Humanitarian workers, 280 have been killed in 33 countries: numbers that risk being even higher before the end of 2024

ROMA – It is a record number, never recorded by international agencies in 2023, considered the deadliest year for the global humanitarian community. We learn this from the site Info-Cooperationthe portal for Italian humanitarian workers. Workers of NGOs or UN humanitarian agencies are on the front line in world conflicts and are killed in unprecedented numbers: this is reiterated in a dossier byUnited Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The 2023 figure represents a 137 percent increase compared to 2022, when 118 aid workers were killed. Added to these are 224 injured operators and 91 kidnapped or illegally detained.

A Doctors Without Borders worker killed. It happened in the north of Gaza after the attacks in the Jabalia camp. He is the seventh MSF person killed since the conflict began. His name was Nasser Hamdi Abdelatif Al Shalfouh: he died following shrapnel wounds he sustained in his legs and chest on 8 October in Jabalia, north of Gaza, after the area had been subjected to attacks by Israeli forces which had trapped hundreds of people. After being injured, Nasser – 31 years old, who worked as a driver for MSF until the beginning of the conflict – received first emergency treatment at Al Awda hospital, in Jabalia, and was then transferred to Kamal hospital Adwan. He was unable to receive the level of care he needed due to a lack of hospital capacity and too many patients in the facility, and died from his injuries on October 10 at Kamal Adwan Hospital.

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The omen before the end of 2024. Alarming numbers which risk being even higher in 2024 due to hostilities in Gaza and Lebanon, to date 227 dead and 118 injured have been recorded, most of the deceased were staff members of UNRWA killed by air strikes.

But the death toll does not only concern the Middle East. But the death toll is not unique to the Middle East, extreme levels of violence in Sudan and South Sudan have contributed to the tragic death tolls in both 2023 and 2024 and many aid workers continue to be detained in Yemen. In all these conflicts, the majority of victims are national personnel.