Aid Crisis: The world’s aid workers are facing more attacks than ever before.
Attacks on humanitarian workers around the world reached a record high in 2025, according to new data released by the United Nations, as violence against the people who deliver food, medicine and shelter to those in crisis continues to rise.
On August 19, 2026, marking World Humanitarian Day, the United Nations revealed that 907 aid workers were killed, injured or kidnapped in 2025 alone, according to figures from the Aid Worker Security Database. This is a sharp jump from the 833 workers affected the year before. Of those attacked in 2025, 350 were killed – a small decrease from the record 387 deaths recorded in 2024, but still one of the deadliest years on record. UN officials say the trend is being made worse by a new and troubling factor: the growing use of armed drones in conflict zones, which is putting humanitarian staff at risk even when they are far from the front lines. According to the UN News report, fatalities in 2025 marked the second-highest toll ever recorded, and another 322 aid workers were injured on top of those killed.
Most of the people caught up in these attacks are not international staff flown in from abroad; they are local workers, often serving their own communities. The violence is concentrated in the world's worst conflict zones. Gaza remained by far the deadliest place for aid workers in 2025, with 186 humanitarians killed there, followed by Sudan. According to the Al Jazeera report, the UN Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, has reported that at least 393 of its staff have been killed in Gaza since the war between Israel and Hamas began in October 2023, though Israel maintains it takes extensive precautions to avoid harming civilians. Other dangerous locations in 2025 included Ukraine, Ethiopia, Syria, Haiti, Chad and Cameroon, where kidnappings and aerial bombing were the most common forms of violence, as noted by UN News. Drones have become a defining feature of this new danger: in March 2026, drone strikes hit Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, killing at least three people including a French aid worker, while aid convoys in Sudan and Ukraine were repeatedly hit.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the figures directly, saying that serving others has become more dangerous than ever, and calling on states to respect the rules of war and hold those responsible to account. UN aid chief Tom Fletcher went further, warning through UN News that weaponised drones have become the new face of an old danger (the deliberate or reckless destruction of civilian life) and that although the technology may change, the laws of war do not. He added that more than 1,000 aid workers have been killed in just three years, calling this utterly unacceptable, and insisted that simply condemning attacks will not protect the next worker – states must uphold international humanitarian law and ensure real consequences for those who break it. Humanitarian organizations are echoing this call.
Oxfam’s Bushra Khalidi warned, as reported by Reuters via Arab News, that the world is witnessing an assault on humanitarian action itself. Meanwhile, the European Commission pledged to continue its support for aid operations, stating through Al Jazeera that every aid worker killed is not only a personal tragedy but also a failure by the international community. As funding for humanitarian work is simultaneously being cut, the coming years will test whether words of condemnation translate into real protection (and real accountability) for the people risking their lives to help others.
written by Clarissa Battistella
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