from afghanistan to south sudan to syria aid groups that were once almost universally viewed as neutral increasingly find themselves targeted why the change and what can be done to make things safer for aid agencies and the critical work they do this is inside story. hello and welcome to the program i'm mohammed jim joining there was a time when aid groups working in difficult places were almost universally regarded as neutrals and most conflicts all sides respected them and while aid might have been blocked from reaching particular areas aid workers themselves were rarely attacked but that era is long gone in recent years aid groups and their activities have frequently been targeted in conflicts around the world wednesday's attack on the salon about office of save the children was only the latest example of what has become a disturbing trend we begin with this report from jennifer glass. the attack began with a car bomb at the door of the state of the children office in jalalabad eastern afghanistan the gunman stormed the building for more than eight hours they battled afghan security forces while dozens of save the children staff were trapped inside the building was set on fire eventually afghan police and soldiers killed the attackers and rescued the staff afghanistan is one of the most dangerous places for children to be born following decades of war insecurity and poverty for twelve years save the children has worked with afghan communities to help kids survive but the attack on the agency's office in jalalabad suggest it's becoming increasingly difficult for staff to help afghans without becoming victims of the conflict themselves. it's quite possible the save the children would leave afghanistan and the onus is on the afghan government to provide security for the latest a to stick on aid worker security show that over the last fifteen years their jobs have become much more dangerous in two thousand and sixteen there were one hundred fifty eight attacks on aid organizations around the world in which one hundred to one aid workers were killed ninety eight wounded and eighty nine kidnapped that's almost triple the number of attacks in two thousand and three south sudan is the most dangerous country for aid workers followed by afghanistan and syria the u.n. humanitarian coordinator calls afghanistan one of the most challenging and dangerous environments for humanitarians in two thousand and seventeen seventeen aid workers were killed and thirty two injured doctors without borders withdrew from the northern afghan city of could use in two thousand and fifteen after the medical charities hospital was mistakenly destroyed by a u.s. airstrike and last year the international red cross which is operated in afghanistan for more than thirty years close to clinics and limited his operations nationwide after seven staff members were killed and others abducted now we're in a very. explosive situation i think where we note the community says communities can no longer guarantee all safety on our axis and that's now where it's becoming extremely difficult to know. who we can rely on and that's that's the challenge today more so than in the last thirty years afghanistan is dependent on aid organizations have gunmen were to drive them out the afghan government can't support the social services programs on which millions of afghans depend save the children says it helps one point four million children in afghanistan and it's committed to its work here the organization would like to restart its programs but it can only do so when it's short staffed can work safely jennifer glass al jazeera kabul. let's bring in our guests in geneva we have francois del flossed he is the project. manager of attacks on hospitals with doctors without borders also known by its french initials m.s.f. joining us via skype from juba is monday morning that she is the spokeswoman with the international committee of the red cross in south sudan and finally david said me he's a former u.s. deputy assistant secretary of defense for afghanistan and pakistan and is now a senior fellow center for strategic and international studies welcome to you all i'm audie i want to start with you i often speak with aid workers in conflict zones who tell me about how much the situation is deteriorating how much risk they face can you tell our viewers about how hard it is for you and your colleagues to operate out of a place like south sudan of course when we work in a place like south sudan there's a basic this is a country in war. it is a country where they really in our visit every day and for us as well aaron for the red cross. here in south sudan we also lost one of our staff members and last year this was the most serious the fact that we had seen on the i.c.r.c. in very many years. and here in south sudan and of course. this is something that we are very sad about and something that we are affected by every day in our daily work here in south sudan so mari how hard is it for you want to personal level when you've lost friends and you've lost colleagues you want to serve the needs of the most vulnerable but you also realize that you and your colleagues are increasingly coming under attack. i mean when kennedy our i.c.r.c. staff member was shot and killed in september last year he was without the need for that had been working with i said season six thousand and fourteen when that happened we could really see that that's when the staff as well as the international after in south sudan we really got together and we were shocked and saddened by by what happened and this is something that reminded us about the vulnerable inside all environments as we are working in it of course is not something that. should suck up to must of course that this can happen we are working in a war and conflict environment here in south sudan. but when this happened we really really thought that the south lebanese colleague and international colleague it well where. the porting the family of like fifty staff member that was was killed when this happened david what the situation used to be like in places like afghanistan for humanitarian workers for for aid groups i mean was it really safe for them fifteen twenty twenty five years ago to operate out of places like that it was somewhat safer in some areas but attacks against aid workers in afghanistan go back certainly for the fifteen or so years that i've been involved in tax in two thousand and two and three on i.c.r.c. and m.s.f. . the groups they were working to help afghanistan happened back then as well but i think the the number and severity of them have increased as have the as has the use of kidnappings i spent the last year as president of the american university of afghanistan in kabul and we have two professors who a year and a half ago were kidnapped by the taliban remain in prison by the taliban and so i believe it's a much more dangerous situation certainly in afghanistan now than it was even five or ten years ago francois picking up on on what david said you know one of the things that led to the u.n. security council resolution twenty two eighty six being passed in two thousand and sixteen was the destruction of the doctors without borders hospital can do is trauma center you know but hasn't violence against