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A4EP Celebrates World Humanitarian Day

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World Humanitarian Day is an international day dedicated to humanitarian workers and those who have lost their lives working for humanitarian causes. It is a global celebration of people helping people. In the last 5 years, humanity has witnessed one crisis after the other such as civil wars, refugee crisis, climate change, natural disasters, food insecurity and the most recently, the COVID19 global pandemic.

At the frontlines, there have been ordinary yet brave people, who have responded to the needs of others. Many times, they are the affected people themselves – always first to respond when disaster strikes, they are far from the spotlight and out of the headlines, yet they come together to ease suffering and bring hope. The world is still struggling to come out of the Covid19 crisis. At a time when international aid workers withdrew because of travel restrictions, the local aid workers led the response from front by exposing themselves to the risk. Many fell ill and many died. There are no proper records of the local aid workers who lost their lives while serving the communities at the most critical time. They left behind their vulnerable families.

These people are not alone, there is a global community that supports them as they recover.
Crisis cannot be managed by the people alone, it takes the whole humanitarian community, local and international to support people in need and manage these complex situations. A4EP would like to draw attention of the humanitarian community, particularly the international actors, to pay special attention to the local humanitarian actors who are on the frontline but often work without adequate compensation, social security benefits and income security. Often the plight of these workers goes unnoticed and not part of the mainstream discourse and the entire localisation discourse remains silent on this issue. The humanitarian system functions largely because of these workers who are the real frontline workers. The humanitarian architecture needs to be fairer with them in observing the world humanitarian day.

It is critical to amplify the voices of local, indigenous communities and local actors such as local government and grass root civil society organizations and activists. Their inclusion is important, as they best understand the local context. They witness firsthand the social and economic impact of disasters on their societies, and need to have a more central role in decision making on disaster management policies and interventions.