Paper details
| Paper authors | Dr Rachel Coghlan, Dr Ola Ziara |
| In panel on | Humanitarian Aid Workers: Ethics, Altruism, and Best Practices |
| Paper presenter(s) will be presenting |
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Abstract
Global humanitarian leaders have for months called the “nightmare” in Gaza the worst crisis they have ever seen. In June 2025, the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross told the BBC that the situation is “surpassing any acceptable, legal, moral, and humane standard...we are watching a people entirely stripped of its human dignity”.
In January, UN human rights experts wrote “The heroic actions of Palestinian medical colleagues in Gaza, teach us what it means to have taken the medical oath.” These experts were referring to the moral courage, leadership and superogatory acts of healthcare colleagues who continue to care in Gaza, despite extraordinary personal risks, and through family separations, forced displacements, a destroyed healthcare system, growing famine, and immense grief. Such principled action could also be said of civil defence personnel, journalists, schoolteachers, university lecturers, soup kitchen volunteers, and colourful clowns who buoy the spirits of children.
Through sharing personal vignettes collected from Palestinian colleagues, this discussion will explore the endurance and ethics of local humanitarians in Gaza. What drives them to carry out their duties against the odds of death? How do they continue narrating live their stories when met with silence or misinformation from the world? What pushes students to keep studying and earning degrees? How do healthcare workers navigate saving lives when the chances of dying from infection, lack of medicines, hunger and further strikes are so high? Who cares for them?
It is the actions and motivations of those in Gaza, carried out in extremis, that exemplify what being humanitarian – and human - means. These actions should be written into the books of humanitarian and health ethics around the world.
