State actors and groups including the Taliban and ISIS are increasingly acting with impunity in attacking aid workers in conflict-affected countries, British MPs have warned in a report published on Tuesday urging the UK to lead in diplomatic efforts to hold aggressors to account.
Last year violence against aid workers resulted in 126 deaths and 143 injuries across the world with the most amount of attacks seen in Syria, Afghanistan and South Sudan, according to figures quoted in a report by Britain’s International Development Committee.
The report pointed to aerial bombardment by state actors in Syria as being chiefly responsible for aid worker death and injury in the country, while aid workers in Afghanistan have been subjected to kidnappings and South Sudan has witnessed shootings and assaults.
While the number of aid workers killed was slightly down on 2017, MPs warned that a “growing trend of attacks” was putting humanitarian efforts in jeopardy.
Violence against aid workers is hampering international efforts to carry out vital aid work, such as combatting the spread of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
While statistics from Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition, also published on Tuesday, documented more than 900 attacks in 2018 on health facilities and personnel in 23 countries, nearly a third of them in Israel and the Occupied Territories.
More than nine out of 10 aid workers killed or injured in 2018 were nationals of the country that they were working in.
Committee chair Stephen Twigg said it was “unacceptable” that aid and healthcare workers should “put their lives on the line” without greater support from the international community.
“Whether through targeted acts of violence or indiscriminate bombing; we are witnessing a growing trend of attacks,” he said in a statement.
“But where are the consequences for those committing these atrocities?”
The report has recommended that the British government take the lead in working with local communities to build trust around aid programmes as well taking “meaningful diplomatic action against sponsors, enablers and perpetrators of attacks that contravene international rules of law”.
