United Nations says a record number of aid workers were killed in 2023

A record number of aid workers were killed in conflicts around the world last year, more than half of them after the Israel-Hamas war started on 7 October, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Monday.

“Last year, 280 aid workers lost their lives in 33 countries making it the deadliest year on record for the entire global humanitarian community,” said Ramesh Rajasingham, head and representative of OCHA in Geneva.

He added that shockingly, this was more than double the previous year’s figure of 118 and twice as many deaths as the yearly average over the last 20 years.

OCHA said 2024 “may be on track for an even deadlier outcome” with 172 aid workers killed as of 7 August, according to a provisional data.

More than 280 aid workers have been killed in Gaza, mainly in airstrikes.  The war there is now in its 11th month.

The organisation said that “extreme levels of violence in Sudan and South Sudan ” have also contributed to the death toll both this year and last.

“In Sudan and many other places, aid workers are attacked, killed, injured, and abducted. We demand an end to impunity so that perpetrators face justice,” he said.

Leni Kinzli, spokesperson for the World Food Programme in Sudan, said there is active fighting in areas where people need help the most.

“There are airstrikes, bombings, shelling, in places like Khartoum and Al-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur. So that's the physical security threat,” she said.

“But then along the roads where we would have to transport food, there are so many checkpoints, so many different actors, armed actors involved, across different lines of conflict.”

In a tweet on World Humanitarian Day on Monday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said honouring the humanitarians killed was not enough.

The UN’s acting humanitarian chief, Joyce Msuya, said “the normalisation of violence against aid workers and the lack of accountability are unacceptable” and enormously harmful to aid operations everywhere.

In a letter to UN member nations, 413 humanitarian organisations said that “brutal hostilities” seen in multiple conflicts have exposed the terrible truth that “we are living in an era of impunity”.

They appealed to all countries, the wider international community, and all parties to conflicts to protect civilians and aid workers and hold perpetrators to account.

At a ceremony at UN headquarters on Monday dozens of current staff members and relatives of some of the victims stood in silent tribute to their memory.