It’s time to walk the talk on protecting humanitarian workers

The rubble of the al-Canal Hotel that housed the UN headquarters, after an explosion on Aug 19, 2003, in Baghdad. Iraqi and UN officials on Saturday (Aug 19, 2023) marked the 20th anniversary of the deadly attack in conjunction with World Humanitarian Day. — AP

WORLD Humanitarian Day was marked on Saturday (Aug 19). It was also 20 years ago from that day that a bomb was detonated outside the United Nations headquarters in the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, Iraq, in 2003. As the late UN secretary-general Kofi Annan said at the time, it was one of the darkest days in the history of the UN. It still is.

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