Gaza the Most Dangerous Place for Humanitarian Workers
HAVANA TIMES – Gaza is the most dangerous place in history for humanitarian workers, with 408 of them killed since October 2023. This was the affirmation offered on April 2nd by Joyce Msuya, assistant director of the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs.
Speaking before the UN Security Council, Ms. Msuya declared, “We demand a response, and ask for justice. And since we’re here to discuss the protection of humanitarian workers, I must ask this Council: ‘What are you going to do to help us find those answers, achieve justice, and avoid more killings?’”
She added that the humanitarian workers “are being killed in unprecedented numbers.” According to her statistics, 2024 was the worst year on record, with 377 humanitarian workers killed in 20 countries.
That number, she noted, represents nearly 100 more deaths than in 2023, itself a year in which a 137% increase in killings was registered with respect to 2022. Many other aid workers were wounded, kidnapped, attacked, and arbitrarily detained.
The last two years have been especially brutal. In Sudan, at least 84 aid workers, all of them Sudanese citizens, have been killed since the conflict between rival armies began in April 2023.
“Just three days ago, on March 30, a mass grave was uncovered in Rafah (southern Gaza) with the bodies of 15 emergency aid workers from the Palestine Red Crescent’s Civil Defense unit and the United Nations,” Msuya stated.
These aid workers had been “murdered by the Israeli forces several days before, while they were trying to save lives. Their clearly identifiable vehicles were discovered destroyed and smashed. The UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs team also witnessed shots fired against civilians as they fled,” Msuya continued.
“This tragedy has occurred just eleven days after another fatal incident on March 19, when another colleague from the United Nations died in Gaza and six others were wounded. Those deaths “elevate the number of aid workers killed in the Gaza strip since October 7, 2023 to 408, making Gaza the most dangerous place on earth for humanitarian aid workers.
For the past year and a half, the Gaza strip with its 2.3 million inhabitants has been the scene of a large-scale military offensive on the part of the Israeli army, which has cost over 50,000 civilian lives. The assault is in response to an attack from the militant Islamist group Hamas in the south of Israel that caused the death of nearly 1,200 people.
The UN’s humanitarian agencies, together with the Red Crescent Society and associated groups that try to bring in food, medical attention, and other services, are laboring under the constant threat of attacks and bombings that indiscriminately hit homes, hospitals, shelters, warehouses, and refugee camps for those displaced within Gaza.
Msuya stressed that all over the world 95% of the aid workers killed are local workers, “although their deaths don’t elicit huge reactions or appear on the news.”
She commented that the International Red Cross and the Red Crescent have documented the fact that the assassination of a local aid worker receives 500 times less attention than the killing of international personnel.
Humanitarian workers confront other challenges as well, like the criminalization of their labor. There are ever more being detained, interrogated, and accused of backing terrorism, simply for providing aid to whoever needs them, Ms. Msuya declared.
She added that the aid organizations are also targets of disinformation campaigns in places like Haiti, the Occupied West Bank and Yemen.
The debate in the Security Council was centered on Resolution 2730 from 2024, that calls on States to respect and protect United Nations and humanitarian personnel.
“The attacks on aid workers must cease. The perpetrators must be held accountable. There’s no lack of solid framework under international law to protect humanitarian workers and those of the United Nations. What’s missing is the political will to comply,” Msuya concluded.
First published in Spanish by IPS and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.