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UN Says a Record Number of Aid Workers Were Killed in 2023 and This Year May Be Even Higher

FILE -A World Food Program (WFP) truck backs up to load food items from a recently landed UN helicopter, in Yida camp, South Sudan Sept. 14, 2012. (AP Photo/Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin)
FILE -A World Food Program (WFP) truck backs up to load food items from a recently landed UN helicopter, in Yida camp, South Sudan Sept. 14, 2012. (AP Photo/Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin)
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UN Says a Record Number of Aid Workers Were Killed in 2023 and This Year May Be Even Higher

FILE -A World Food Program (WFP) truck backs up to load food items from a recently landed UN helicopter, in Yida camp, South Sudan Sept. 14, 2012. (AP Photo/Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin)
FILE -A World Food Program (WFP) truck backs up to load food items from a recently landed UN helicopter, in Yida camp, South Sudan Sept. 14, 2012. (AP Photo/Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin)

A record number of aid workers were killed in conflicts around the world last year – more than half after the Israel-Hamas war started on Oct. 7 -- and this year may become even deadlier, the United Nations said Monday.
The 280 aid workers from 33 countries killed in 2023 was more than double the previous year’s figure of 118, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs known as OCHA said in a report on World Humanitarian Day.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres tweeted that honoring the humanitarians killed in the deadliest year on record is not enough, The Associated Press reported.
“In Sudan & many other places, aid workers are attacked, killed, injured & abducted. We demand an end to impunity so that perpetrators face justice,” the UN chief said.
OCHA said this year “may be on track for an even deadlier outcome,” with 172 aid workers killed as of Aug. 7, according to a provisional account from the Aid Worker Security Database.
More than 280 aid workers have been killed in the war in Gaza, now in its 11th month, mainly in airstrikes. The majority of them are Palestinians who worked for the UN agency helping Palestinian refugees known as UNRWA, according to OCHA. It said that “extreme levels of violence in Sudan and South Sudan ” also have contributed to the death toll both this year and last.
The UN’s acting humanitarian chief, Joyce Msuya, said in a statement that “the normalization of violence against aid workers and the lack of accountability are unacceptable, unconscionable and enormously harmful for aid operations everywhere.”
In a letter to the 193 UN member nations, 413 humanitarian organizations around the world said: “The brutal hostilities we are seeing in multiple conflicts around the world have exposed a terrible truth: We are living in an era of impunity.”
The aid organizations appealed to all countries, the wider international community and all parties to conflicts to protect civilians and aid workers and hold perpetrators to account.
World Humanitarian Day commemorates the Aug. 19, 2003, terrorist bombing of the UN offices at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad which killed 22 UN staff members including the top UN envoy to Iraq, Sergio Viera de Mello, a Brazilian diplomat.
At a ceremony at UN headquarters Monday before the tattered UN flag retrieved from the hotel that day, dozens of current UN staff members and relatives of some of the victims stood in silent tribute to their memory – as did many watching around the world.

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Ukraine Says Ceasefire Accords Brokered by US Take Immediate Effect

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks during a press conference, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine March 25, 2025. (Reuters)
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks during a press conference, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine March 25, 2025. (Reuters)
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Ukraine Says Ceasefire Accords Brokered by US Take Immediate Effect

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks during a press conference, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine March 25, 2025. (Reuters)
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks during a press conference, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine March 25, 2025. (Reuters)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said a truce with Russia covering the Black Sea and energy strikes was effective immediately on Tuesday and that he would ask Donald Trump to supply weapons and sanction Russia if Moscow broke the deals.

The United States said earlier it had made separate agreements with Kyiv and Moscow to ensure safe navigation in the Black Sea and to implement a ban on attacks on energy facilities in the two countries.

"The US side considers that our agreements come into force after their announcement by the US side," Zelenskiy told reporters at a news conference in Kyiv, adding that he did not trust Russia to honor the arrangements.

The accords are the first ones aimed at halting energy strikes since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, triggering Europe's biggest conflict since World War Two. The fighting rages on across a 1,000-km (600-mile) front line.

The Ukrainian leader cautioned that the agreements did not set out a course of action if Russia broke them and that he would appeal directly to the US president if that happened.

"We have no faith in the Russians, but we will be constructive," he said.

He said US officials saw the energy ceasefire as covering attacks on other civilian infrastructure too and that ports should be covered by the Black Sea agreement.

Nightly Russian drone attacks have been a feature of life in big Ukrainian cities for many months. So have power outages as missiles have hammered the power grid. Kyiv has used drones to hit Russian oil refineries to raise the costs for its much larger foe.

Ukraine, Zelenskiy said, presented US officials during talks with a list of facilities that should be covered by the moratorium on energy strikes.

The deals were announced following two days of talks in Saudi Arabia between US and Ukrainian officials on the one hand and US and Russian officials on the other.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, who took part in the talks, wrote on X: "All parties agreed to develop measures for implementing the Presidents’ agreement to ban strikes against energy facilities of Ukraine and Russia."

The White House said in a joint statement with Russia that it would help Moscow restore its access to the world market for agricultural and fertilizer exports.

Zelenskiy said Ukraine had not agreed to put that in its statement with the US side.

"We believe that this is a weakening of position and sanctions," he said.

BLACK SEA WARNING

Kyiv will regard any movement of Russian naval vessels beyond the east of the Black Sea as a violation of the spirit of the agreements, Umerov said.

In such an event, Kyiv will have the right to self-defense, he said, implying that Ukraine could retaliate.

Kyiv, which has used naval drones and missiles to push Russia's Black Sea fleet back towards the east of the Black Sea, would welcome third countries supporting the implementation of the accords, Umerov said.

"The American side really wanted all of this not to fail, so they did not want to go into many details. But in any case we will have to understand answers to each of the details," Zelenskiy said.

Zelenskiy said that Türkiye could potentially be involved in monitoring in the Black Sea while Middle Eastern countries could track the energy truce, though he noted that had not been discussed yet with those countries.

Separately, Zelenskiy said the United States had presented Ukraine with an expanded version of a bilateral minerals deal that went beyond the initial framework agreement that the two sides agreed earlier but never signed.

Zelenskiy had been expected to sign a minerals deal opening up Ukraine's critical minerals to the United States during talks with Trump in the Oval Office last month, but did not when the meeting spiraled into acrimony in front of the world's media.

Zelenskiy said he had not been able to fully review the new proposal in detail yet, but that it did not include greater US involvement in Ukraine's nuclear power sector, something that has been floated by Washington in recent days.