World Humanitarian Day

On August 19, 2003, a bomb attack on the United Nations at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, Iraq, killed 22 humanitarian aid workers, including the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights. Five years later, in December 2008 the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution designating August 19th as World Humanitarian Day (WHD) to honor and remember those who lost their lives during their service, and to promote awareness about worldwide humanitarian activities.

"There is no escaping our obligations: our moral obligations as a wise leader and good neighbor in the interdependent community of free nations – our economic obligations as the wealthiest people in a world of largely poor people, as a nation no longer dependent upon the loans from abroad that once helped us develop our own economy – and our political obligations as the single largest counter to the adversaries of freedom." – John F. Kennedy, Special Message to the Congress on Foreign Aid, March 22, 1961

President John F. Kennedy was responsible for identifying the need to have a single agency responsible for administering aid and promoting social and economic development of foreign countries, and on November 3, 1961 the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was born. In 1961, President Kennedy signed the Foreign Assistance Act* into law. 22 U.S.C. 2151 provides the authority and general rules for the conduct of United States Government foreign assistance grant activities and programs.

Article Sources and Additional Resources

• United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
• Read more about the history of World Humanitarian Day on the United Nations website.
• Learn how the Center's for Disease Control (CDC) works to build public health capacity globally during and after humanitarian emergencies.
• ForeignAssistance.gov is the U.S. Government’s flagship website for making U.S. foreign assistance data available to the public.

*This links to a Statute Compilation, which is a compilation of the public law, as amended, and is an unofficial document and should not be cited as legal evidence of the law. Learn more.