The attack on the World Food Program headquarters in Islamabad was a tragedy and a crime. It was also symptomatic of a  deadly trend in international security. Last year, 268 humanitarian aid workers were killed, kidnapped, or seriously injured in violent attacks.  This represents a 61% increase of attacks on aid workers over the past decade.  This increase is not just because there are more aid workers in the field today. Rather, the relative number of aid worker victims is steadily increasing.  According to data compiled by the Overseas Development Institute, there were about 9 aid worker victims per 10,000 workers in the field in 2008 compared to about 4 per 10,000 in 1997.

This chart, also from ODI, shows the number of attacks on aid workers since 1997. The data includes attacks on the UN, the ICRC and NGOs. The majority of these incidents over the past three years have occurred in Somalia, Afghanistan and Sudan.  

The trendlines are clear.   What is not clear, however, is how the international community can respond to this onslaught.  The neutrality of aid workers in a conflict zone is no longer respected by belligerents, yet aid workers continue to conduct critical life-saving work despite the increased risk.  These workers bravely put their lives on the line in the service of others --  and in the case of the World Food Program in Pakistan, in the service of stabilizing a strategically important country.  It is in the international communities own interest to do what it can to stem this terrible trend. We ignore it at our own risk.

Samoa was hit by an enormous Tsunami yesterday.  Here is some dramatic footage from the Associated Press.

Entire towns have been wiped out. Hundreds of people are reported killed and many thousands are now homeless. President Obama has offered his condolences and American support for a humanitarian operation.

Coming to help is Telecoms Sans Frontieres (TSF) a UN Foundation*-Vodafone Foundation partnership that sets up emergency telecommunications systems in the immediate aftermath of disasters like this. These telecoms centers can be erected within 24 hours of an emergency and provide critical logistical support to relief NGOs and UN agencies. TSF also sets up call centers where people affected by a disaster can contact loved-ones.  

The scale of this devastation from this Tsunami has not been fully realized.  We will stay on this story throughout the week. 

Meanwhile in the Philippines, flooding from cyclone Ketsana has drowned cities and the countryside.  Some 80% of Manila, which has a population of 12 million people, is submerged.  TSF is on the scene. As is the World Food Program, which is delivering food rations to 180,000 people.  

*As regular readers know, UN Dispatch enjoys the sponsorship of the UN Foundation

By Navi Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. This item is cross-posted at Huffington Post

August 19 is a date that is etched deep in the consciousness of the United Nations and the memories of those involved in humanitarian and human rights work around the world: the day in 2003 when 22 people, mostly UN staff, were killed in cold blood by a single bomb at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad.

It was by no means the first time that humanitarian aid workers, human rights defenders, peacekeepers and others working to improve the lot of the disadvantaged had been deliberately targeted by ruthless forces determined to create instability or subvert the basic laws and norms on which civilized society depends. My own organization, the Office of the United Nations High Ccommissioner for Human Rights, experienced its first loss of staff on 4 February 1997, when five members of the Human Rights Field Operations were killed in Rwanda.

And sadly, since 19 August 2003, there have been numerous other assassinations of individuals and further bombs – most notably the one in Algiers on 11 December 2007 which took the lives of a further 17 UN staff members – targeting UN and NGO staff. And I have just learned that two more UN staff are among those killed on Tuesday by a suicide bomber in Kabul. I would like to offer my deepest condolences to their families and colleagues.

In the case of the Baghdad and Algiers bombs, the perpetrators of these crimes were terrorist organizations. However, in other cases, the killers have sometimes acted on behalf of a government, or for organs meant to be under the control of governments.

Killing those who are trying to help others is a particularly despicable crime, and one which all governments should join forces to prevent, and – when prevention fails – to punish. It is therefore appropriate – as a first step – that last December the global forum for all the world’s governments, the UN General Assembly, agreed to designate 19 August as World Humanitarian Day.

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Humanitarian aid workers are on the frontline, trying to provide at least a minimum of material support and protection for the displaced, and for populations affected by conflict, chronic poverty, food shortages, natural disasters and other crises.

Humanitarian work and human rights are inextricably entwined. It is very often abuse of human rights that causes humanitarian crises in the first place. And without humanitarian aid, the basic human rights of millions of people – including the right to seek asylum from persecution, the right to education, and, most fundamental of all, the right to life – would be denied. Similarly, if human rights are ignored during a humanitarian crisis, the crisis will often deepen.

The Canal Hotel bombing rocked the UN system to its core. Among the dead was my predecessor as High Commissioner for Human Rights, Sergio Vieira de Mello. Several staff from the Office of the High Commissioner (OHCHR) had gone with him on secondment to help the effort to bring peace and stability to Iraq.

Sergio was uniquely placed to provide the synthesis between humanitarian work, human rights, and political mediation. As High Commissioner for Human Rights, and as a former top official with the UN refugee agency and the humanitarian affairs office, he saw with sharp clarity the essential, mutually reinforcing, connections between humanitarian work, human rights and peace-building.

The UN staff who were killed and injured alongside him in the Canal Hotel came from a variety of backgrounds. Some were experts in providing humanitarian aid, some were human rights specialists, others were experienced in peace-building and political negotiations. They were all working in the common belief that they could contribute to rebuilding Iraq after decades of massive human rights abuses by the regime of Saddam Hussein, and the destructive conflict that removed him but was threatening to plunge the country into prolonged chaos and anarchy.

Would they have succeeded, if the August 19 bomb had not exploded? Would the ensuing years of horrendous inter-ethnic strife, killing, rape and other forms of abuse that plagued Iraq have been mitigated or largely avoided? We shall never know.

But they, and all the aid workers like them around the world, past, present and future, most certainly deserve to have this day in the annual calendar devoted to their selfless, often unrewarding and sometimes dangerous efforts to improve the lives of others.

You know, the one he is actually paid for (well, sort of). After rescuing journalists imprisoned in North Korea, Clinton is back to...talking about turning sawdust into fuel.

Electric power is scarce in rural areas and the cutting of trees to make charcoal has led to deforestation in Haiti.

As an example of projects rife for further investment, Clinton described a recycling program that turns paper and sawdust waste into cooking fuel that sells for one-fifth the cost of charcoal.

Seriously, though. Clinton's role promoting international development and stability in Haiti might even be more difficult that freeing hostages taken by the equally impoverished -- but decidedly less hospitable -- regime in North Korea.

And while there may not be imprisoned journalists in Haiti, there is still some dangerous tension between Haitian protestors and UN peacekeepers, who have done much to calm and rebuild the country, but have  again found themselves in the midst of demonstrations turned violent. If Bill can mediate between a hostile regime and innocent Americans, then surely he can soothe animosities between everyday Haitians and the peacekeepers who, after all, are trying to improve their lives.