Aid Worker Security Report 2025 – Defenceless: Aid worker security amid the humanitarian funding collapse.

This year’s Aid Worker Security Report comes at a major inflection point for international humanitarian assistance and during an alarming new peak of violence against humanitarians. The 2025 edition – our 15th since data tracking began – was almost not produced after the Aid Worker Security Database (AWSD), lost its US government funding when the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was dismantled. The funding crisis now rocking the sector comes on top of escalating conflicts and a steep erosion of respect for humanitarian norms and the laws of war by state actors – amplified in some places by public smear campaigns against aid organisations.

The conflicts in Gaza and Sudan continue to drive the greatest numbers of aid worker casualties, but incidents were on the rise in other contexts as well, with historically high numbers seen in Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Lebanon, Nigeria, Somalia, Ukraine, and Yemen.

The loss of funding, security risk management capacities, and in some places public acceptance, have put humanitarians at increased risk. Anecdotal accounts and some formal reporting indicate direct links between programme cuts and violent incidents. At the same time, incident monitoring has become more difficult as data and analytics providers face severe funding reductions. Aid organisations report having to cut security positions, communications capacity, and other critical supports, forcing difficult choices between accepting increased risk exposure and abandoning communities.

Amid the bad news of rising violence and decreasing support for humanitarian action, an encouraging development has been a spate of diplomatic initiatives to protect aid workers. UN Security Council Resolution 2730 (2024), for the first time, not only condemns attacks on humanitarians but also calls for accountability and judicial redress – offering a glimmer of hope in an otherwise dark time for humanitarian action.

Summary of key findings

 2024 was another record-setting year for aid worker fatalities, with 383 humanitarians killed in violent incidents. 

 In addition, 308 aid workers sustained serious injuries, 125 were kidnapped, and at least 45 were arrested or detained. 

 The first half of 2025 saw the surge in violence continue unabated, with the number of incidents and fatalities already more than double the annual totals seen in most years before 2021.

 Most fatalities occurred in Gaza, followed by Sudan, Lebanon, Ethiopia, and Syria. Other high-incident contexts included South Sudan, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Ukraine, Myanmar, Yemen, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Cameroon. 

 The numbers reflect not only the intensity of violence occurring in armed conflicts, but also a marked retreat by states from norms of international humanitarian law, and a souring of public and government attitudes towards humanitarian action. 

 In January 2025, the US government – formerly the world’s largest aid donor – abruptly froze and then slashed its humanitarian contributions, removing roughly a third of global resources for the sector. 

 As aid organisations cut programmes and staff, they face heightened security risks with decreasing funds and capacities to mitigate them, putting humanitarian staff in even greater danger. 

 Anecdotal reports from multiple contexts link programme closures and downsizing directly to security incidents, including attacks by disgruntled former staff, community protests over lost services, and exploitation of local grievances by armed actors. 

 Good-quality data for security analysis is now itself at risk, as USAID played an outsized role in funding data and analytics support across the sector. 

 Cuts to staff positions and technical support functions, and other adaptations organisations are making – such as pooling resources and adopting informal security coordination measures – reflect a pattern of de-professionalisation of humanitarian action, as brain drain accelerates and hard-won advancements over the past decade are lost. 

 Recent diplomatic momentum, including the adoption of UN Security CouncilResolution 2730 (2024), offers some encouragement, signalling renewed political attention to the scale of violence against humanitarians and recognition that respect  

This report will be available in Arabic, French and Spanish by end August. 

Download the Aid Worker Security Report 2025 – Defenceless: Aid worker security amid the humanitarian funding collapse
Aid Worker Security Database (AWSD)