Shafaqna English- 2023 was the deadliest year on record for humanitarian workers, according to Claudio Cordone, Deputy Special Representative of the UN’s Secretary-General for Iraq for Political Affairs and Electoral Assistance.
“We of course have a particular reason to commemorate this day here in Baghdad. The memory and the wounds, some invisible, of the attack on the Canal Hotel are still raw. We lost 22 colleagues on that day in 2003, only five days after UNAMI was established by the Security Council,” Cordone said during his speech marking the anniversary of the Hotel bombing.
“The then Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Sérgio Vieira de Mello, was among those who lost their lives. More than 100 others were injured or impacted in other ways,” he added.
Moreover, he pointed out that humanitarian workers from the UN, along with those from local and international NGOs, are being killed, injured, and abducted, alongside the civilians they support, who continue to bear the brunt of conflicts everywhere.
Cordone added: “In our region, in Gaza, we have seen the highest number of UN’s staff killed in a single conflict. Among them are 207 of my former colleagues at UNRWA, killed together with over 40,000 Palestinians in a ferocious war in which all sides are violating international law, and it is a war that may yet escalate into a regional conflagration.”
Source: Shafaq News