“The protection of aid workers is paramount,” said Stephen O’Brien, the Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and UN Emergency Relief Coordinator in an interview with UN News on Thursday.
World Humanitarian Day seeks to pay tribute to health and aid workers who risk their lives daily to help those in need. It also rallies support for the innocent victims of war and conflicts worldwide.
This year, the UN and their partners came together under the #NotATarget Twitter campaign to bring awareness to the need to protect civilians caught in conflict, including medical and humanitarian workers.
“World Humanitarian Day is an opportunity for us to focus on protecting humanitarian aid workers, particularly in the medical field,” O’Brien noted.
O’Brien said that humanitarian workers are currently operating in 40 countries worldwide, despite dangerous conditions.
Syria is among the top five most dangerous countries for aid workers due to the civil war, now in its seventh year, along with the rise of ISIS in 2014.
Last Saturday, seven members of the Syria Civil Defense rescue workers, known as the White Helmets, were killed when unknown gunmen stormed their office in Sarmin, Idlib province.
“My heart grieves for the family and friends of those brave people who gave the ultimate sacrifice to help others,” said O’Brien in response to the death of White Helmet members who were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize last year.
Since the beginning of 2017, there have been a total of 82 aid or health workers killed, 28 wounded and 36 kidnapped who were working for UN, the International Red Cross or Red Crescent or other local and international non-governmental aid organizations.
Almost half of the deaths reported in 2017 occurred in Syria according to the Aid Worker Security Database created by Humanitarian Outcomes, which provides research and policy advice for aid agencies or donor governments.
World Humanitarian Day stems from an incident which occurred in Iraq in 2003. On August 19 of that year, a bomb attack on Canal Hotel in Baghdad killed 22 aid workers, including Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General for Iraq.
This event marked a turning point for humanitarian operations in Iraq and worldwide. Five years later, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution designating August 19 as World Humanitarian Day.
“Today, millions of people around the world are engulfed in conflicts that are not of their own making,” said Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the UN in a video released Friday to commemorate 2017 World Humanitarian Day.
“The brave health and aid workers who set out to help are often themselves targeted in deplorable attacks that hamper their ability to save lives,” he added.
Guterres said that the UN is calling for the protections of civilians caught up in the conflict as well as the health and aid workers who support them.
“We want the world to know civilians, including aid workers and health workers are not the target.”
from Rudaw http://ift.tt/2xc0yrs
via Defense News
No comments: