Celebrate people helping people

But they need more than comforting words – they need food, access to clean water, basic health services, a place for their children to be educated, and the tools to help them quickly restore normalcy, especially to help them understand what is going on and how they can influence those providing them with help.

World Humanitarian Day is marked on August 19, with 62 million people around the world still needing some level of humanitarian aid.

Humanitarian aid workers want to be able to access those in need in order to provide vital assistance. The majority of aid workers come from the countries in which they work. People affected by disasters are always the first to help their own communities following a disaster. Communities, local partner organisations, international organisations and the public can build a chain of solidarity to support communities in responding to and recovering from disasters. Everyone can show humanitarian spirit.

Conflict and insecurity have led to some 240,000 people fleeing Myanmar to find refuge in camps along the Thai-Myanmar border over the past three decades. Close to 100,000 people have been resettled overseas.  

The current population of the camps is approximately 140,000. Local and international organisations provide healthcare alongside the Thai authorities in all camps. One of these organisations, the International Organisation for Migration, screens and treats people with tuberculosis (TB) and other communicable diseases; something that must be done before people can depart for new lives overseas. 

Most patients need just six to nine months treatment before they can be resettled. However, in the case of multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB treatment can take two years, is often debilitating and very expensive. In one camp near Mae La, Kanokkan Sriruen, a nurse with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) cares for patients with MDR TB every day. Despite the risks to her own wellbeing, she ensures these people receive the treatment they need so they can make the journey that will change their lives. Kanokkan is a humanitarian worker. She’s helping people – and that’s what World Humanitarian Day is all about – people helping people. 

But often doing this job exposes humanitarian workers to the risk of becoming victims themselves. Over the last ten years, more than 800 aid workers have died in the line of duty worldwide. They were assassinated, killed in ambushes or by mines or other explosive devices; hundreds more were abducted or maltreated. Sometimes, they were killed accidently with the people they were helping. Sadly the trend is on the increase where humanitarian workers are being directly targeted.

Conflict dynamics are changing. While more and more people count on aid workers for support, getting that aid to people is, in some situations, becoming much more complicated. Despite the dangers, humanitarian workers remain committed to meeting the needs of people and to saving lives.

To honour people helping people and to pay tribute to those who have died because of this commitment, the UN General Assembly has designated August 19 as World Humanitarian Day. It also commemorates the day 22 humanitarian staff died in a bomb attack on the Baghdad headquarters of the UN in 2003.

On this day we recognise the achievement of humanitarian workers, the diversity of where they work and what they do. The day is as much a celebration of life and hope as it is of hardship and crisis.

This year, singer Beyonce, the UN and humanitarian aid organisations have launched a global campaign to shine a spotlight on humanitarian work and to encourage people around the world to get involved by doing something good for others. Beyonce has released the World Humanitarian Day song “I Was Here”, and with a simultaneous worldwide appearance through social media of the WHD message, we aim to reach one billion people with stories of people helping people.

Every day we see and hear images and stories of pain and suffering in our own neighbourhoods and in countries far away. But we also find acts of kindness, great and small. World Humanitarian Day is a global celebration of people helping people.

 

Oliver Lacey-Hall is the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, based in Bangkok.