Aid workers wrongly perceived as the enemy

All too often, the day opens with news of yet another tragic attack on humanitarian aid workers, and by extension, the principles of humanity, impartiality, and neutrality that define our work. The sheer, sickening repetition of the news could hail from Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia or any number of hot spots where unarmed aid workers are seeking to help civilians in urgent need of life-saving assistance.

Last week, the Nobel Prize-winning humanitarian organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) announced it was closing its operations in Afghanistan after 24 years of uninterrupted service to the Afghan people. MSF's decision follows the murder in June of five of its aid workers there, a crime that occurred against the backdrop of deteriorating security, impunity for perpetrators, and an increasingly politicized environment for humanitarian aid.

Since March 2003, more than 30 humanitarian workers have been killed in Afghanistan. Add to this the dozens of other aid workers kidnapped or attacked elsewhere, and the trend becomes horrifyingly clear.

Under the Geneva Conventions, both civilians in crisis and the aid workers who seek to help them are to be protected from harm. UN Security Council Resolution 1502, passed last year following the bombing of the UN compound in Baghdad, affirmed that killing a humanitarian aid worker is a war crime. All UN members have a responsibility to end impunity and bring to justice those who commit these crimes. Despite these proclamations, humanitarian aid workers continue to be targeted. Why?

In our post-9/11 world, there is a perception that humanitarianism has been politicized, with a dangerous blurring of the lines between independent, impartial humanitarian action and military or foreign-policy objectives. The result: Aid workers are seen as "legitimate" targets by those who identify them - wrongly - with the policies of combatants or governments. In Afghanistan, for example, the aid workers shot in June were accused by the Taliban - which claimed responsibility for the attack - of carrying out US policies.

In principle as well as practice, however, humanitarianism is independent of the policies of any government or rebel group. Our loyalty belongs to no nation, religion, or ethnicity - but only to the principle of humanity: providing aid to people in need.

Attacking an aid worker undermines this most basic principle: that people caught on the front lines of violence or disaster have a right to assistance. The ripple effects of an attack begin, of course, with the family and colleagues of the slain, but extend more widely to countless others whose survival may well hinge on the provision of aid.