August 19, 2022 — On World Humanitarian Day, the International Rescue Committee commemorates humanitarian personnel and those who have lost their lives working for humanitarian causes. We honor all aid workers who continue to support people affected by crises and to advocate for their protection, well-being, and dignity.
The IRC works in 40 countries, including Afghanistan, South Sudan and Syria, delivering emergency assistance and supporting vulnerable populations in hard-to-reach areas. The safety and security of humanitarian aid workers and civilians is crucial to ensuring assistance can reach all the people we serve.
Aid workers around the world face grave risks on a daily basis to deliver humanitarian aid to those most in need. The risks range from escalating constraints on humanitarian access and increases in targeted attacks and harassment of humanitarians in crisis settings. In 2021, according to the Aid Worker Security Report, there were 268 reported attacks involving 461 aid workers who either died, were wounded, or kidnapped. Last year also saw the most fatalities recorded since 2013. The most violent context for aid workers continued to be South Sudan, followed by Afghanistan and Syria.
Ciaran Donnelly, IRC’s Senior Vice President, Crisis Response, Recovery, and Development, said:
“People in fragile or conflict-affected states cannot properly gain humanitarian relief if access to care cannot be guaranteed. The safety of humanitarian aid workers is the essential foundation for relief services that save lives and, in turn, enables long-term recovery and long-term development. Duty of care - which is our obligation to maintain the safety, security, health, and well-being of our staff - becomes crucial as security conditions deteriorate but the need increases for greater program implementation. We will continue to learn, adapt, and improve how we operate in complex environments to safely deliver humanitarian aid where it is most needed. Our commitment to the safety, security, and support of our staff has never wavered and will remain a priority.
“We must promote safety and security for humanitarian programs via funding, policy decisions, and diplomacy. We should fully fund humanitarian appeals, reaffirm adherence to international humanitarian law and ensure accountability, strengthen monitoring and reporting, and work with governments and stakeholders to increase humanitarian access. Attacks on humanitarian aid workers who put their lives on the line during crises is horrifyingly wrong – but it is past time for expressions of sympathy and time to act.”
Araba Cole, IRC’s Global Director, Safety and Security, said:
“Despite the daunting incident numbers, continued investment and innovation in security risk management can enable us to safely and responsibly meet the challenges of increasingly complex threat environments in the field. We cannot afford to be at the mercy of uncertainty; we can and must find ways to navigate it to ensure continued assistance to those most in need.”
Afghanistan: One year on
August marks the one-year anniversary since the shift in power in Afghanistan, which led to a mass evacuation of Afghans from Kabul to the United States - the largest U.S. evacuation operation since the Vietnam war. One year on, thousands of volunteers, professionals, and crisis-affected people persevere to deliver urgent services for survival and resilience in a country with skyrocketing levels of unemployment, rising hunger, and the disintegration of civil society.
The IRC began work in Afghanistan in 1988 and now works with thousands of villages across twelve provinces. Our 6,000 staff in the country – 99% are Afghans themselves - works with local communities to provide vital health services, safe learning spaces and community-based education, basic necessities such as clean water and sanitation, cash distribution, and extensive resilience programming. At the same time, our teams have advocated for the inclusion of women in the humanitarian response, and the IRC has maintained a staff body comprising 40% Afghan women.
In Afghanistan,our teams have been able to reach remote districts of the country in the last year that had been unreachable to humanitarian actors for decades. In Helmand, for example, the IRC is able to deliver essential healthcare, community-based education programs, and cash for work to areas previously cut off by fighting. Meanwhile, improved access meant that the IRC could deliver emergency healthcare assistance to some of the most isolated villages in Afghanistan affected by the earthquake in rural Paktika and Khost.