#aid workers killed

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2024/04/25/jose-andres-world-central-kitchen-memorial-gaza/

Washington Post

José Andrés eulogizes World Central Kitchen workers killed in Gaza

[newstfionline]

Justice Elusive for Slain Aid Workers on Front Lines of Crises

Reuters, Aug. 19, 2016

NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation)--It was a massacre that shocked the world’s humanitarian community.

Seventeen aid workers were killed outside their office in Sri Lanka’s northeast--executed at point-blank range with automatic weapons in one of the worst attacks on humanitarians.

A decade on, justice remains elusive for families of the victims, all Sri Lankan nationals, says Action Contra La Faim (ACF), the charity where they worked.

“Our colleagues, four women and 13 men, were deliberately executed although they were clearly identified as humanitarian aid workers. It was an unprecedented massacre in the humanitarian sector, constitutive of a war crime,” said Pauline Chetcuti, ACF’s Head of Humanitarian Advocacy and Policy.

ACF has found evidence they were likely assassinated by Sri Lankan security forces and that their attackers must have been shielded by Sri Lankan top authorities, she said.

As aid workers across the globe gathered on Friday to mark World Humanitarian Day, paying tribute to those killed working on front lines of crises, experts say much more needs to be done to ensure perpetrators are held accountable.

In 2015 alone, 109 aid workers were killed, 110 injured and 68 kidnapped in attacks in countries such as Afghanistan, South Sudan, Yemen, Somalia and Syria, according to consulting group Humanitarian Outcomes.

Yet experts say few, if any, of the 148 attacks, which included physical and sexual assault, bombings, shootings and kidnappings, have been independently investigated and satisfactory justice served.

“An attack on an aid worker is an attack on humanity,” said Unni Krishnan, director of Save the Children’s Emergency Health Unit. “For people who are living in such extremely vulnerable and difficult circumstances, these aid workers are sometimes their own line of defense.”

The “Mutur Massacre,” named after the town where the killings took place, occurred on August 4, 2006 during Sri Lanka’s civil war between separatist Tamil Tiger rebels and forces belonging to the majority Sinhalese-ruled government.

The mostly ethnic Tamil aid workers were providing water and sanitation to survivors of the 2004 tsunami when Tiger fighters launched an offensive against government troops for control of Mutur.

Trapped in their office, the workers lost radio contact with their head office.

Two days later, the bloated bodies of 15 aid workers were discovered face-down in the ACF compound, with bullet wounds to their heads and necks. Two other bodies were found in a vehicle nearby. They were killed possibly trying to escape.

ACF, which has campaigned for justice, says the Sri Lankan government investigation was biased and that it has deliberately attempted to avoid prosecuting its own forces.

But last September, the United Nations published its findings, concluding “there are reasonable grounds to believe that members of the security forces committed the extrajudicial executions of the ACF staff.”

Yet the investigation remains at a standstill, ACF’s Chetcuti said.

“There has been no indictment or prosecution. The authors of the crime are still free,” she said.

“Families of the victims have made clear that justice is a key element to allow closure,” she said. “They are suffering twice--from the crime and from the injustice that followed.”

What happened in Mutur, however, is not exceptional. Across the world, many families of slain aid workers have had no form of redress.

This is especially true when victims are nationals of the country. Often violence is intensified where a government is incapable or unwilling to provide security for its population.

In recent years, hospitals and clinics run by aid agencies in countries such as Yemen, Syria and Afghanistan have been increasingly targeted by state forces as well as militants.

On Monday, a hospital run by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) was hit in an air strike in northern Yemen, killing 19 people and injuring 24 others. It was the fourth and deadliest attack on MSF facilities there this year.

As a result, the medical charity said it was being forced to evacuate its staff from hospitals in Yemen, where civil war has raged for more than a year.

The charity said despite sharing GPS coordinates of its hospitals and clinics with the Saudi-led coalition government trying to quell Yemen’s insurgency, aerial bombings of its health facilities continue.

In October last year, 42 people, including 12 aid workers, were killed when MSF’s hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan was hit in a U.S. air strike. In response, the group demanded an independent humanitarian commission be activated.

Such a commission was never activated, and a U.S. military investigation concluded the bombing was not a war crime and was caused by human error, equipment failure and other factors.

Sixteen service members faced disciplinary action over the air strike. Pentagon officials said payments of $6,000 were made to victims’ families and $5.7 million would be given to rebuild the MSF hospital.

“The number of hospitals that have been destroyed over the past years is utterly shocking,” said Andre Heller Perache, MSF’s head of programs and former head of mission in Yemen.

“It should warrant a unanimous outcry from world leaders, but this is not happening,” he said. “If news of hospitals being destroyed, patients killed in their beds and doctors torn apart in bomb blasts happens with such frequency that it somehow becomes normalized, what does it say about our humanity?”

[newstfionline]

International Aid Agencies Call for Temporary Exit From Afghanistan

By Rod Nordland, NY Times, Dec. 1, 2014

KABUL, Afghanistan--A three-week-long wave of Taliban attacks in Kabul has led several aid agencies to put their staff members on higher security alert, and some have sent foreign workers out of Afghanistan earlier than usual ahead of the holidays, aid officials say.

