World Humanitarian Day honours and celebrates the hundreds of thousands of volunteers, professionals and individuals who help and support, with care, food, and water, people in distress around the world. In 2022, Humanitarian Outcomes recorded 168 attacks on humanitarian workers, resulting in 44 deaths. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that more than 460 humanitarian workers were victims of attacks in 2021.
Humanitarian aid in Syria blocked due to geopolitical quarrels:
While the country has been embroiled in a bloody civil war for more than ten years, the Syrian population was hit by an earthquake in February 2023 that plunged them into unprecedented crisis.
The earthquake caused devastation in several regions of northern and western Syria, which had already been fragmented by almost 12 years of conflict. According to the Syrian Ministry of Health, 1,414 people died in areas under government control. On the other hand, in the regions outside Damascus’ control, close to the Turkish border, the local authorities reported a death toll of 4,537.
Following the earthquake, the European Union (EU) and the United States eased sanctions against the regime of Bashar Al-Assad in order to “further facilitate the rapid delivery of humanitarian aid”. Humanitarian aid actors were no longer required to seek prior approval from EU Member States to make transfers or provide goods and services to blacklisted individuals and entities in order to contribute for humanitarian purposes.
However, the aid delivered by the UN, which in 2014 set up a cross-border mechanism enabling humanitarian aid to be delivered, without authorisation from Damascus, to more than 2.4 million people in the Idlib region, which remains under the control of jihadist groups and rebels, has become subject to multiple blackmail by global forces. On 11 July, the Security Council failed to renew the mechanism on which four million people depend, following Russia’s veto.
On 19 July, Amnesty International issued a statement calling on UN member states to “unequivocally condemn Russia’s abuse of its veto” and to “reaffirm the legality, impartiality, neutrality and independence of the cross-border aid mechanism for north-west Syria”. For the time being, these calls have gone unanswered, while the situation of the region’s population is deteriorating daily and the safety of humanitarian workers is being jeopardised.
124 attacks on humanitarian workers in Yemen:
The United Nations has revealed that it recorded 124 attacks against humanitarian workers in Yemen during the first nine months of 2022. The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Yemen said that “from January to September 2022, partners and offices reported 124 attacks against humanitarian workers in Yemen”.
These attacks resulted in the death of one humanitarian worker and the injury of four others, while 15 people were kidnapped and 13 others were held captive.
The provinces of Al Hudaydah and Hajjah, under the control of Houthi militias, are at the top of the list of towns where humanitarian action is being violated. The US special envoy to Yemen, Tim Lenderking, discussed with a UN official the restrictions imposed by the Houthi militias on the delivery of humanitarian aid to the most precarious regions of Yemen. However, the meeting did not result in any concrete measures being taken.
In March 2023, the Security Council called for the truce to be extended to “give time to help the millions of Yemenis who depend on humanitarian aid for their lives”. Taking part in the meeting, the United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, Joyce Msuya, pointed out that the $1.16 billion in donations pledged earlier this year in Geneva at the Donors’ Conference would not be enough to last until the end of the year. The UN official called for all these pledges to be disbursed immediately and for the response plan to be fully funded—4.3 billion dollars to urgently help the 17 million people in need.
Joyce Msuya pointed out that, thanks to the 2021 truce, donor support, EU aid and the efforts of humanitarian workers, the number of people suffering from hunger in Yemen had fallen by almost two million. However, the UN official underlined the “dramatic emergency situation” in which 17 million people find themselves, relying on emergency aid for assistance and protection, while all too often the agencies have nothing to help them. Access for humanitarian workers and security remain major challenges. “Funds are lacking”, said the senior official, and “economic problems are pushing even more people into destitution”.
World Humanitarian Day is celebrated every year on 19 August, an initiative adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2008 to honour the memory of the 22 aid workers who died in the 2003 bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad, Iraq.
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