GENEVA: A staggering 281 assist staff have been killed all over the world to date this 12 months, making 2024 the deadliest 12 months for humanitarians, the UN assist chief mentioned on Friday (Nov 22).
“Humanitarian staff are being killed at an unprecedented charge, their braveness and humanity being met with bullets and bombs,” mentioned Tom Fletcher, the United Nations’ new under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency reduction coordinator.
With greater than a month left to go of 2024, the “grim milestone was reached”, he mentioned, after 280 humanitarians had been killed throughout 33 nations throughout all of 2023.
“This violence is unconscionable and devastating to assist operations,” Fletcher mentioned.
Israel’s devastating warfare in Gaza was driving up the numbers, his workplace mentioned, with 333 assist staff killed there – most from the UN company supporting Palestinian refugees, UNRWA – since Hamas’s Oct 7, 2023 attacks, which sparked the warfare.
“States and events to battle should defend humanitarians, uphold worldwide legislation, prosecute these accountable, and name time on this period of impunity,” Fletcher mentioned.
Help staff had been topic to kidnappings, accidents, harassment and arbitrary detention in a spread of nations, his workplace mentioned, together with Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and Ukraine.