humanitarian groups only worsened since then. i think it's it's we have to be our first i would like to highlight one thing is that the violence against walker humanitarian worker is a symptom of the general violence the civilian population in conflict zone are suffering from. we they get content of our own staff being victim of attack patients being victims of attack but also the general population. also director of this level of violence second i think it's difficult to say that there is. an increasing trend for several reasons first has a capacity to analyze. the type of attack and the motivation behind i think it's very contextual in some countries like afghanistan there is an increasing trend of for instance as mentioned kidnapping you know the contrary it will be an increasing trend trend of a alone being against health facilities. it's very contextual and one have to remind our soldiers that it's difficult to make a comparison between a puck because nowadays there is. much bigger number of humanitarian workers being deployed worldwide twenty years ago so it's difficult to to have to draw from that. an adequate. for instance and i but i think what is important is that what we are facing and therefore the un resolution twenty two eighty six you were mentioning what we are facing is a new way to. run wafa in an increasingly in increasing number of contacts namely men. afghanistan so you you you mentioned you can do this bit or bombing years ago but we did. face increasingly a number of failed bombing of health care facilities. whether it be intentionally. as a tactic of whether it be an intentionally into forego for our. u.s. authorities told us regarding could do this be taught. and this new modern warfare. which is disrespectful of humanitarian aid as neutral induction an independent type of aid together with what we are afraid of is the crimean any additional sort of humanitarian aid in the speech. by state authorities. and i think it's very important for us and therefore so i think it's of great food. that we were able to reach this u.n. resolution despite the fact that it's not yet operationalized that would be the next step for us as a community is ation a few many diana aid basically criminally being a humanitarian aid being provided to a group level a screaming or the bellas terrorist is a real burden to our capacity as organisation to deploy independent impassioned and neutral assistance where it's needed and this is also eroding somehow. neutrality an impression that we are seeking for and we are relying on it for own security. david i want to ask you when the united nations and the red cross headquarters in baghdad were destroyed just a few weeks apart in two thousand and three those events shocked the world today these attacks on aid groups generate far fewer headlines so as attacking a group like save the children gone from being unconscionable and unprecedented to being expected nowadays. i wouldn't say it's gone to being accepted at all and i think the reaction both in afghanistan and around the world to attack such as the one the other day on the save the children's remains strong however i think it really needs to be seen in the overall context of violence and violence against civilians around the world fifteen or fifteen years ago at the end of the cold war i think many people believe that the world was on the course to a better future that attacks on civilians that conflicts were going to be reduced sadly is the horrible tragedy in syria the conflict there the humanitarian disaster his show and that's not the case human capacity for violence and cruelty has not abated in fact in some cases and some areas the there's been a great deal increased so i think what we've seen is an overall increase in attacks and attacks against civilians and this was just mentioned often often abetted by by governments so i think it's it's an overall trend in afghanistan specifically i would note that in the year since two thousand and fourteen when u.s. and nato forces were withdrawn from combat every year since then the number of attacks on civilians have increased so it's except you ation there with the withdrawal of foreign forces didn't solve the problem actually appears to have made things worse so david in your opinion are there concrete steps that can be taken to reverse what some say see as a very disturbing trend. well i think the u.n. resolution you mentioned and the willingness of governments to actually enforce it could help during this last ten to fifteen years a number of governments around the world the government of pakistan for example the government of china the government of egypt and others have spoken out very strongly against the activities international n.g.o.s and portrayed them as enemies of the country enemies of the people so i think that change in a number of countries to see n.g.o.s as the enemy is part of the overall climate that some of these attacks flourish and who so i think working with those governments to reclaim that neutral space that aid in jail agencies have around the world is very important and i hope the u.n. resolution and the work of those who supported the successful model how much of a threat to groups like yours face from non-state actors versus how much for threat they face from state actors these days. so i think you are you're asking an important question there and it's in the discussion as well of course in the last years in the last experience we have seen them more armed with the emerging global lead than in the previous six decades and this is of course making our work as a neutral independent and communitarian after more complicated because it needs it means that we will have to have dialogue with more parties to the conflict it's a complex situation that we're working in south than as well as very many other places in the world and i think it's important as well for across the size get to emphasize that this is not a new phenomenon for the i.c.c. we have been working in one conflict areas for more than one hundred fifty years and being you know in on the front line it's always talent thing it always has been but i think what we have seen also here in south sudan is that the front lines are now going much closer to where the civilians are actually living this means that we also have to be very much closer to the. to the front lines because that's where we are to give humanitarian aid to the civilian population of south sudan france was one of the aspects of all this that international humanitarian law simply being disregarded more by by governments and by non-state actors. i think some of it is it's. true that you agree with my colleague from i.c.r.c. that it's not a new trend but what we have witnessed lately recently is a disrespect or an increasing disrespect you know an interesting number of context of yourself therefore the un resolution is very important but the un resolution twenty two it is you got such is meaningless it's not and forced by states. so translated into domestic load on translating into one on your own and so on so what we are feeling is that this resolution is just stay at this symbolic level not being operationalized. but just did it definitely what we see in your men afghanistan syria and so many complexities of