Almost half of all aid workers killed worldwide in 2024 died in Gaza, where 183 humanitarian staff were killed in Israeli attacks, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
The UN condemned the overall toll of 383 deaths as a “shameful indictment” of international apathy and warned that this year’s numbers are similarly alarming.
The 2024 figure marked a 31 percent rise from the previous year, with 60 more aid workers killed in Sudan and dozens elsewhere in conflict zones.
The UN said state actors were the most common perpetrators, and most of the dead were local staff, targeted either in the field or in their homes.
Beyond the deaths, 308 aid workers were wounded, 125 kidnapped, and 45 detained last year, according to the UN’s report released on World Humanitarian Day.
‘Shameful indictment of international inaction’
“Even one attack against a humanitarian colleague is an attack on all of us and on the people we serve,” said UN aid chief Tom Fletcher. “Attacks on this scale, with zero accountability, are a shameful indictment of international inaction.”
So far in 2025, 265 aid workers have already been killed, according to provisional data from the Aid Worker Security Database.
The UN stressed that assaults on humanitarian staff violate international law and undermine relief lifelines for millions in war and disaster zones. “Violence against aid workers is not inevitable. It must end,” Fletcher said.
The World Health Organization also reported more than 800 attacks on health care in 16 territories this year, killing over 1,110 health workers and patients and injuring hundreds more.
World Humanitarian Day, marked every August 19, commemorates the 2003 bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad that killed 22 people, including UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello.
