After the Commitments: What recent political will means for aid worker safety

With new global commitments on aid worker protection on the table, it feels like the right moment to reflect on what this means for those of us working on humanitarian security.

Recent commitments from the UK and a group of UN member states on aid worker safety raise questions about what this means for our sector, and how we put them into practice.

2024 was the deadliest year on record for aid workers. More than 380 colleagues and partners were killed while trying to deliver humanitarian assistance. This shouldn’t be just seen as a statistic. It represents people we worked alongside, learned from, and depended on. For those of us in humanitarian security and risk management, this reality underlies every decision we make, every system we establish, and every conversation we have about duty of care and risk.

In the past few months, two important signals have been sent. The UK Parliament’s inquiry into aid worker protections and Government’s response to inquiry report Protection not Permission, and the Declaration on the Protection of Humanitarian Personnel, amplify aid worker safety as the central, critical issue it is. While neither is binding nor changes the operational risks we deal with day-to-day, both highlight the issues, give them structure, and strengthen the conversations that we have been having for many years.

Gaza (whether the latest ceasefire holds or not) shows why this is central to our work and so critical. International humanitarian law (IHL) is clear: aid workers are not combatants and must be protected as civilians should be. Yet agencies have seen staff targeted and killed, detained, and their access blocked. No amount of training or systems can offset the deliberate denial of humanitarian space. That’s the uncomfortable truth of our work: risk management has limits. The challenge for security professionals and risk managers is to be clear about those limits, to define risk tolerance openly, and to make sure programme and leadership colleagues understand there is a point where risks can no longer be managed away or discounted.

Both the UK response and the Declaration also put duty-of-care front and centre of our conversations again. The UK has said openly that when UK-funded aid workers are casualties, organisations will be examined for whether they met their responsibilities. The Declaration echoes this by calling for stronger protections and by recognising that local staff often carry the greatest risks. That underpins what we consistently advocate for: duty of care can’t be passed off to one function or be solved with a policy statement. It’s shared. It needs leadership commitment, programs, advocacy, finance, and security all pulling together, layered responsibilities that reinforce each other and protect people.

Funding is another area where these commitments matter. The UK’s response made it clear that underfunding security is a false economy. The Declaration pushes the same point, calling for predictable and flexible funding for Security Risk Management. We’ve been saying this for years, but now there is political backing we can point to, which provides an entry point for security costs to be directly included in proposals, a reference to defend them in donor discussions, and a lever to explain that protecting staff isn’t separate from delivery; it makes delivery possible.

Thankfully, well-being is now also on the agenda. Too often, security has been defined only in terms of physical safety. But the toll of trauma, stress, and loss is just as real. The UK response allows budgets for psychosocial support, and the Declaration calls for the same kind of access to wellbeing resources. This is long overdue. Caring for people’s mental health, and the residual impact of exposure to traumatic events, has to be part of how we understand duty-of-care.

Personally, both initiatives underline the role of security managers and SRM professionals across this sector. We’re not just here to highlight problems or say “no.” We’re here to inform decision-making, to help organisations weigh programme imperatives against risk realities, and to ensure safety and delivery are always connected. And we can’t do that alone; it has to be collaborative, across teams and with partners, especially local colleagues who, along with our frontline staff, often face the sharpest risks.

The UK’s response to aid worker safety concerns and the Declaration don’t solve the problem, but they do give us momentum. They both recognise the dangers aid workers face, call out the gaps that need to be closed, and press for stronger protections, dedicated funding, and greater access. For our community, the challenge now is how we use these commitments, not as endpoints, but as platforms to push for the changes we know are needed.

About the author

Chris Williams is the Executive Director, Security and Operations, at CARE International, and member of GISF Policy Working Group.

Photo credit: ANDREW KELLY / Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

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