The theme of this year's World Humanitarian Day, an occasion dedicated to humanitarian aid workers, is female humanitarians. The Turkish Red Crescent, an international charity based in Turkey, prides itself on the number of women humanitarians it has recruited. Red Crescent President Kerem Kınık said they had 3,104 female workers, roughly 45% of the total number of employees and are among the leading humanitarian organizations in the world in the number of female employees. "I am grateful to our female employees and volunteers who empowered our humanitarian aid efforts for 151 years," Kınık said.
Kınık said they wanted to increase the number of women humanitarians to at least 50% from 45% in the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies Europe where he served as vice president. He pointed out that the proportion of female executives in the federation was only 17% and this needed to be increased. "Women, with their resilience, will certainly have better results in the resolution of many problems," Kınık said.
World Humanitarian Day originally marks the day of a terrorist attack in Iraq in 2003 that killed 22 people including Sergio Vieira de Mello, the United Nations' top representative in Iraq. This year's theme is also meant to highlight the efforts of women humanitarian workers across the world. Some 250,000 aid workers in the world are women, a number which corresponds to more than 40% of the humanitarian workforce, according to the United Nations.