JERUSALEM (dpa-AFX) - At least 326 humanitarians were killed in the line of duty across 21 countries during 2025, bringing the total killed over three years to over 1,010, according to the UN's top aid coordinator, Tom Fletcher.
Of that total, more than 560 died in Gaza and the West Bank, 130 in Sudan, 60 in South Sudan, 25 in Ukraine and 25 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, he told the Security Council on Wednesday.
'This is not an accidental escalation. It is the collapse of protection,' he told ambassadors in New York, clarifying that they were killed in service - distributing food, water, shelter and medicine, some travelling in clearly marked convoys.
Humanitarians are not just being killed but 'our action is being restricted, penalized, delegitimised,' said Mr. Fletcher, who leads the UN's aid coordination agency, OCHA.
The UN relief chief challenged Member States, asking why humanitarians continue to be killed despite a recent Security Council resolution which spoke with moral urgency 'about ending violence' against aid workers.
In the past year, the UN reported 14 abductions, 145 arrests and detentions, along with 441 acts of intimidation and harassment against staffers, the UN's top official for safety and security said.
In the same time period, there were also 62 attacks on United Nations premises and 84 attacks on United Nations vehicles, Gilles Michaud added.
'Perpetrators are rarely held accountable - they are rarely named and shamed, let alone prosecuted.'
The International Committee of the Red Cross official who liaises with the UN, Elyse Mosquini, said, 'We are losing our humanity in war.'
She pointed to the alarming frequency of deliberate harmful misinformation campaigns designed to erode trust in humanitarian organizations and portray our colleagues as legitimate targets and urged, 'this cannot continue.'
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