Global call for protection of health workers serving under difficult conditions
They carry the sick and treat the wounded even under most challenging and difficult environments.
They deliver medicines across conflict lines.
They keep hospitals running when electricity and water run low and essential supplies are disappearing.
They respond to outbreaks, reach displaced families and remain beside communities when everything else has fallen apart.
Health workers continue to deliver care under unimaginable pressure.
Increasingly, they are also being killed for it.
On World Humanitarian Day 2026, the World Health Organization (WHO) joins the global call demanding greater protection for civilians, health workers and humanitarian personnel.
They are also calling for an end to impunity for attacks against them and stronger support for responders who remain on the frontlines during the world’s gravest emergencies.
Nowhere is that call more urgent than in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region.
As conflict, displacement, hunger, disease and climate shocks converge on communities already pushed to the limits of survival, more than 117 million people across the Region will require humanitarian assistance in 2026.
The people working to keep communities safe are under attack.
So far this year, WHO has recorded 438 attacks on health care in the Region, resulting in more than 773 deaths and 1123 injuries. The Eastern Mediterranean accounts for nearly 50 percent of global attacks on health care and more than 80 percent of associated deaths.
Behind every number is a person. A doctor who did not return home. A nurse killed while caring for patients. An ambulance worker attacked while answering a call for help. An aid worker who chose to stay and serve a community with nowhere else to turn.
The failure to protect those delivering lifesaving assistance must not be normalized.
Hospitals are not battlefields.
Ambulances are not targets.
Health and humanitarian workers are not combatants.
Civilians seeking care should not have to risk their lives to reach it.
Those who violate international humanitarian law must be held to account. Impunity only makes the next attack more likely.
On World Humanitarian Day, we recognize those who shoulder the burden of the humanitarian response but receive little recognition, the local and national responders who serve their communities in the face of conflict, displacement, hunger and insecurity.
They must be protected, empowered and adequately resourced.
As we mark World Humanitarian Day, WHO pays tribute to humanitarian and health workers who put their duty of care above their own safety and, too often, their own lives.
Protect civilians. Protect health and humanitarian workers.
Uphold international humanitarian law. End impunity.
Those who protect humanity must be protected.