19/08/2026
World Humanitarian Day is marked each year on the anniversary of the 2003 bombing of the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, an explosive weapon attack that killed 22 aid workers. Twenty-three years on, humanitarian workers and civilians are still being killed by the same means, in the towns and cities where they work.
Almost 90 percent of the attacks on aid were recorded in Palestine, while incidents tripled in Myanmar and increased by 80 percent in Sudan.
In Gaza, the most dangerous environment for aid workers, they were killed in convoys, in warehouses and in displacement camps and while distributing aid; health and rescue workers were killed in “double tap” strikes that hit those attending the casualties of an earlier attack.
This harm is preventable. Restricting the use of explosive weapons in populated areas would stop much of it, and 92 states have committed to that through the Political Declaration on EWIPA. As part of the International Network on Explosive Weapons, Mines Action Canada is calling on states to meet those commitments.
