August 19th – World Humanitarian Aid Day 2020

The Day was chosen by the UN General Assembly in 2009, in memory of the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad in 2003 during the war in Iraq.

22 people lost their lives, including the Special Representative of the Secretary General for Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello and his 21 colleagues.

In these days – to the thousands of other victims that preceded or followed those of the 2003 attack – have been added Charline, Myriam, Nadifa, Stella, Antonin, Léo, Kadri, Boubacar: the six young French aid workers who – together with their local driver and guide – were assassinated on 9th August 2020, in Niger, in an ambush prepared by terrorist organisations operating in a vast area of the Sahel including Mali and Burkina Faso.

Perhaps they felt strong in the fundamental principles on which humanitarian aid is based, including humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence.

But today the risks are increasingly high because the immediate response to emergencies is only one aspect of humanitarian work to provide assistance that for many makes the difference between life and death. Workers also provide psycho-social support to rebuild the lives of communities, to address future crises and to maintain lasting and sustainable peace in areas of conflict or climate disaster. And humanitarian work – at certain levels, certainly not by people afflicted by deep suffering – can be experienced as an expression of hostile politics.

The complexity of humanitarian crises prompted the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to promote the first World Humanitarian Summit in 2016, which resulted in the so-called “Agenda for Humanity”, which sets five fundamental objectives:

• To activate global leadership to prevent and end conflict.
• To support the norms that safeguard individuals.
• Leave no one behind.
• Change people’s lives, starting with aid and ending needs.
• Investing in people.