How a suicide bomb attack changed the lives of UN aid workers

On 19 August 2003, the United Nations office in Baghdad was targeted in a suicide bomb attack. The head of the UN mission, Sergio Viera de Mello, was killed, along with 21 others, most of them staff. The attack changed the way the UN carries out humanitarian operations. It also changed the lives of dozens of UN aid workers personally affected by the blast.

In August 2003, Laura Dolci was a new mother. The Italian and her husband Jean-Selim Kanaan, both aged 33, were spending three weeks at home in Geneva, getting to know their baby son Matthia.

Laura and Jean-Selim, UN aid workers, had met a few years earlier in Bosnia. They were, Laura remembers, "fiercely in love - with our work, and with each other".

Postings to Kosovo, New York, and Geneva followed. So too did marriage and parenthood, and a new posting to Iraq for Jean-Selim.

Two days before the 2003 bombing, Laura took Jean-Selim to Geneva airport, to re-join the UN mission at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad. He arrived the following day, welcomed by colleagues with champagne, to congratulate him on the birth of his son. Jean-Selim proudly showed off photographs of Matthia.

Later, on 19 August, Canadian UN staff member Jason Pronyk arrived at the Canal Hotel for a meeting on post conflict recovery. "It was 54C (129F) that morning," he remembers.

That same afternoon, Elpida Rouka, a Greek national who had been working for the UN's oil for food programme in Iraq, arrived in Baghdad from the north of the country and went to her office in the Canal Hotel. That day "was supposed to be our last day in Iraq," she says.

Then, at around 16:30 local time, a suicide bomber drove a truck packed with explosives into the UN compound.

"I recall hearing a tremendous explosion," says Jason. "Drifting in and out of consciousness, being carried out of the building on my door. The next memory of opening my eyes was after the second brain surgery."

Elpida escaped with only minor physical injuries. She witnessed the chaos as people tried to rescue those trapped in the rubble. "I was dazed and confused; we didn't have forklifts to lift the debris. It was mayhem."

Back in Geneva, Laura was out walking with a restless Matthia in the pram. When she got home, the news from Baghdad was flashing on her computer.

"I immediately tried to call [Jean-Selim]," she says. "But after two or three attempts there was this constant sort of beep sound, and at that point I knew he was dead.

"I had taken him to the airport, together with our child… it took me many years to be able to use the same elevator in the airport where I last kissed him."

It was not the first time humanitarian workers had been attacked. For example in 1996 six Red Cross medical delegates were murdered inside their field hospital in Chechnya.

But such a direct, blatant attack on the UN's headquarters, with the famous blue flag clearly flying above it, shook the foundations of the UN's own perception of itself.

Elpida says she was a "totally bright eyed and bushy tailed" 24-year-old. "Thinking the UN blue flag was untouchable."

Laura adds: "The 19th of August was a day where we lost that innocence."

Since 2003 there have been more attacks on the UN, and on other aid agencies. In 2007, 10 UN workers died when a car bomb targeted UN buildings in Algiers. In 2011, 18 people were killed when the UN headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria, was attacked.

In 2022 there were 235 attacks on aid workers, according to the Aid Worker Security Database, and 116 were killed.

Abby Stoddard, who works compiling the database, says the reasons for such deliberate attacks are increasingly complex.

"It can be by armed groups that have a political agenda," she explains. "Or criminal gangs, and very often there is collusion between those two, and aid groups can be very attractive targets for them. They have resources and vehicles that can be looted. And they can also be kidnapped for ransom or for propaganda purposes."

In some instances, aid agencies are targeted as a way to destabilise an already fragile country, and to provide space for a particular armed group to take control. This may have been the motivation in Baghdad in 2003.

"By controlling or blocking or diverting aid," says Ms Stoddard, "armed groups can destabilise the government, and exercise control over territories and populations".

The events of August 2003 led to much tighter security for aid workers; in 2005 the UN set up the Department for Safety and Security, to support all UN agencies.

The changed working conditions don't always sit comfortably. T-walls (tall reinforced concrete blocks), sandbagged compounds and protective gear have become the norm, Elpida says.

Meanwhile the UN struggles, with reduced budgets, to bring aid to 250 million people in 69 countries - ten times more than at the time of the Canal Hotel bombing, UN Secretary General António Guterres points out.

Even with the extra security, there are no guarantees. In 2017, the most recent year for which the comparison was made, the fatality rate for aid workers, says Abby Stoddard, was higher than it was for UN peacekeepers.

Mr Guterres today describes humanitarian work as being "under attack" from both deliberate violence and disinformation campaigns.

Now, every August, the UN marks World Humanitarian Day, dedicated to all those who have been killed working for aid agencies.

Despite their own personal tragedies, and the increased risks, Elpida, Jason, and Laura still work for the UN.

In a way, they, together with Jean-Selim, who was Egyptian and French, embody the spirit of the UN Charter, which promises: "We the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights."

Jason says he is thankful to be alive, and sees that day two decades ago as "a reminder of the importance of multilateralism - to look outward".

Elpida, who has struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder, will use the day to remember "our oath of office to the UN Charter".

Laura chose to stay with the UN to provide "continuity with what we were as a young family". She doesn't believe the attacks on aid workers will deter them.

"There is this line up of young people, with motivation," she says. "Despite the news, they're ready. They're packing their bags to go. They're putting their best years, their youth, their aspiration at the service of others."