In the last decade, more than 700 humanitarian workers have made the ultimate sacrifice while striving to help those most in need in some of the world’s most hostile environments. Thousands more have endured bombing, kidnapping, attacks, hijacking, robbery and rape.
To honor all humanitarians and increase public understanding of humanitarian assistance activities worldwide, the United Nations General Assembly has chosen to dedicate 19 August to commemorate World Humanitarian Day.
The date is highly symbolic. On 19 August 2003, a truck packed with a ton of explosives deliberately drove into the United Nations office in Iraq, killing 22 people. Among them was Sergio Vieira de Mello, then the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Under-Secretary-General of OCHA from 1998 to 2001 and longtime humanitarian.
This commemoration also takes place at a time when humanitarian workers are increasingly targeted by extremists and armed groups and when humanitarian needs are on the rise.
According to FAO, world hunger is projected to reach a historic high in 2009, with just over a billion people going hungry every day. Tens of millions of people around the world have been forcibly displaced, both within their own countries and across international borders. This number is expected to rise still further in the coming years, at least in part due to the consequences of climate change.
In 2008 more than 9 million children died before their fifth birthday, most of them succumbing to a combination of diseases that could easily have been prevented or treated. Malnutrition still contributes to more than a third of these deaths. And every year, 1.8 million people die from diarrhoea and other water-related diseases.
Gender-based violence is also high on the agenda of the humanitarian community and has reached epidemic proportions in countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
