Word: aid
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...world is sorely in need of humanitarian aid these days, what with a global recession deepening every day and numerous conflicts raging. But as the number of aid workers operating across the globe has soared - more than doubling over the past decade to a record 290,000 people last year - so too have attacks against them, according to a report published Wednesday by the London-based think tank Overseas Development Institute...
...More than 60% of the killings, assaults and kidnappings are concentrated in just three places: Somalia, Sudan's Darfur region, and Afghanistan. Together with four other countries - Sri Lanka, Chad, Iraq and Pakistan - they make up three-quarters of the 270 attacks against aid workers recorded last year. That's hardly a surprise to big international aid organizations, whose workers in those places remained long after the risks had driven out almost all other Westerners. (See pictures of the perils of childbirth in Afghanistan...
...sharp increase in the number of attacks over the past few years has jolted aid officials, some of whom are wondering whether they might soon be driven out of conflict areas altogether. "Vast parts of Sudan, Somalia and Afghanistan are without humanitarian assistance because it has become too dangerous to operate there," says Peter Buth of the emergency team of Médicins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Holland. "It is incredibly frustrating." The surge in attacks, says the ODI report, "highlights the dearth of viable options to keep staff secure in the most volatile contexts, where humanitarian aid...
...According to the report, an average of 95 aid workers were killed in each of the past three years, up from an average of about 66 each year between 2003 and 2006. The rate of kidnappings of aid workers has accelerated even more quickly, from about 18 a year between 2003 and 2006, to about 57 a year for the past three years. Operating across hundreds of countries, aid workers are in most danger in places where they represent one of the few Western organizations left in the area - as in Somalia, the villages of Darfur or remote parts...
...Somali buccaneers: longtime rivals India and China. New Delhi has had at least one ship in the Gulf of Aden since October, and late last year, with great fanfare, China deployed two warships to the same area. The ships have been active in interdicting pirates and coming to the aid of commercial ships in apparent distress - though they are not part of the U.S.-led Combined Task Force 151 (usually composed of 14 to 15 vessels from several nations), which coordinates its activity with the dominant naval force in the Indian Ocean, the U.S. 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain...