Aid work risks may discourage volunteers

THE charity Concern is worried people may be discouraged from becoming aid workers because of the increasingly precarious nature of the job in some countries.

The comments from the head of Concern’s Worldwide’s Emergency Unit, Dominic Crowley, came as efforts continue to free kidnapped GOAL aidworker Sharon Commins.

The 32-year-old from Clontarf is in her second month of captivity, along with her GOAL colleague Hilda Kawuki from Uganda. hey were abducted at gunpoint from their compound in the Sudanese region of Darfur early in July.

Sudanese newspaper Al-Ra’y al-Amm reported that Ms Commins had agreed to marry one of her kidnappers, an allegation on which GOAL refused to comment. However, a spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs said it was satisfied there was no foundation to the report.

An Irish delegation is still in Darfur working to have the two women freed, amid earlier reports that the gang holding the women had demanded payment of a $2 million (€1.4m) ransom.

Sudanese government spokesman Dr Khalid al-Mubarak said he hoped there would be good news “very soon” regarding Ms Commins and Ms Kawuki, but the pair have been detained for far longer than any of the other aid workers kidnapped and subsequently released in Sudan in two earlier episodes this year.

Speaking on World Humanitarian Day yesterday, Mr Crowley said there were serious incidents affecting aid workers now, specifically in three countries: Somalia, Afghanistan and Sudan.

Figures released yesterday indicate that worldwide at least 260 aid workers were killed, kidnapped or seriously injured while carrying out their work last year.

“There has been a massive increase in the number of incidents in which aid workers have been targeted,” Mr Crowley said.

On Tuesday, Irish aid worker Robert Stringer was laid to rest in Co Wicklow after he was killed in Zanzibar in an apparent mugging earlier this month.

The 26-year-old had finished five weeks of voluntary computer training work for the Camara aid agency and was travelling in Tanzania when he was killed.

United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon marked the inaugural World Humanitarian Day by calling for new efforts to help those in need and those working in providing aid.