GENEVA: The United Nations on Monday condemned the “unacceptable” level of violence becoming commonplace against humanitarian workers, a record 280 of whom were killed worldwide in 2023.
And it warned that the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza is potentially fueling even higher numbers of such deaths this year.
“The normalization of violence against aid workers and the lack of accountability are unacceptable, unconscionable and enormously harmful for aid operations everywhere,” Joyce Msuya, acting director of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said in a statement on World Humanitarian Day.
“With 280 aid workers killed in 33 countries last year, 2023 marked the deadliest year on record for the global humanitarian community,” a 137 percent increase over 2022, when 118 aid workers died, OCHA said in the statement.
It cited the Aid Worker Security Database which has tracked such figures back to 1997.
The UN said more than half of the deaths in 2023, or 163, were aid workers killed in Gaza during the first three months of the war between Israel and Hamas, mainly in air strikes.
South Sudan, wracked by civil strife, and Sudan, where a war between two rival generals has been raging since April 2023, are the next deadliest conflicts for humanitarians, with 34 and 25 deaths respectively.
Also in the top 10 are Israel and Syria, with seven deaths each; Ethiopia and Ukraine, with six deaths each; Somalia at five fatalities; and four deaths both in Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In all the conflicts, most of the deaths are among local staff.
Despite 2023’s “outrageously high number” of aid worker fatalities, OCHA said 2024 “may be on track for an even deadlier outcome.”
As of August 9, 176 aid workers have been killed worldwide, according to the Aid Worker Security Database.
Since October, when Hamas-led militants launched a deadly raid into Israel, triggering the war, more than 280 aid workers have been killed in Gaza, the majority of them employees of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, according to OCHA.
Against this backdrop, the leaders of multiple humanitarian organizations were to send a letter Monday to UN member states calling for the international community “to end attacks on civilians, protect all aid workers, and hold perpetrators to account.”
Each year the United Nations marks World Humanitarian Day on August 19, the anniversary of the 2003 attack on its Baghdad headquarters.
The bombing killed 22 people including Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN special representative to Iraq, and injured some 150 local and foreign aid workers.
UN warns of ‘unacceptable’ level of violence against aid workers
https://arab.news/8fu8h
UN warns of ‘unacceptable’ level of violence against aid workers
- Israel-Hamas war in Gaza is potentially fueling even higher numbers of such deaths this year: UN
- More than half of the deaths in 2023, or 163, were aid workers killed in Gaza
Ukraine marks four years since Russian invasion
- Tuesday’s anniversary is expected to see the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the president of the European Council, Antonio Costa, in Kyiv to mark the occasion
KYIV, Ukraine: Ukraine was on Tuesday marking the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, with a show of solidarity from its staunchest allies and no immediate end in sight to Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II.
Tens of thousands of lives have been lost since the Kremlin ordered troops into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, confident of a quick victory but not expecting the fierce resistance that followed.
The worldwide fallout of the war has been immense, with many European countries increasing their own defense spending in anticipation of a possible confrontation of their own with Russia.
But diplomatic talks between the two sides, relaunched last year by the United States, have so far failed to halt the fighting, which has devastated Ukraine and left it facing the mammoth task — and bill — of reconstruction.
Tuesday’s anniversary is expected to see the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the president of the European Council, Antonio Costa, in Kyiv to mark the occasion.
Both said they would take part in a “commemoration ceremony” and visit the site of a Ukrainian energy facility damaged by Russian strikes before attending a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky.
They are also due to take part in a videoconference meeting with Kyiv’s allies — the so-called “Coalition of the Willing” which includes Britain, France and Germany.
- Impasse -
Russia, which currently occupies nearly 20 percent of Ukrainian territory, bombs civilian areas and infrastructure on a daily basis.
The Russian bombardment has sparked the worst energy crisis since the start of the invasion, during a bitter winter.
Kyiv’s Western allies have slapped heavy sanctions on Moscow, forcing it to redirect its key oil exports toward new markets, particularly in Asia.
Despite heavy losses, Russian troops have in recent months advanced slowly on the frontline, particularly in the eastern Donbas region, which has been the epicenter of the bloody fighting and which Moscow wants to annex.
US-brokered talks are ongoing, with Zelensky unwavering in his demands for security guarantees from Washington before any talk of “compromise,” including on territory, with Russia.
Russia, though, has rejected Ukrainian proposals for the deployment of European troops in Ukraine after any ceasefire deal.
President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned that he will pursue his objectives by force if diplomacy fails.
- Reconstruction -
The grinding four-year war has devastated Ukraine, which even before the fighting was one of the poorest countries in Europe.
According to a joint World Bank, European Union and United Nations report with Kyiv, published on Monday, the cost of post-war reconstruction is estimated at around $558 billion over the next decade.
Russia justified sending troops into Ukraine to prevent Ukraine’s ambition to join NATO, arguing that Kyiv’s membership of the transatlantic alliance would threaten its own security.
On Monday, during a medal ceremony to mark “Defenders of the Fatherland Day,” Putin insisted that his soldiers were defending Russia’s “borders” in Ukraine, to ensure “strategic parity” between powers and fight for the country’s “future.”
Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, for its part considers the war to be a resurgence of Russian imperialism aimed at subjugating the Ukrainian people.
In an interview with the BBC broadcast on Sunday, Zelensky said he believed Putin had “already started” World War III.
“Russia wants to impose on the world a different way of life and change the lives people have chosen for themselves,” he told the British public broadcaster.
