The United Nations The U.N. humanitarian office said Tuesday, on the annual day that honors the thousands of people who enter crises to help others, that a record 383 aid workers were killed in worldwide hotspots in 2024, with nearly half of them in Gaza during the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
The record number of deaths must serve as a warning to protect civilians trapped in violence and everyone attempting to assist them, according to U.N. humanitarian head Tom Fletcher.
“Attacks on this scale, with zero accountability, are a shameful indictment of international inaction and apathy,” Fletcher said in a statement on World Humanitarian Day. “As the humanitarian community, we demand again that those with power and influence act for humanity, protect civilians and aid workers and hold perpetrators to account.”
The number of homicides increased from 293 in 2023 to 383 in 2024, including more than 180 in Gaza, according to the Aid Worker Security Database, which has been compiling records since 1997.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, reports that the majority of the aid workers slain were national staff working in their communities who were assaulted at home or on the job.
According to OCHA, the numbers so far this year don’t indicate that the growing trend is going to reverse.
According to data from the database, there were 599 significant attacks that affected aid workers last year, a significant rise from the 420 that occurred in 2023. In addition, 308 humanitarian workers were injured in the 2024 attacks, 125 were abducted, and 45 were arrested.
According to the database, 265 relief workers have been slain in 245 significant attacks during the last seven plus months.
Israeli military opened fire before dawn on March 23 in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, killing 15 emergency responders and medics in clearly marked trucks in one of the deadliest and most horrific strikes of the year. The dead and their wrecked vehicles were crushed by troops and buried in a mass grave. It took a week for rescue and U.N. personnel to arrive at the scene.
“Even one attack against a humanitarian colleague is an attack on all of us and on the people we serve,” Fletcher of the United Nations stated. “It is not necessary for relief workers to be killed. It has to stop.
The database shows that, in 2024, violence against aid workers rose in 21 nations compared to the year before, with government forces and affiliates being the most frequent offenders.
According to the database, the Palestinian territories had the most significant attacks last year (194), followed by Sudan (64), South Sudan (47), Nigeria (31), and Congo (27).
With 60 relief workers killed in 2024, Sudan, where a civil war is still continuing, came in second to Gaza and the West Bank in terms of deaths. That was more than twice as many as the 25 deaths of relief workers in 2023.
Twenty humanitarian workers were killed in Lebanon, where Israel and Hezbollah militants fought a conflict last year, compared to none in 2023. The database shows that 13 relief workers were killed in Ukraine in 2024, up from 6 in 2023, and 14 in Ethiopia and Syria, roughly twice as many as in 2023.
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