Australia pledges aid worker protection as deaths surge
More than 380 humanitarian workers were killed in conflict zones in 2024, marking the deadliest year on record and a 31 per cent jump from the previous year, according to Aid Worker Security Database statistics released on Tuesday.
But there are dire warnings this could be surpassed in 2025 with more than 200 people killed.
For Matthew Maury, this was more than just a tally as he reflected on the death of a former colleague during a wreath-laying ceremony in Canberra on World Humanitarian Day.
The Australian Council for International Development CEO reflected on his former colleague John Amahoro, who was killed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo when their convoy was ambushed by rebels.
"Without the efforts and sacrifices of humanitarian workers like John, the lives of civilians in conflicts and disaster zones would be far more precarious and life-threatening," Mr Maury said at the Australian Overseas Aid Volunteer Memorial.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong is spearheading a pledge to protect humanitarian personnel after convening a ministerial group with several other nations at a United Nations conference in September 2024.
It will be launched on the margins of the United Nations meeting in New York during the final week of September, International Development Minister Anne Aly confirmed.
"The declaration will be an important demonstration of our collective commitment to upholding international humanitarian law," she said.
"It will also include practical steps that will increase aid worker safety."
The text hasn't been released but a spokesperson for the Foreign Affairs Department told AAP it called for "political commitment at the highest possible level to protect aid workers and enable safe, rapid and unimpeded humanitarian assistance to civilians in conflict zones".
Gaza remains the deadliest place on earth for humanitarian workers and journalists, with at least 520 aid workers killed since the start of the conflict, according to data from the United Nations.
The highest numbers of deaths in 2024 were recorded in Gaza at 181, followed by 60 in Sudan.
Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom and six other World Central Kitchen workers were killed by an Israeli air strike in Gaza in April 2024, which its defence force blamed on a mistake.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Canberra Times
9 minutes ago
- Canberra Times
The four-day work week would benefit you, me and the rest of the country
Now, there is absolutely no question that the four-day week will benefit all Australians. It will benefit those of us who work. It will benefit people who look after kids. It will be an extra day for less childcare (groaning under demand). It will be another moment to do all those things which make our lives run: batch cooking, GP appointments, bill paying, breathing, walking, cuddling, cleaning. I reckon it will even cut down on Australian levels of anxiety. Nothing would make us more productive than having lower levels of stress. Same for working from home. Do we need to be under our bosses' noses? Surveillance capitalism at its worst.
Daily Telegraph
10 minutes ago
- Daily Telegraph
Autopsy rules out 'trauma' in Frenchman livestream death
Don't miss out on the headlines from Breaking News. Followed categories will be added to My News. A post mortem on a Frenchman who died during a live stream found that he was not killed by trauma or a third party, a public prosecutor said Thursday. "The probable causes of death appear to be medical and/or toxicological," Nice prosecutor Damien Martinelli said, adding that further tests had been ordered. Raphael Graven, known online as "Jean Pormanove" or "JP", died on Monday near the French Riviera city during a live stream, with footage showing him lying under a sheet while another man threw a plastic bottle at him. Two forensic doctors found no "internal or external traumatic injuries" or burns, only a few bruises and healed lesions, the prosecutor said. "The medical experts consider that Mr Graven's death was not traumatic in origin and was not related to the intervention of a third party," said Martinelli. Graven may have suffered from heart problems and was undergoing medical treatment for his thyroid gland, the prosecutor added. The 46-year-old had built a following of hundreds of thousands on Australian streaming platform Kick by putting on live shows in which he was abused or humiliated. Prosecutors said he died Monday in the village of Contes near Nice. Kick said all co-streamers involved in the event had been banned from the platform pending the outcome of the investigation. It said it was also running a "complete re-evaluation" of its French content. The platform is seen as having less stringent user terms than those of its livestreaming rival Twitch. alc-ekf/fg Originally published as Autopsy rules out 'trauma' in Frenchman livestream death
The Age
39 minutes ago
- The Age
The walkout of writers shows how promiscuous the politics of safety can be
What might we discern from the wreckage of the Bendigo Writers Festival? To recap, nearly 60 per cent of its participants withdrew on the eve of the festival, protesting the last-minute introduction of a code of conduct. That code, drafted by La Trobe University (which was presenting some sessions), required participants to have 'conversations that are inclusive, thoughtful and welcoming to diverse perspectives,' and 'avoid language or topics that could be considered inflammatory, divisive or disrespectful'. Appended, were definitions of both antisemitism and Islamophobia, inviting the reasonable inference that the war on Gaza was top of organisers' minds. Ultimately, more than 20 sessions were cancelled, including both opening and closing ceremonies. It later emerged that an antisemitism advocacy group had pressured the festival to remove an ardent Palestinian-Australian speaker on grounds of alleged antisemitism. The whole thing was, to be frank, disastrous. The reasons for writers' withdrawals are subtly varied. Some withdrew as an act of solidarity, over what they saw as the silencing of Palestinian voices. A related argument criticised the code of conduct for silencing criticism of Israel, and especially stifling discussion of genocide which is inherently 'inflammatory' and 'divisive'. Another objection regarded the guidelines as impossibly vague and unworkable. The broadest objection, articulated most clearly by the Australian Society of Authors, reiterated in bold type the inviolable principle that 'freedom of expression is a fundamental right'. Hereabouts, there's a tension. The festival organisers explained that La Trobe introduced the code because it 'felt it was necessary to emphasise the importance of safety and wellbeing for all participants'. If that language strikes you as familiar, it's because it distils progressive politics' dominant expression over the past decade or so. It is in progressives' hands that confronting speech has been reconceived, not as offensive, but as unsafe. On this basis, speech could constitute harm, or even 'violence', and therefore be curtailed. Such safety discourse became all the rage, especially on university campuses where various academics and invited speakers faced regular student complaints or student-led 'deplatforming' campaigns. Loading Until two years ago, such claims have always revolved around speech alleged to be racist, misogynist, homophobic or transphobic. That is, they have gathered around matters of progressive concern, and policed a progressive consensus (with some complications around transphobia). The kink in the Bendigo Writers Festival was that 'safetyism' was being invoked in the name of a cause progressives largely reject. In the chiefly progressive context of a writers' festival, the politics of safety short-circuited. Gaza has cut diagonally across such principles. Conservatives, whether in the Coalition or on the editorial pages of the Murdoch press, once positioned themselves as free-speech crusaders against safetyism, denouncing it as a censorious means of imposing leftist orthodoxy by force. Now, they suddenly find themselves policing protests, arguing that the speech of some make Jews feel unsafe, especially on university campuses. The same people who campaigned to abolish racial vilification laws like section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, began to demand punishment of what they considered antisemitic speech. Coalition senators began grilling university administrators in committee hearings about campus protests, and insisted they listen to the 'lived experience' of Australian Jews – effortlessly borrowing from the progressive glossary. Meanwhile, progressives found themselves unmoved by claims that Jews felt unsafe on university campuses or in the city amid ongoing protest. This was summarily dismissed not only as a matter of fact, but on the basis that such feelings could not trump the right to speech and protest. Gaza has led lots of people to adopt principles they had previously opposed. Free speech and safetyism have been swapped like trading cards.
