News

Thomson Highlights World Humanitarian Day

Local MP Richard Thomson has highlighted World Humanitarian Day 2021, which takes place later this week. 

On 19 August each year World Humanitarian Day is marked, the purpose of which 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. 

Commenting, Richard Thomson MP said: 

“The timing of this year’s World Humanitarian Day is, unfortunately, particularly apposite, coming as it does when we are witnessing the deeply concerning events in Afghanistan as one of the biggest foreign policy disasters in modern times unfolds. 

“Over 130 million people throughout the world are currently in crisis, either through war or natural disasters and are in need of humanitarian aid. 

“For World Humanitarian Day 2021, the focus will be on the immediate human cost of the climate crisis and increasing the pressure on world leaders to take meaningful climate action for the world’s most vulnerable people.” 

World Humanitarian Day was established in 2008 by the United Nations General Assembly and was first officially celebrated in 2009.  The date of 19 August was chosen as it marks the anniversary of the bombing of the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, an event in which the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Sergio Vieira de Mellothe and twenty others lost their lives. 

• Press Release
• Charity