Interview: UN recognizes ordinary people who save lives on World Humanitarian Day

Many of the people saving lives in disaster zones around the world are ordinary people who volunteer to help, Kieran Dwyer, chief of communications for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told Xinhua in a recent interview.

Dwyer spoke with Xinhua on the eve of this year's World Humanitarian Day, which falls on Aug. 19. To mark the day this year, OCHA is focusing on stories of shared humanity, from volunteers in Syria to a Nepalese Sherpa who helped bring food to remote villages after the earthquake.

ORDINARY VOLUNTEERS

Dwyer said that many of the world's humanitarian workers are ordinary people.

"They're volunteers, ordinary people who've said we can do something and literally they're saving live," he said.

He touched upon Khaled from Syria, a member of the volunteer search and rescue team called the White Helmets.

After an apartment building was torn apart by a barrel bomb, Khaled and his team arrived to search for survivors.

"They could hear a baby crying and they found a woman who was distraught and didn't have her baby," Dwyer said.

Khaled and the rest of the search and rescue team began searching through the rubble for the baby -- the moment Khaled pulled the baby out alive is captured on camera -- he describes it as the best day of his life.

"In the midst of the very worst that is happening to people there's new life and all because these volunteers have decided that they put their humanity on the line," Dwyer said.

The very reason the White Helmets are special is because they are ordinary people, he said.

"In their normal lives before the war started (the White Helmets) were bakers, drivers, accountants, lawyers, ordinary people going about their daily job," he said.

OCHA is using World Humanitarian Day to draw attention to the amazing work of humanitarian workers like Khaled as well as the challenges they face.

SECURITY RISKS

One of the risks that rescue workers like the White Helmets face is becoming targets themselves.

"International humanitarian law demands that anybody who's a party to a conflict respects and protects humanitarian workers but outrageously this is not always the case," Dwyer said.

"If a humanitarian worker is not safe to work, it's not just about them," Dwyer said. "It means that they can't get the life saving assistance to thousands, and sometimes millions of people, so that's a major problem."

Across the world, Dwyer said, there are currently more than 80 million people receiving life-saving humanitarian assistance every day.

This figure, along with the cost of providing humanitarian assistance, has doubled in the last 10 years, leaving a funding shortfall, he said.

One of the reasons is that conflicts today are lasting longer. Eighty percent of humanitarian aid is provided to people living in conflict affected areas, he said.

"One of the greatest challenges in the world today is that 80 percent of humanitarian effort is happening in conflict related situations and that means in order to get life-saving assistance to people humanitarian workers are often put at great physical risk of being attacked and of being killed."

"Because crises are going on longer it puts a huge strain on the global system and it requires everybody to share their humanity and do a bit more," he said.

Telling the stories of humanitarian workers and the people they are helping can help unite the international community to address these challenges.

Dwyer voiced his hope that stories such as Khaled's will show what we share as humanity.

"What we share as people is much more significant then what makes us different," he said. "We have different cultures but we' re all human so share that humanity." Endite