This year’s World Humanitarian Day will commemorate the highest annual incidence of major attacks against aid workers worldwide, yet recorded. 

In the years that have elapsed since the foundation of World Humanitarian Day a number of trends and developments have emerged which profoundly affect how, where and in what circumstances humanitarian workers can provide assistance to populations in peril. 

In assessing these trends a series of major studies and recent research by ODI’s HPG demonstrates that a deteriorating security environment is just one of many obstacles which now stand between humanitarian workers and civilians caught up in some of the world’s most dangerous conflicts.