2024 Deadliest Year for Aid Workers, Security Council Pressed to Ensure Justice, Protection
UN Safety Chief Asks Council to Address His 'Biggest Concern’ — Lack of Accountability for Killing UN, Aid Personnel
As 2024 becomes the deadliest year for humanitarian workers, speakers today urged the Security Council and countries to act on the Secretary-General's recommendations to safeguard aid and UN personnel, including providing greater support for them and ensuring accountability for perpetrators.
“In recent years, State actors are responsible for the greater share of aid worker deaths as opposed to non-State armed groups and criminals,” said Abby Stoddard of Humanitarian Outcomes, a research group whose Aid Worker Security Database tracks major incidents of violence affecting aid workers globally, lamenting that “the very actors charged with upholding international humanitarian law, with protecting and facilitating humanitarian aid, have instead become the main source of threat and impediment to it”. This has serious implications for humanitarian access to people in need, as well as to the global stability and order, she added.
As of this morning, 282 aid workers have been killed this year, she reported, exceeding “last year’s awful total” of 280 — more than double the annual average of the previous 10 years — attributed to major warfare and mass civilian losses in Gaza, Sudan and South Sudan, along with 17 other humanitarian response settings. This looks to be “a step-change” rather than “a short-term spike”, she said.
Recalling the Council’s adoption in May of resolution 2730 (2024), which called on States to respect and protect UN and humanitarian personnel, she urged the 15-member body to take additional, concrete measures to address impunity, including by holding ad hoc tribunals or promoting other international legal means of achieving justice and disincentivizing these attacks.
Many humanitarians now distrust the notification systems, even fearing that their participation in some of these mechanisms might increase their risk, due to conflict parties acting in bad faith, she pointed out, urging collective action to improve protocols and create accountability mechanisms when deconfliction fails. She further urged the Council to call on States and international organizations to empower local and national humanitarian actors, ensuring that they are accorded the same protections as UN and other international agencies.
“Please help protect my colleagues in Gaza”, implored Lisa Doughten, Director of Financing and Partnerships Division, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, as she highlighted deaths of more than 330 humanitarian workers — mostly United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) staff — since 7 October 2023.
Despite the “very real dangers”, global humanitarian operations have provided life-saving aid to more than 116 million people worldwide this year, she said. However, “no amount of security management will help those workers” when conflict parties choose to target humanitarian workers or ignore their obligations under international law to spare them, she warned. Outlining three critical areas for action, she urged the Council and Member States to clearly condemn attacks against aid workers, seek more systematic and universal accountability for serious violations and provide greater support for humanitarian workers who are the victims and survivors of harm.
“They want you to use diplomatic and economic pressure to force respect for international law,” including through effective humanitarian exemptions across sanctions regimes and counterterrorism legislation, she continued. The international community must allow survivors to participate in global discussions at the highest levels, including at the Council, and provide reparations, legal aid and mental health support for survivors and families, she added.
Also briefing the Council for the first time, Under-Secretary-General for Safety and Security Gilles Michaud urged members to address his “biggest concern” — a profound lack of accountability for violence against humanitarian and UN personnel. “The entire community of Member States must speak with moral clarity about the need to protect humanitarian workers and ensure accountability for acts of violence by any State and non-State actor, against humanitarians,” he implored.
Noting that UN operations navigate multiple overlapping crises of unprecedented scale, such as in Gaza, Lebanon, Haiti and Somalia, he pointed out that locally recruited personnel — who make up the majority of those impacted — frequently bear the heaviest burden. Normative frameworks, such as the Convention on the Safety of United Nations and Associated Personnel and its Optional Protocol, should gain universal support, he said, urging Member States to join both agreements and to fully implement them.
Moreover, UN mission transitions and closures not only affect the safety and security of UN personnel but also limit capacity to enable humanitarian delivery. Such fundamental changes require advance planning and should be explicitly considered by this Council, he said.
In the ensuing debate, Council members welcomed the Secretary-General’s recommendations on ways to respond to threats to humanitarian personnel and echoed urgent calls for action.
The representative of Switzerland, whose delegation penned resolution 2730 (2024), urged all Member States to fully implement the text. She further called on Council members to put aside political differences to prioritize the protection of human lives and humanitarian principles, emphasizing that the voices of humanitarian actors are “the best compass to guide our action”.
France’s delegate urged that the Secretary-General’s recommendations be implemented without delay and, similarly, called on the Council to ensure the implementation of resolution 2730 (2024), and ensure that perpetrators are held accountable.
The implementation of that resolution, however, has “fallen short of expectations” despite a beacon of hope it offers for those in the field, said Mozambique’s delegate, underlining the need for robust accountability mechanisms; an expansion of humanitarian exemptions to sanctions; and for misinformation and disinformation to be combated, including by holding digital platforms accountable for their role in spreading harmful narratives.
On that last point, Algeria’s delegate said disinformation and misinformation lead to erosion of the local population’s trust, underscoring the importance of disseminating accurate information and holding those spreading hate speech accountable. He also urged States to strengthen national oversight mechanisms and ensure investigations of all documented violations, as attacks on humanitarians are considered war crimes.
Slovenia’s delegate said States should adopt legislation properly sanctioning violations of international humanitarian law, and cases of grave violations should be referred to international courts, including the International Criminal Court. Other Council members, including the representatives of the United States, Malta, the Republic of Korea and Guyana, also echoed the briefers’ demand for accountability for crimes against aid workers.
The protection of civilians in armed conflict is rooted in his country’s lived experience, said Sierra Leone’s representative, noting Council resolution 1270 (1999) authorized the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) with the first explicit mandate to protect civilians from threats of physical violence.
Cautioning against the normalization of violence against humanitarian workers, Ecuador’s representative urged States to enhance monitoring systems, improve quality of the data systems on incidents and bolster mechanisms for information exchange and support services.
Addressing calls for mental health support for aid workers was Japan’s representative who spotlighted his country’s contribution of over $364,000 to the UN Department of Safety and Security project “Capacity Building in Crisis Psychosocial Support”. Voicing alarm over “alarmingly high” reports of severe violence, kidnappings, injuries, harassment and arbitrary detentions in conflict areas, he called for the strengthening of the work of the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission.
The representatives of the Russian Federation said that the Secretary-General’s recommendations left out “the most important thing: the need for consent and coordination with national Governments” — a vital principle of humanitarian assistance contained in General Assembly resolution 46/182. On accountability, he voiced his opposition to the International Criminal Court, the reason for which his delegation abstained from Council resolution 2730 (2024). His counterpart from China also called for the rejection of double standards, and the guaranteed safety and security of UN personnel “without distinction and bias”, whether in Gaza or Afghanistan.
The representative of the United Kingdom, Council President for November, speaking in his national capacity, underscored that facilitating rapid and full humanitarian access to all civilians in need and full compliance with international humanitarian law is “a bare minimum as per the Geneva Conventions which we have all ratified”.
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