GENEVA β More aid workers, health care staffers, delivery personnel and other humanitarians have been killed in 2024 than in any other single year, the United Nations reported Friday.
Bloodshed in the Middle East is the single biggest cause of the 281 deaths among humanitarians globally this year, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
"Before the year is even over, 2024 has become the deadliest on record for humanitarian personnel worldwide," OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke said.
He told reporters in Geneva the figure surpassed the previous record of 280 deaths for the whole of last year.
A Red Cross vehicle carrying Israeli hostages drives by Nov. 25, 2023, at the Gaza Strip crossing into Egypt in Rafah.
Humanitarians "are working courageously and selflessly in places like Gaza, Sudan, Lebanon, Ukraine and so on. They show the best humanity has to offer, and they are getting killed in return β in record numbers," he said.
"These numbers will send shock waves around the humanitarian community, especially on the front lines of the response," he added.
The U.N. said the figures come from the Aid Worker Security Database, a U.S.-funded project run by a Britain-based group called Humanitarian Outcomes.
A total of 268 of the humanitarians killed β including from non-U.N. organizations like the Red Cross and Red Crescent β were national staff, while 13 were international staff.
About 230 aid workers have been killed in occupied Palestinian areas, the database showed Friday. It did not break out whether that was Gaza or the West Bank.
Laerke said the threats to aid workers "extend beyond Gaza, with high levels of violence, kidnappings injuries, harassment and arbitrary detention" reported in Afghanistan, Congo, South Sudan, Sudan, Ukraine, Yemen and elsewhere.
Smoke and flames erupt from a building hit by an Israeli airstrike Friday in Chiyah, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon.
Israeli airstrikes killed a hospital director at his home in northeastern Lebanon and six others, while at least five paramedics were killed by Israeli strikes in the country's south on Friday, Lebanon's Health Ministry said.
The United Nations reported heavy clashes between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon.
Four Italian peacekeepers were lightly wounded when a rocket hit their base, the U.N. said.
U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said the rockets were likely launched by Hezbollah militants or by affiliated groups Friday, impacting a bunker and a logistics area in the southwest headquarters at Chamaa.
One of the structures that was hit caught fire, and the blaze was swiftly put out by U.N. staff, he said.
Smoke rises Friday after an Israeli airstrike on Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon.
In Gaza, Israeli strikes hit Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the few hospitals still partially operating in the northernmost part of the territory, wounding nine medical staff and damaging its generator and oxygen systems, the hospital director said Friday.
Hossam Abu Safiya said strikes before dawn Friday hit the entrance of the emergency unit as well as in the hospital courtyard. He said six staff were wounded, including two critically. Friday night, he said an armed drone hit the entrance again, wounding three staffers.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Abu Safiya said the strikes caused damage to the functioning of the generator and disrupted oxygen supplies. The hospital is treating 85 wounded, 14 children in the pediatric ward and four newborns in the neonatal unit, he said.
During the past month, Kamal Adwan Hospital has been hit several times, was put under siege and was raided by Israeli troops, who are waging a heavy offensive in the nearby Jabaliya refugee camp and towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya.
Palestinian children line up for donated food Friday in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip.
OCHA said 333 humanitarians have been killed since the latest conflict between Israel and the militant Hamas group erupted when the militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250.
A full-blown war between Israel and Hezbollah erupted in September after almost a year of lower-intensity conflict. More than 3,640 people have been killed in Lebanon and 15,350 wounded, the majority following Israelβs escalation and ground invasion, the Health Ministry said Friday.
The death toll in the Gaza Strip from the 13-month-old war has surpassed 44,000, local health officials said Thursday. The Gaza Health Ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count, but it has said that more than half of the fatalities are women and children.
Non-mortgage debt balances are declining in 2024
Non-mortgage debt balances are declining in 2024
Updated
With the notable exception of mortgages, consumer debts are declining in 2024. This reverses a trend of larger borrowing balances among American consumers that goes back to the Great Recession.
Non-mortgage debt includes the total balance of a consumer's loans and lines of credit when their first and second mortgages are removed from consideration. That's obviously a large carve-out: Mortgage balances exceed $250,000 on average in 2024, and collectively make up about two-thirds of the overall consumer loan balance of around $17 trillion, according to Experian data.
But focusing on non-mortgage debt allows analysts and others to zoom in on the parts of a consumer's financial life that change more often and apply to a broader cross section of the population. Only 40% of consumers are paying off a mortgage or other type of home loan in most given years, but around 85% have at least one credit card, and more than 62% have at least one auto loan.
Average Debt Balances, Excluding Mortgages, Fell in 2024
Updated
In the face of a period of relatively higher rates of inflation, nationwide average loan balances (excluding mortgages) fell by 1.1% from the second quarter (Q2) of 2023 to Q2 2024, according to Experian data. That may not seem like much of a decline, but it marks a major reversal in consumer debt trends.
The average non-mortgage debt balance of $23,066 is still significantly larger than the $20,908 average in 2020. But in the face of 23% credit card APRs and near $50,000 average sticker prices for new automobiles, any reversal of the relentless upward trajectory of consumer balances is noteworthy.
Average Non-Mortgage Debts Not Equally Distributed
Updated
Looking at where non-mortgage balances are falling the most, some broad patterns emerge. While some regions saw their balances decline, states where inflationary costs were steeper saw less, if any, decline.
Only a handful of states, mostly in the Western region of the U.S., saw their average non-mortgage balances continue to increase this year, albeit slightly. The state where non-mortgage debt grew the most was Alaska, by 1.3% to $24,643 in 2024.
Meanwhile, states in the Northeast saw their average balances decline the most, broadly speaking. And although Washington, D.C., isn't a state, it leads the nation in declining non-mortgage debt. Average balances there fell by 4.5% in 2024, to $24,258. Adjacent Maryland was runner-up with a 3.8% decline in average non-mortgage debt.
Canceled Debts Behind the Reversal
A main driver behind the cresting levels of non-mortgage debts is student loan cancellation. Despite the halting stops and starts in student loan payment and programs impacting student loan borrowers from 2020, some federally funded student loans have been canceled by the Department of Education. The sum total of these loan cancellations exceeded $175 billion as of fall 2024, according to the department.
Select Consumer Non-Mortgage Debt Component Averages, 2019-2024
Updated
Indeed, average student loan balances peaked in 2021 and 2022 at roughly $39,400 before falling by more than $1,000 in 2023, when student loan cancellations started climbing and some borrowers decided to repay their student loan balances prior to interest accruing once again in September 2023. And now that student loan paymentsβand interestβhave resumed, student loan balances are rising again for those still with student loan debt.
But even with student loan repayment resumed, forgiveness sums are massive, and they've reached nearly 5 million student loan borrowers so far, roughly 10% of all student loan borrowers in the U.S., according to the Department of Education. In effect, that means that while student loan averages remain statistically elevated versus 2023, so many borrowers being removed from the pool of student loan borrowers entirely has contributed to a dip in overall non-mortgage balances.
There are also signs of other types of consumer debt, like personal loan balances, plateauing in 2024. So although auto and credit card debts get an outsized amount of coverage in the financial media, not all types of debt have increased so sharply, if at all.
The Bottom Line
Non-mortgage debts have declined in 2024, largely due to the cancellation of around $175 billion of student loan debt since 2021. Although those cancellations were focused on a particular set of consumers, the size of the cancellations was large enough to lower overall non-mortgage debts for the first time in at least 15 years, according to Experian data.
This story was produced by Experian and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
