Red Cross marks record numbers of humanitarians killed in 2024

Red Cross marks record numbers of humanitarians killed in 2024
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) staff hold pictures of their 31 staff and volunteers lost while performing their humanitarian duties during an event to honour their memories, and to raise awareness on the urgent need to protect humanitarians everywhere, in Geneva on December 4, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 05 December 2024
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Red Cross marks record numbers of humanitarians killed in 2024

Red Cross marks record numbers of humanitarians killed in 2024
  • “2024 is now the deadliest year on record for humanitarian workers, especially for local staff and volunteers worldwide,” Stoiljkovic says

GENEVA: Dozens of Red Cross staff and volunteers gathered Wednesday for a candlelight vigil for more than 30 of their colleagues killed in 2024, during the deadliest year on record for humanitarians.
More than 100 people crowded outside the headquarters of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in Geneva, most donning red vests and carrying candles.
The tribute came as a Palestine Red Crescent volunteer was killed Wednesday in the Gaza Strip, which “brings the total number of IFRC network members killed worldwide this year to 32,” the group said in a statement.
“Alaa Al-Derawi, a member of PRCS’s emergency medical team, was fatally shot in the Khan Younis area of Gaza, shortly after transporting patients for treatment. He was returning to base when the incident occurred,” it said.
In Geneva, standing in the stinging cold in front of a banner emblazoned with the words “Protect Humanity,” some held up pictures of the staff and volunteers killed this year while performing their humanitarian duties.
“We are shocked. We are appalled,” Nena Stoiljkovic, the IFRC’s Under Secretary-General for Global Relations, Humanitarian Diplomacy and Digitalization, told the gathering.
“We are not a target,” added IFRC official Frank Mohrhauer.
Following a minute of silence, an IFRC staff member solemnly read out the names of those killed.
They were among a record number of aid workers who have perished around the world this year.
Already last month, the United Nations said the record number of 280 humanitarians killed in 2023 had been surpassed, and the number has kept climbing.
Israel’s devastating war in Gaza has especially been driving up the numbers, but aid workers were also subject to violence and killings in a range of countries including Sudan and Ukraine.
“2024 is now the deadliest year on record for humanitarian workers, especially for local staff and volunteers worldwide,” Stoiljkovic said.
“This grim milestone has not spared the IFRC network,” she said, pointing to more “heartbreaking news” just last week when another Syrian Arab Red Crescent volunteer was killed, and eight others injured in an attack.
“They were rescuing people in desperate need of humanitarian assistance,” she said.
Stoiljkovic told AFP that the event, which came before International Volunteers’ Day on Thursday, provided “a moment to reflect” on the towering losses with “sadness and compassion.”


16 Pakistanis killed in shipwreck off Libya: Islamabad

A migrant looks at the sea from the deck of the boat of the NGO Proactiva Open Arms on July 1, 2018. (AFP)
A migrant looks at the sea from the deck of the boat of the NGO Proactiva Open Arms on July 1, 2018. (AFP)
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16 Pakistanis killed in shipwreck off Libya: Islamabad

A migrant looks at the sea from the deck of the boat of the NGO Proactiva Open Arms on July 1, 2018. (AFP)
  • “So far 16 dead bodies have been recovered and their Pakistani nationalities established on the basis of their passports,” a spokesperson for Pakistan’s foreign ministry said in a statement

ISLAMABAD: Emergency workers have recovered the bodies of 16 Pakistanis after a boat capsized off the coast of Libya, with 10 others believed to be missing, Pakistan’s foreign ministry said Tuesday.
Thirty-seven people survived the accident, according to authorities.
The ministry first reported the accident on Monday. It said 63 Pakistanis had been onboard the vessel and 10 are still missing, according to unconfirmed reports.
“So far 16 dead bodies have been recovered and their Pakistani nationalities established on the basis of their passports,” a spokesperson for Pakistan’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
“There are 37 survivors including 1 in hospital and 33 in police custody.”
A team from Pakistan’s embassy in Tripoli visited the coastal city of Zawiya to meet with local officials and those from Zawiya hospital.
“The Embassy in Tripoli is in the process of gathering further information and maintaining contact with the local authorities,” the statement added.
Each year thousands of Pakistanis pay large sums to traffickers to launch risky and illegal journeys to Europe, where they hope to find work and send funds to support families back home.
Pakistanis are frequently among those drowned on crammed boats which sink on the Mediterranean Sea separating North Africa from Europe — the world’s deadliest migrant route.
An official from the Federal Investigation Agency, speaking anonymously to AFP in 2023, estimated Pakistanis attempt 40,000 illegal trips every year.
In June that year the Mediterranean witnessed one of its worst migrant shipwrecks when a rusty and overloaded trawler sank overnight. It was carrying more than 750 people — up to 350 of them Pakistanis according to Islamabad — but only 82 bodies were ever recovered.

