The inherent risks facing international aid workers again came to the forefront a month ago, when a video surfaced showing ISIS militants threatening to execute David Cawthorne Haines, a 44-year-old British aid worker with Paris-based disaster relief group ACTED.
Haines was beheaded days later. His countryman and fellow humanitarian Alan Henning, a 47-year-old taxi driver working for an aid convoy in Syria, was next and a video showing his brutal murder was posted online last week. ISIS’ latest identified hostage is 26-year-old Peter Kassig, a former U.S. Army ranger who founded a nongovernmental organization for fleeing Syrian refugees. The fact that all three men were aid workers who had traveled to war-torn Syria did not surprise those versed in the dangers facing those working for such groups abroad.
Kidnapping and violence against foreign aid workers has gone from a rare horror story to an all-too-familiar refrain from those working in the world’s most dangerous locales. Even as security has improved for many aid organizations in recent years, deepening political crises in a few select hot spots stretching across the Middle East, North Africa and Latin America have made it increasingly risky for humanitarians operating in remote and unstable locations.