Khadijah Shehu Abdulkareem
UNITED NATIONS — A record 383 aid workers were killed in 2024, the United Nations revealed on Tuesday, describing the figures as a “shameful indictment” of global inaction and warning that this year’s toll is already deeply alarming.
The grim tally, released on World Humanitarian Day, marks a 31 percent increase from 2023. The UN said the surge was “driven by the relentless conflicts in Gaza, where 181 humanitarian workers were killed, and in Sudan, where 60 lost their lives.”
State actors were the most common perpetrators of the killings, according to the report. Most of those killed were local staff—often targeted while carrying out their duties or even attacked in their homes.
Alongside the deaths, 308 aid workers were wounded, 125 kidnapped and 45 detained in 2024.
“Even one attack against a humanitarian colleague is an attack on all of us and on the people we serve,” UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said. “Attacks on this scale, with zero accountability, are a shameful indictment of international inaction and apathy.”
Provisional figures from the Aid Worker Security Database show that at least 265 aid workers have already been killed in 2025, as of August 14.
The UN stressed that such violence not only violates international humanitarian law but also threatens the lifelines sustaining millions of civilians trapped in war and disaster zones. “Violence against aid workers is not inevitable. It must end,” Fletcher added.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it had verified more than 800 attacks on health care facilities across 16 territories so far this year. Those incidents killed more than 1,110 health workers and patients, leaving hundreds more injured.
“Each attack inflicts lasting harm, deprives entire communities of life-saving care when they need it the most, endangers health care providers, and weakens already strained health systems,” the WHO said in a statement.
World Humanitarian Day, observed annually on August 19, honors aid workers who risk and often lose their lives in crisis zones. The day commemorates the 2003 bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad, which killed 22 people, including UN rights chief Sergio Vieira de Mello.