 


UK’s Princess Catherine visits women’s prison

Britain’s Catherine, Princess of Wales, visits a mother and baby unit at HMP Styal, a prison and young offender institution.
Britain’s Catherine, Princess of Wales, visits a mother and baby unit at HMP Styal, a prison and young offender institution.
Updated 5 min 24 sec ago
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UK’s Princess Catherine visits women’s prison

Britain’s Catherine, Princess of Wales, visits a mother and baby unit at HMP Styal, a prison and young offender institution.
  • Catherine visited HMP Styal in northwest England to meet offenders who had used the services of a charity-run mother and baby unit

LONDON: Britain’s Catherine, Princess of Wales, on Tuesday visited a women’s prison to meet ex-offenders and those still serving, as she continues her return to public duties having completed her cancer treatment.
Catherine visited HMP Styal in northwest England to meet offenders who had used the services of a charity-run mother and baby unit.
“It is great that you are looking at the mother’s wellbeing as well. The best thing for baby is to have a mother whose emotional needs and wellbeing is met as well,” she told staff at the unit.
Former inmate Sam told the princess that parental support was better in jail than outside.
“I only left six weeks ago and I am just getting rolling with everything again. I have said so many times that I just wish I could take this (prison) nursery and put it in my hometown,” she said.
Catherine, 43, who is mother to Prince George 11, Princess Charlotte, nine, and six-year-old Prince Louis, has only recently begun a gradual return to royal duties after a shock cancer diagnosis last year.
It was the princess’s fifth public engagement in just over two weeks.


Ukraine prepared to offer territory swap with Russia: Zelensky

Ukraine prepared to offer territory swap with Russia: Zelensky
Updated 17 min 51 sec ago
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Ukraine prepared to offer territory swap with Russia: Zelensky

Ukraine prepared to offer territory swap with Russia: Zelensky
LONDON: Ukraine will offer to swap territory with Russia in any potential peace negotiations, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview published Tuesday, adding that Europe alone would not be able to shoulder Kyiv’s war effort.
Zelensky will meet US Vice President JD Vance on Friday at the Munich Security Conference, the Ukrainian leader’s spokesman told AFP, as Washington pushes for an end to the nearly three-year war with Russia.
Vance has been a frequent critic of US support that has been vital to Ukraine’s war effort.
“There are voices which say that Europe could offer security guarantees without the Americans, and I always say no,” Zelensky told the Guardian newspaper in an interview published on the UK newspaper’s website on Tuesday.
“Security guarantees without America are not real security guarantees,” he said.
Trump is keen for both sides to reach a deal, the terms of which are a source of concern in Ukraine.
Zelensky told the Guardian he would offer Russian President Vladimir Putin territory that Ukraine seized in Russia’s Kursk region six months ago.
“We will swap one territory for another,” he said, adding that he did not know which territories he would ask for in return.
“I don’t know, we will see. But all our territories are important, there is no priority,” he said.
Russia says it has annexed five regions of Ukraine — Crimea in 2014 and then Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia in 2022 — though it does not have full control over them.


Trump confirmed Monday that he would soon dispatch his special envoy Keith Kellogg, who is tasked with drawing up a proposal to halt the fighting, to Ukraine.
The US president is pressing for a swift end to the conflict, while Zelensky is calling for tough security guarantees from Washington as part of any deal.
Kyiv fears that any settlement that does not include hard military commitments, such as NATO membership or the deployment of peacekeeping troops, will allow the Kremlin time to regroup and rearm for a fresh attack.
Zelensky has said he would offer US companies lucrative reconstruction contracts in a bid to win over Trump.
“Those who are helping us to save Ukraine will renovate it, with their businesses together with Ukrainian businesses. All these things we are ready to speak about in detail,” he told the Guardian.
Ukraine has some of the biggest mineral reserves in Europe and it is “not in the interests of the United States” for those to fall into Russian hands, he said.
“Valuable natural resources where we can offer our partners possibilities that didn’t exist before to invest in them. For us it will create jobs, for American companies it will create profits,” he added.
The Munich meeting comes with Russia advancing across Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, where over the past year it has captured several settlements, most completely flattened by months of Russian bombardments.

