Remarks by the Head and Representative of OCHA Geneva and Director of the Coordination Division at the commemoration service for fallen humanitarian workers on World Humanitarian Day 2025

Survivors, families, Excellencies, colleagues:

I would like to express here my appreciation to Australia and Ambassador Walsh for this initiative and for the important leadership and support you have brought to the protection of aid workers.

19 August is always a hard day. I remember exactly where I was in 2003 when I heard about the bombing of the Canal Hotel in Baghdad. That day, 22 humanitarians were killed, including my former boss, Sergio Vieira de Mello. It was a wound to the humanitarian community that has never healed.

Every year since, on World Humanitarian Day, we gather to honour those we have lost – and to stand with those who continue bringing hope to the world’s hardest and most dangerous places.

But remembrance is not enough. Because today is not only about looking back. It is about confronting a present reality that is unacceptable.

Last year alone, 383 humanitarians were killed – another record. Hundreds more were wounded, kidnapped, or detained. Already this year, the toll is rising again.

We lost 181 colleagues in Gaza – many from UNRWA – who kept classrooms open and food lines running even as the very schools and shelters where they worked were bombed.

We lost 60 colleagues in Sudan, more than double the year before – killed as they tried to deliver medicine, food, and water to those in desperate need.

These are not just statistics. These are fathers, mothers, sons, daughters. Friends, mentors, teammates. They had names. They had families waiting for them at home. And, for the vast majority of them – home was in the same country where they were killed. They are among the thousands of local staff of UN agencies and NGOs who carry the biggest risk, pay the highest prize, yet whose names often go unheard.

These events are not recent. I remember a close colleague and friend who was pulled out of his Landcruiser and executed by armed men. But, what was a rare event in that period, has now become a weekly occurrence and humanitarian innocence is all but lost.

Let us be clear: these attacks are often not accidents of war. Many are deliberate acts. And they continue because the world allows them to continue. Impunity is pervasive. Our calls for justice are too often met with silence, or, even worse, accusations of culpability.

Last year the Security Council passed Resolution 2730, reaffirming the duty to protect humanitarian personnel and hold perpetrators to account. But resolutions mean little if no one enforces them. Words do not save lives. Silence does not protect aid workers. Action does.

That is why remembrance is only a part of our duty today. The other major part is demand. Demand for protection. Demand for accountability. Demand for change. Because the killing of aid workers is not an unfortunate side-effect of war. It is an outrage. It is an attack on humanity itself.

And it isn’t only the bullets and bombs. Humanitarians are being strangled by bureaucratic blockades, by relentless underfunding, by smear campaigns that spread lies and hatred online. Their families scroll through social media and see them vilified for the very work that keeps others alive.

Yet despite it all, humanitarians continue to step forward. Last year, more than 116 million people received aid because colleagues refused to give up. Children had classrooms. Families had food on the table. Displaced communities had shelter and clean water.

This is what humanitarianism means. Not a slogan, not an abstract principle – but lives saved, hope restored, dignity defended.

So today, as we remember those we have lost, let us also honour those still carrying hope. And let us not leave this place without a pledge.

The campaign we relaunch today – #ActForHumanity – is not a hashtag. It is a demand. A demand for protection. For accountability. For action.

To our colleagues in Gaza, in Sudan, in every crisis where humanitarians are risking their lives: we see you. We grieve with you. We stand with you. And we will fight for your protection.

To the families of those who never came home: we cannot fill the space they leave behind. But we can promise this – their names will not be forgotten, and their sacrifice was never in vain.

Because violence against humanitarians is not inevitable. It is a choice – a choice made by people. And together, we must make a different choice. A choice to defend humanity. A choice to end impunity. A choice to act.

Thank you.
Disclaimer

Mr. Ramesh Rajasingham, Head and Representative of OCHA Geneva and Director of the Coordination Division.

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.