Attacks Against Aid Workers

Around the world, humanitarian workers are being targeted as never before.

A report by the Center for International Cooperation and the Overseas Development Institute tallies a total of 122 aid worker fatalities in 2008, including 45 in Somalia, 33 in Afghanistan and 19 in Sudan.

(I've tracked slightly different numbers of Somalia, with 36 aid worker fatalities.  These statistics were taken from the Somalia NGO Safety and Preparedness Program report no. 52/08, current through December 23rd.  Another aid worker was then killed in Somalia on December 13th.  The Afghanistan NGO Security Office also reports a somewhat lower figure for Afghanistan, with 31 aid workers killed in 2008.)

Over the last three years, aid workers have also been killed in the Central African Republic, Iraq, Lebanon, South Sudan, and Sri Lanka.

Providing assistance during armed conflicts has always been dangerous, yet this risk was traditionally mitigated by the fact that aid workers were rarely direct targets. Humanitarian staff worked closely with communities, building the acceptance and trust necessary to ensure their protection. Aid agencies based their security on the assumption that as long as they remained neutral, no one would see them as a threat.

In many conflicts, this assumption no longer holds true. There was a 92% increase in the number of violent attacks against aid workers from 1997 to 2005. A total of 947 aid workers were victims of these attacks, including 434 who were killed. The vast majority of victims (78%) were national staff. The most deadly year on record was 2003, with 86 aid worker fatalities. (A year-by-year comparison of attacks against aid workers is available here.)

Part of the reason for the increase has to do with the fragmented nature of many conflicts since the end of the Cold War. In places such as Afghanistan, Darfur and Somalia, there are a bewildering array of warlords and armed groups, and community acceptance isn't much of a security guarantee if bandits control the surrounding roads.

There also has been a rise in politically motivated attacks. Many rebel and insurgent groups no longer see humanitarian workers as neutral or independent. For instance, the Taliban issued a statement after killing four aid workers in Afghanistan on August 13^th, accusing them of working for “foreign invader forces”.

Aid agencies have long criticized Western troops in Afghanistan and Iraq for carrying out small development projects, "blurring the lines" between military and humanitarian actors. Furthermore, many Western aid agencies have agendas, such as support for women's rights, which put them directly at odds with religiously motivated insurgents like the Taliban – who, for instance, go to great lengths to attack girls' schools.

The problem is not limited to insurgents – some observers blame government security services for the massacre of seventeen aid workers in Sri Lanka in 2006.

There's also no denying the effect of Iraq. Attacks against humanitarian workers there shattered whatever remained of the taboo against such acts, and did so in a way that captured massive media attention.

[Body of an aid worker killed in Afghanistan - Photo from AP / NY Times]