Aid worker Steve Holland has warned that humanitarian work is becoming more dangerous as funding is squeezed, following the deaths of colleagues in Gaza and a decision not to open a criminal investigation into a strike that killed seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) workers.
Writing in an opinion piece for the Daily Express, Holland, a British Army veteran and international security manager for the Middle East and Gaza for WCK, described the risks faced by aid workers and called on the government to back strong words with action and funding.
Colleagues killed in Gaza strike
Last week an inquest into the deaths of three of his colleagues took a step forward. James Kirby, James Henderson and John Chapman were killed alongside four other WCK colleagues in April 2024, when an aid convoy was hit by an Israeli strike on a route the IDF had approved them to be on. Last month Israel's military prosecutor decided there would be no criminal investigation.
Holland, who grew up in Cheshire and served in Afghanistan, Iraq and Northern Ireland, said he did not become an aid worker expecting to bury friends. He has delivered aid in Gaza, Ukraine and the West Bank, and runs his own charity project, Children of Ukraine, which collects medicine, food, Christmas presents and toys in the UK and drives them from England.
Targeted in Ukraine and Gaza
He said he has been targeted countless times in Ukraine by Russian forces. In one incident in Kherson, a Russian drone identified his team moving in and hit them twice with artillery. They missed, but he warned that with the advancement in capability of robotics, they may not be so lucky next time.
The team went in anyway because a boy in Kherson with cerebral palsy needed a wheelchair. His old one was too small and had rubbed his legs and hips raw, so they drove through exploding shells to deliver a new one.
Holland said he saw unimaginable things in Ukraine, but witnessing the collapse of humanity in Gaza broke something in him that even Ukraine did not. He described it as hell on earth and torture, with no respite.
Funding set to fall by a fifth
He highlighted the case of Omar Hayek, a Doctors without Borders (MSF) worker who was killed and four others hurt when they were hit at a bus stop waiting for the staff bus to their own field hospital. Hayek was the fifteenth MSF worker killed in Gaza and was wearing a vest with MSF written on it, which made no difference.
Government figures show funding earmarked specifically for humanitarian work, which pays for security, vehicles and local support networks, is set to fall by a fifth over the next few years. Holland said this means fewer people watching your back, older kit, and teams stretched too thin.
Development minister Kirsty McNeill recently gave a speech about the five most pressing types of security she wants to focus on: health, climate, human, economic and food. Holland said she is talking about exactly what he has described, but none of it gets built on a shrinking budget while the risk to people delivering it keeps growing.
He said he will keep doing the work because he has to do his part to help humanity, but wished the government would understand that the work is not safe any more, and that pretending it is, or funding it like it is, will cost the lives of more British aid workers.
