COMMENTARY / World

Paying tribute to those who serve the humanitarian cause

On World Humanitarian Day, we must honor those U.N. personnel and others lost to violence

World Humanitarian Day is a time to remember the people from the organizations and communities who dedicate their lives to helping others around the world in their times of need, despite the risks and dangers. | REUTERS

By Martin Griffiths
Contributing Writer

Aug 18, 2023

This World Humanitarian Day, we commemorate 20 years since that murderous day when terrorists detonated a suicide bomb outside the United Nations headquarters in the Canal Hotel in Baghdad on Aug. 19, 2003.

As the late U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said at the time, it was one of the darkest days in the history of the organization. It still is.

For me, World Humanitarian Day on Aug. 19 will always be an occasion of mixed and still raw emotion.

Paying tribute to those who serve the humanitarian cause

On World Humanitarian Day, we must honor those U.N. personnel and others lost to violence

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