Today, as we mark World Humanitarian Day, we must reflect on the state of humanitarianism. Humanitarian work has always been framed upon the collective assumption that there are lines that should never be crossed, even in wars.
For a generation, we had binding international agreements that treated the act of protecting a child in need of food or a medic treating the sick and wounded as a fundamental legal right.
Today, the consensus and meaning behind these laws are gone.
Too many governments are no longer consistently defending the rules-based order that they helped create. When it suits them, some are openly disregarding international law. Others are applying it selectively, condemning their adversaries for violations while tolerating the same behaviours by their allies. Many more are simply remaining silent at times when condemnation and action are required.
When governments feel that their own geopolitical and domestic interests are more important than their legal obligations, our rules-based humanitarian system becomes diminished and corrupted. Enforcement becomes inconsistent. Tolerance of excessive civilian casualties becomes routine. And anything becomes permissible, including the unthinkable.
Today, impunity is being allowed to flourish. Bad actors feel more empowered to break the laws that exist to make us all safer because they know they won’t be held to account.
This matters because humanitarian crises do not emerge in a vacuum. Instead, they are the direct results of these kinds of transactional political choices.
In this worldview, the protection of civilians and aid workers is no longer understood as a universal obligation as much as a commodity – something that can be bargained, withheld or selectively applied. Protection becomes a political investment that demands a political return.
We can measure the consequences of this in people’s lives.
At least 1,000 aid workers have been killed in the past three years, nearly triple the toll of the previous three. In 2025, there were hundreds of attacks on humanitarian operations and 350 aid workers killed, 322 injured, 235 kidnapped, and 280 detained, according to the UN.
At Oxfam, we have lost five colleagues and partner staff in eight years and had more than 1,300 of our people caught up in at least 1,200 security incidents.
The killing of aid workers often happens in places where the belligerents are armed, funded or shielded by the same governments that are actually funding a humanitarian response.
But failing protection is not the only challenge humanitarian work faces today. Often, states impose unnecessary restrictions that prevent aid workers from carrying out their duties.