Trump prepares executive order to continue downsizing federal workforce

Trump prepares executive order to continue downsizing federal workforce
Updated 21 min 32 sec ago
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Trump prepares executive order to continue downsizing federal workforce

Trump prepares executive order to continue downsizing federal workforce
  • Hundreds of people gathered for a rally Tuesday across the street from the US Capitol

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order on Tuesday that would continue downsizing the federal workforce, including strict limits on hiring.
The Associated Press reviewed a White House fact sheet on the order, which is intended to advance Elon Musk ‘s work slashing spending with his Department of Government Efficiency.
It said that “agencies will undertake plans for large-scale reductions in force and determine which agency components (or agencies themselves) may be eliminated or combined because their functions aren’t required by law.”
It also said that agencies should “hire no more than one employee for every four employees that depart from federal service.” There are plans for exceptions when it comes to immigration, law enforcement and public safety.
Trump and Musk are pushing federal workers to resign in return for financial incentives, although their plan is currently on hold while a judge reviews its legality. The deferred resignation program, commonly described as a buyout, would allow employees to quit and still get paid until Sept. 30. Administration officials said more than 65,000 workers have taken the offer.
Hundreds of people gathered for a rally Tuesday across the street from the US Capitol in support of federal workers.
Janet Connelly, a graphic designer with the Department of Energy, said she’s fed up with emails from the Office of Personnel Management encouraging people to take the deferred resignation program.
She tried to use her spam settings to filter out the emails but to no avail. Connelly said she has no plans to take the offer.
“From the get-go, I didn’t trust it,” she said.
Connelly said she thinks of her work as trying to do an important service for the American public.
“It’s too easy to vilify us,” she said.
Others have said fear and uncertainty have swept through the federal workforce.
“They’re worried about their jobs. They’re worried about their families. They’re also worried about their work and the communities they serve,” said Helen Bottcher, a former Environmental Protection Agency employee and current union leader in Seattle.
Bottcher participated in a press conference hosted by Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington.
Murray said workers “deserve better than to be threatened, intimidated and pushed out the door by Elon Musk and Donald Trump.” She also said that “we actually need these people to stay in their jobs or things are going to start breaking.”


Ebola cases in Uganda rise to nine, while 265 others are being monitored under quarantine

Ebola cases in Uganda rise to nine, while 265 others are being monitored under quarantine
Updated 11 February 2025
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Ebola cases in Uganda rise to nine, while 265 others are being monitored under quarantine

Ebola cases in Uganda rise to nine, while 265 others are being monitored under quarantine

KAMPALA: Ebola cases in Uganda have risen to nine, while 265 other people were being monitored under quarantine, health authorities said Tuesday.

The nine include the first victim, a male nurse who died the day before the outbreak was declared on Jan. 30. That man remains the only fatality.

Eight patients “are receiving medical care and are in stable condition,” a Health Ministry statement said. 

Seven of them were admitted to the main public hospital in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, in addition to one being treated in the eastern district of Mbale, the ministry said, adding that “the situation is under control” amid heightened surveillance.

The nurse who died had first sought treatment in Kampala and later traveled to Mbale, where he was admitted to a public hospital. 

Health authorities said that the man also sought the services of a traditional healer. His relatives are among those being treated for Ebola.

Kampala has a highly mobile population of about 4 million, and officials are still investigating the source of the outbreak. Tracing contacts is key to stemming the spread of Ebola, which manifests as a viral hemorrhagic fever.

There are no approved vaccines for the Sudan strain of Ebola that is infecting people in Uganda. But authorities have launched a clinical study to further test the safety and efficacy of a trial vaccine as part of measures to stop the spread of the current outbreak.

The last outbreak of Ebola in Uganda, which began in September 2022, killed at least 55 people by the time it was declared over four months later.

Ebola is spread by contact with bodily fluids of an infected person or contaminated materials. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding.

Scientists suspect that the first person infected in an Ebola outbreak acquires the virus through contact with an infected animal or eating its raw meat. 

Ebola was discovered in 1976 in two simultaneous outbreaks in South Sudan and Congo, where it occurred in a village near the Ebola River, after which the disease is named.