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  Ken O. McKojallah September 3, 2021 20:07

  My cry out for action on this year's #worldhumanitarianday2021 : Condemning is not enough! Directly targeted attacks on humanitarian aid workers and facilities impeding the ability to stay and deliver assistance.
  Parties to ongoing conflict around the world are increasingly becoming non-committal to observing the International Humanitarian Law (IHL). Consequently, humanitarian aid workers and aid facilities are alarmingly directly being targeted by Non-State Armed Groups (NSAG) in ongoing armed conflict. 2019 goes down as the year which saw an unprecedented high number of attacks on aid workers exceeding all other previous years. According to Humanitarian Outcomes Aid Workers (Humanitarian Outcomes) Security Report 2020, a total of 483 aid workers were killed, kidnapped, or wounded in 277 separate incidents of violence.
  Despite COVID – 19 pandemic, the year 2020 leading to 2021 has not been any different either. Fatal attacks on aid workers are continuing unabated across the different conflict contexts and even further shrinking the humanitarian space. The Governments themselves have also actively contributed to the reduction of humanitarian space through bureaucratic impediments, policies and defacto blockades among others. Governments in some countries are exhibiting growing hostility towards humanitarian actors and deliberate attempts to breach IHL.
  The UN and the affected organization have in all these major attacks on their staff and facilities issued strongly worded media statements condemning the attacks and reminding the active parties to the conflict, especially the NSAG and Governments, to respect the IHL . But have these strong condemnation messages reached the ears of the NSAGs operatives and Governments? The answer is definitely NO!
  The situation has been made worse in a conflict context where humanitarian access negotiation with NSAG is not possible or is not happening at all. In many contexts, these structured dialogues are not possible or not happening may be due to fragmentations of armed groups, the unwillingness of the parties to dialogue, lack of neutrality from organizations, and ban from host Governments. Thus the NSAG operatives conduct attacks with completely no regard to the IHL.
  Therefore, I cry out to leading humanitarian organization leaders, UN Security Council, ICRC, INGOs (through the IASC) should do more than just issuing condemnation statements. Go out there and engage the NSAG leaders even in areas where host governments are against negotiations, to respect IHL and understand that humanitarian aid workers and organizations are neutral, impartial, independent, and are not part of the conflict.  Those killing staff and destroying humanitarian facilities should be brought to book. Killing, wounding, kidnapping humanitarian aid workers is a crime against humanity, and as such perpetrators should be brought to book. 
  Humanitarian aid workers are #NotATarget.