EU Commissioner Salutes 'Selfless' Aid Workers on World Humanitarian Day

August 19 is World Humanitarian Day, dedicated to marking the sacrifice of people who have lost their lives working for humanitarian causes. On the date in 2003, 22 people were killed when the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, a base for the UN mission in Iraq, was bombed. Marking the day, EU Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid Christos Stylianides said that humanitarian crises have become “more devastating than ever before.”

He said it was “an alarming trend” that more aid workers were being attacked, kidnapped or killed now compared with 10 years ago. Credit: European Union Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection