
Lesa Scholl
4 February 2025
Aid workers face an increased risk of threats and incidents of violence, as well as exposure to trauma and chronic stress that can affect their ability to save lives, according to recent research.
They spend their lives saving others, but it’s easy to forget that aid workers themselves are among the constantly rising number of vulnerable and displaced people.
Research in the Christian Journal for Global Health examines moral injury and post-traumatic stress disorder in aid workers in an attempt to develop strategies, training and support systems for international aid and missionary teams.
Moral injury can occur when a person witnesses an event or is compelled to act in a way that conflicts with their moral beliefs. It can have long-lasting emotional and psychological impact on mental well-being.
An earlier study from Harvard Medical School, Columbia University and the United Nations reported an increase in the emotional burden on aid workers since the beginning of the 21st century.
The research found that organisational aspects of humanitarian work—such as the logistics of receiving and distributing aid—created more stress and poor mental health than incidence of trauma.
In protracted crises, where resources were diminished, this risk was found to be more prevalent.
Read more: ‘Why are they not helping?’ Heartbreak as Australian support for Sudan lags
Caritas Emergency Lead Sally Thomas said that in Gaza 100 per cent of the aid workers had been displaced multiple times and experience trauma every day, but they continue to turn up however they can.
Similarly in Ukraine, she noted the drive and motivation of the people on the ground. “The staff is still really, really dedicated in doing as much as they can because it’s for their own communities,” she said.
Agencies agreed that local partnerships were critical in maintaining momentum in protracted crises because the workers had shared experience with the communities they were trying to help.
Churches of Christ Overseas Aid International Partnerships Manager Colin Scott said that that many of COCOA’s partners in African nations have been refugees themselves, which gave them compassion toward new refugees.
“They are very ready to share what little they have with people from other places,” he said.
Read more: PNG refugees homeless by Christmas
A sense of God’s presence and purpose enabled many aid workers to keep going in situations where the flow of broken bodies and lives seems never ending.
World Vision chief executive Daniel Wordsworth said that one of the hardest things to realise from the outside is that God lives in those places and He visits us here.
“God’s home is in the prison cell. God’s home is in a village being burned down in Burma. God’s home is in the refugee camp in Papua New Guinea,” he said.
“There’s no promise that we’ll see the finish line…but there is a promise that we’ll at least be accompanying God on that journey.”
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