increasing disregard by states for yourself into going to the why are the non-state actor are obviously. very much behind a number of violent attack of different nature looting of. key images also or capacity as you meant anyone to be able to engage with as non-state actor or in order to do so we stayed. are. going to getting a ration conduct a reasonable ration for instance need to acknowledge that it's also important for own security and no capacity to a neutral and activity in some context to engage with those non-state actors or whether they be loved as a terrorist group criminal group once you know it's it's very important for on security that we are able and the road to engage with those different non-state actors and a way that one of the context. limit of context of it's an increasing complexity is an increasing number of group including number of complex ideology behind. the give us a to engage with a different group for humanitarian organisation is a. kitchen it might be one of the things i hear from lots of aid workers who work in conflict zones is that increasingly they have to take more measures for their security for their colleagues security that means they have to. go around with a much lower profile in many cases they can't wear the logos of the groups that they're working with which would make them more identifiable. does something like that mean that these groups might be regarded with more suspicion by locals because they think that these groups might have something to hide does that make the work even more difficult and more perilous. i think i can only speak for the international red cross and our or our use of the emblem which is basically our protection and that's also very important for us emphasized in this context that we are as a neutral independent and humanitarian actor we are completely dependent on our emblem we need our emblem for people to understand who we are why they are there and we need to be transparent when we speak to. different parts of the conflict and i was saying of course this work is more extensive now we have to have dialogue with more parties of more conflict because of the complexity of the friends roxanne's inside the armed with the trust that emblem is our definite protection and we do again that protection by talking about international humanitarian law and training armed groups as well as civilian population about the importance of having an affair like i said at the press and so that we are able to give neutral and communitarian assistance this is why we are here and that is what we are continuing to doing in the context also of the south sudan david from your vantage point what you what more can the international community do to protect humanitarian organizations. well first to actually apply the u.n. security council resolution as as the previous as previous speaker mentioned. but beyond that i think that. making the case both to state actors and to non-state actors of the importance of protecting aid workers rather than using them as objects is something and yes it has been a problem for for many years it's not a new problem but i do agree that it's getting worse and i think that. it's going to be a very difficult problem in the future i don't know if there's going to be. anything effective in the short term but maybe in the longer term outreach efforts can have some success francoise what do you think about that i mean what steps do you see that can be taken in order to ensure safety for aid groups and for workers. i think there's a main a sound a long run a definitely is a this operation is a sion of u.n. security council resolution twenty two eighty six but on a date with a. maze when we are actually confronted with a threat and. directing security area of operation it's ready to be able to stick to our principle and really to be able to translate those principles into operation which makes sense which are qualitative which are not on the bare feet on your neutral impartial and independent but are are so principled action principled operation things the question you raise about i don't if you gave in for instance and getting low profile i think this is a search. and talking on behalf of m.s.f. . it could be it would be a dangerous trend we have to really to to be able to enforce these logos accidentals or logos identification of our principle and so on and also to be very rarely stick to do a red line if operating in an area. means that we have to engage with non-state actors or for instance and we are not able to engage with those non-state actors or because they are not willing because we are not in deputy to do the proper network and so on if we are not able to have a dialogue and a negotiation process with any wiring but it will be state actor or non-state actor in a given context we should take and we did exist even in some in stand not to work in this area because only the main feed off of security is acceptance by the community and by the warring parties if we are not able to build that we are not in capacity to work so it's really for day to day negotiation if a negotiation is their luck and we have to take some time to this you can too. we do have to be a pretty mary i'm going to give you the last word here how do you balance all of this the risk versus the drive to save lives and what do you tell your colleagues operating there about how to go about doing their jobs in the most effective way thank you for that last word i think for for us here and i see i see south sudan we really saw the bravery of our south as a nice colleagues after what happened with our staff members here. absolutely one hundred percent impressed by the fact that they are willing to go back to the work that they have with i.c.r.c. only the day after this happened of course also an attack on an aid organization any aid organization is also an attack on the people that we are desperately trying to help the humanitarian needs here in south sudan are dire people absolutely still need help from a humanitarian aid organizations and yeah definitely i would i think it's also important to remember that the vast majority of aid workers killed on a global scale are rested and safa local stuff from the countries that they are from and from the i can't the point of view we did not separate between the need for an international staff we have the same security will spread the body and our main objective is to continue the dialogue with the different parties of the conflicts and absolutely make them understand our role as a neutral human terry and independence actor. we'll have to leave it there for now thanks so much to our guests francois delphos in geneva from juba in south sudan mahdi mort's that and david said me from washington d.c. and thank you too for watching you can see the program again any time by visiting our website al-jazeera dot com and for further discussion go to our facebook page that's facebook dot com forward slash a.j. inside story you can also join the conversation on twitter our handle is at a.j. inside story from rome and the whole team here five for now. good looks the arrival of refugees is debated in european parliament's. but the journey itself is little understood. to syrians document the 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