On 24 January 2018, four Save the Children staff were killed in Jalalabad, southern Afghanistan, when our office was targeted by a heavily armed group, including a suicide bomber. Families and friends have been robbed of loved ones. Our organisation has been devastated by the loss of colleagues working to help children in desperate need. But this was not just an attack on Save the Children. It was also an attack on the values that define our shared humanity.
What happened in Jalalabad was one episode in a wider pattern of violence. In 2016, 101 aid workers were killed, across a broad swathe of countries from Afghanistan and Syria to South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia. Many more were injured, kidnapped or detained or by armed groups. The vast majority of those killed or wounded were, like the Save the Children staff in Jalalabad, nationals of the countries in which they were working.
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