On the 19th August each year we celebrate World Humanitarian Aid Day. The purpose of this day is to raise awareness of the plight of civilians around the world who have become caught up in conflicts, and also honour and raise support for the humanitarian workers who risk, and sometimes lose, their lives to help.

Over 130 million people throughout the world are currently in crisis, either through war or natural disasters and are in need of humanitarian aid. This is without the Corvid 19 pandemic making things worse.

World Humanitarian Day was first was first celebrated in 2009

The date of 19th August was chosen as it is the anniversary of the bombing of the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, when the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Sergio Vieira de Mellothe and twenty others were killed.