World Humanitarian Day recognizes aid workers who put themselves in harm’s way to help others

World Humanitarian Day on Aug. 19 honors humanitarian aid workers all over the world. This day commemorates the anniversary of the bombing on the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, Iraq, killed 22 humanitarian aid workers, including the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello. Five years later, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution designating Aug. 19 as World Humanitarian Day.
This year’s theme is #ActforHumanity and is calling attention to the aid workers who are being killed “with impunity,” says the U.N. Last year was the deadliest on record for humanitarian aid workers, with 280 workers killed in 33 countries. That was more than double the 118 workers killed in 2022. Additionally, 78 aid workers were kidnapped and almost 200 were wounded worldwide. 2024 is on track to be worse. So far this year, more than 170 humanitarians have been killed and at least another 150 have been injured or abducted.
Pope Francis has invited everyone to pray for humanitarian workers, “especially for those who have died or been injured while helping people affected by wars and disasters.” Humanitarians, he posted on X, “show that we can be ‘fratelli tutti’,” or “all brothers,” by taking care of others.
In 2023, the overwhelming majority of humanitarian staff killed or injured were national humanitarian workers: a whopping 96% were national staff working to help alleviate suffering in their home countries. More than half of last year’s fatalities, 163, were killed in Gaza during the first three months of the conflict. The next two countries were South Sudan and Sudan, with 34 and 25 deaths respectively.
António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, notes that “Humanitarians — who are mostly national staff working in their own countries — are even closer to the people they serve. They are finding new ways to venture deeper into disaster-stricken regions, and closer to the front lines of conflict, driven by a single purpose: to save and protect lives.”
Joyce Msuya, U.N. Acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, called for action. “The normalization of violence against aid workers and the lack of accountability are unacceptable, unconscionable and enormously harmful for aid operations everywhere,” she said.
Humanitarian organizations worldwide have also written to U.N. Member States calling for greater efforts to protect all aid workers, their premises and assets, as stipulated in U.N. Security Council resolution 2730 (2024), adopted in May.
Perpetrators must also be held to account, they added, noting that those who commit violations of international humanitarian law cannot go unpunished. “We will continue to stay and deliver in humanitarian crises around the world — but the situation requires us to take a united stand to call for the protection of our staff, volunteers and the civilians we serve,” the letter said.
Multiple humanitarian workers shared their experiences with the United Nations for World Humanitarian Day. One worker in Gaza, Louise Wateridge, said that she has colleagues that take their children to work with them because “they would rather die together than die separately.”
Leni Kinzli, who is head of communications with the World Food Program in Sudan, said “I’ve been an aid worker now for six years and being an aid worker in Sudan means basically never giving up. It’s an incredibly difficult situation to be working in … (but) this is what I signed up for.”
She also shared an experience she had with a woman in her mid-30s who had made a 500-mile trek to safety and who was sobbing in Kinzli’s arms. “Having the space to allow people to share the difficulties that they’ve been through and giving them the empathy and compassion they deserve after such horrific experiences; that’s what being a humanitarian is all about.”