Few agencies said they were planning permanent pullouts, however, and most emphasized that they were determined to keep working in the country despite an unusual series of 11 attacks during that period in the capital.

Although the recent attacks have led to a new round of worrying about the future of Western endeavors here, by some measures this year has been much less dangerous for foreign agencies and their staffs than the year before.

So far in 2014, 36 aid workers have been killed and 95 wounded throughout Afghanistan, compared with 44 killed and 167 wounded in 2013, according to the Aid Worker Security Database, an American government-funded project that tracks attacks on humanitarian workers worldwide. While the 2014 figures have still not been verified, it is a substantial drop.

That said, Afghanistan remains by far the most dangerous country in the world in which to be an aid worker. Of the 229 aid workers killed or injured worldwide so far this year, 95 were in Afghanistan; that was true last year as well. No other country has come close in numbers of attacks on aid workers.

Several of the 11 recent attacks were against foreign targets, including a private American aid contractor, South African aid workers, and a British Embassy armored vehicle.

The most recent attack, on Saturday, killed three South Africans with a little-known aid group, a Christian pastor and his teenage son and daughter, in Karte Seh, an area where many foreigners live. Taliban insurgents said they were secretly Christian missionaries.

After that attack, several universities suspended classes, including the American University of Afghanistan, and at least one high school catering to the children of expats did so as well. The American University planned to reopen Tuesday, an official said.

“Everyone’s worried about it, and we’re all talking to each other about what to do,” said the director of the high school, who asked not to be named so as not to identify his school as a possible target. None of his foreign staff had left, however.

“I heard that three or four NGOs were pulling staff out, but wasn’t able to get names or confirmation,” a United Nations official said of nongovernmental organizations, speaking on condition of anonymity as a matter of policy. “I do know that people are getting nervous and some people are bringing their Christmas holidays forward to go home earlier. I know quite a few people who have done that.”

Some businesses reportedly gave foreign employees the option of leaving the country early in response to the attacks, but there were no reports of any shutdowns.

Many foreign workers left Afghanistan after a series of attacks early in the year, including a suicide attack on a popular restaurant, the Taverna du Liban, in which 21 people were killed, most of them foreigners, including diplomats and aid workers. Some employers instituted strict restrictions on staff members’ movements around Kabul, which are mostly still in place; restaurants catering to Westerners are nearly empty most nights, and survive only by takeout and delivery business.

Kabul has a large foreign community, with more foreign embassies than similarly small countries, numerous United Nations agencies, and about 2,300 aid groups, many with international staff members. More than 3,000 foreign aid workers are registered with the Afghan government, and many others are unregistered.

Through much of the Afghan war, aid groups were largely immune to deliberate attacks by the insurgents. But two factors seem to have changed that. One has been the increased use by the American government and other foreign donors of private aid contractors in recent years, which blurred the lines between independent humanitarian groups and military or government-affiliated ones. Another has been the increasing tempo of insurgent attacks throughout the country.

[newstfionline]

Attacks on Aid Workers Rise in Afghanistan, U.N. Says

By Rod Nordland, NY Times, December 2, 2013

KABUL, Afghanistan--The number of aid workers killed in Afghanistan has more than tripled this year, making the country by far the most dangerous place in the world for relief work, according to data released by United Nations officials here.

Officials were reluctant to attribute the increase to any single factor. But in a number of recent cases, Taliban insurgents have openly claimed responsibility--despite espousing an official policy that rejects attacks on humanitarian workers.

"We are looking at the situation with concern about what are clearly increasing numbers of aid workers affected by the conflict," said Mark Bowden, the humanitarian coordinator for the United Nations here.

Through November, he said, there were 237 attacks on Afghanistan's aid workers, with 36 people killed, 46 wounded and 96 detained or abducted. Last year, there were 175 attacks, with 11 people killed, 26 wounded and 44 detained or abducted.

International aid makes up a vast majority of Afghan economic activity. And continuing such assistance after the 2014 American military withdrawal is a central part of security planning.

"I'm really worried," said Justine Piquemal, the director of Acbar, a group that represents many of the country's leading nongovernmental organizations doing relief work. "Because, unfortunately, figures show clearly we are the very worst place in the world for aid workers."

Some aid workers say they are feeling a growing threat not only from insurgents and criminals, but also sometimes from Afghan government forces and even, on occasion, from the American-led coalition.

Andreas Stefansson, the country director for the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, said that at least 10 times this year, Afghan and Western soldiers--mostly thought to be Special Operations units--had occupied or searched medical clinics that the group operates. He said the actions were clear violations of Geneva Conventions that put medical facilities themselves off limits to armed parties, even if insurgents go there for treatment.

Mr. Stefansson said that while the episodes rarely lasted more than a few days, he said, they have made it increasingly dangerous for the group's staff to operate in conflict areas. "The local population don't trust the impartiality of the clinic," he said. "If you end up having armed troops patrolling in and around these places, you disrupt the trust you have."