Safety and protection of humanitarian workers

Abstract

Humanitarian aid workers were always vulnerable because they work in dangerous environment (often in the framework of armed conflicts or instances of violence) but recently it can be observed that aid workers are targets of premeditated attacks, which raises once again the question about the scope of protection of humanitarian workers and ways to improve it. The aims of the article are the following: firstly, to describe main features of humanitarian space in which aid workers perform their duties (i.e. assess the scale of accidental deaths and directed attacks against aid workers; to indicate what is the impact of the involvement of military officers in providing humanitarian aid, to show dangers related with politicization of humanitarian aid), secondly to assess the scope of legal protection of aid workers which entails indication what is a status of humanitarian worker according to international law (i.e. Human Rights law and International Humanitarian Law) and to answer if their activities can be perceived as taking part in hostilities and in case of affirmative answer to indicate if they can be deprived of their protection; thirdly to indicate what kind of measures are undertaken to improve protection of humanitarian workers (i.e. codes of conduct, conventions, trainings).