Ahead of donning a beige WFP vest and boots to face hurricanes, wars and refugee camps, the Portuguese scientist worked with satellite imagery and cartography, creating maps to support humanitarian missions, until he realised he didn’t want to stay behind a computer screen.

On the occasion of World Humanitarian Day, marked annually on 19 August, Mr. Matos shared his story with UN News.

From hurricanes to war

“At a certain point, it just wasn’t enough,” he recalled about his space engineering job. “I didn’t want to be making maps for other people to go and do humanitarian responses. I want to take those maps and be the one to do the responding.”

That’s exactly what he did. At WFP, he first developed maps on the ground and then went on to coordinate the agency’s emergency operations.

Since then, he has visited dozens of countries often at the epicentre of crises, from Hurricane Idai in Mozambique to the outbreak of war in Ukraine.

In 2018, Pedro Matos looks at the Kutupalong refugee camp where Rohingya refugees live. (file)

‘Like moving an entire government’

Coordinating in an emergency response is like “moving an entire government”, where each UN agency represents a “ministry” and the response only works when everyone comes together over the four essential areas in a crisis response: food, shelter, water and health.

Having just returned from a mission in Bangladesh, he described efforts to respond at Cox’s Bazar, the world’s largest refugee camp and home to 700,000 people who fled violence in Myanmar.

“We’ve been able to provide better conditions for people to live in this limbo with a little more comfort,” he said, also remembering his visit there in 2018 at the height of the crisis.

At the time, “a million people crossed the border in a month.” Today, although they remain in “limbo”, he pointed to improvements such as more monsoon-resistant homes and roads, gas stoves and reforestation.

Pedro Matos on board a humanitarian aid flight after Cyclone Idai in Mozambique. (file)

Heart-shredding challenges and profound rewards

The job has meant both challenges and rewards.

“We’ve also had a few instances where we’ve been kidnapped, or come under fire, but it’s not the things that happen to us that impact us the most,” he said. “It’s the things that happen to others that have the most impact.”

Hurricane Idai in Mozambique was a Category 5 hurricane that hit Beira in 2019 was one of the biggest and most intense crisis, but also most rewarding, he said.

“There’s this mix of something that was very intense and hard because we couldn’t reach everyone, but at the same time, the fact was that there were many people – tens or hundreds of thousands of people – who would have died if we hadn’t been there,” he said. “That was the most impactful response in my 17 years at the United Nations.”

When he was in Yemen, “we were bombed 20 times a day” in the capital, Sana’a, he said, adding that “there’s a strange normalcy” that develops.

“We find ourselves saying things like, ‘no, that wasn’t very far; it was only 500 metres from here,’” he said. “It’s something I never thought I’d think or say before doing this work.”

When reaching central Ukraine several weeks after Russia’s full-scale invasion in early 2022, he called the situation “very intense”. Within a week, he and his colleagues began distributing money to people coming from the frontlines.

We couldn’t reach everyone, but there were tens or hundreds of thousands of people who would have died if we hadn’t been there.

“When we interviewed people and asked them what they were doing with the money we gave them, it was very gratifying,” he said. “It was beautiful.”

Those who had been wounded in the war were using the money to buy painkillers. Others used it to pay for gas to escape the frontlines. One mother had been able to buy her daughter a scoop of ice cream for the first time since the war began.

“Her daughter was delighted,” he said. “There are very rewarding moments.”

Feeding millions every day

“We all think we know what the humanitarian or aid sector is,” Mr. Matos explained, adding that the scale during a crisis is much, much larger.

“I thought we’d be rehabilitating schools, feeding 100 people,” he continued. “I never imagined I’d be feeding 13 million people a day in Yemen. The scale is absolutely incredible.”

However, humanitarian work is often seen as a separate job, he said. Almost every profession that exists in private and government sectors also exists in an aid landscape, from lawyers, those who work in procurement, like in supermarkets, and human resources.

“I basically do the same work as social workers or firefighters,” he said. “They do it here every day, and I do it elsewhere. But, our work is in the same field and very similar.”

A toddler eats a food supplement, as part of WFP’s nutrition programme, in Mokha, Taiz, in Yemen.

The value of a Nobel Prize

WFP was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2020, a recognition that Mr. Matos received with humility.

“Our work is largely invisible, despite feeding 120 million people every day,” he said. “It gave us a platform to raise awareness about crises like Congo, Myanmar, Sudan and Gaza, which often go unnoticed.”

Our work is largely invisible, despite feeding 120 million people every day.

He said his job is to give voice to the voiceless when crises fade from news headlines. Despite the difficulties and risks across his career, Mr. Matos has no doubt about the most important lesson he learned.

“People are essentially good,” he said. “When faced with the imminence of tragedy, people are fundamentally good and want to help others, even if that other person is very different. It was good to realise this because it’s not always obvious when we’re far from these crises.”

“The risk of starvation is everywhere in Gaza,” UN Human Rights Office spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan told reporters in Geneva.

“This is a direct result of the Israeli government’s policy of blocking humanitarian aid,” he said.

Mr. Al-Kheetan insisted that in the past few weeks, Israeli authorities have only allowed aid to enter in quantities that remain “far below what would be required to avert widespread starvation”.

The UN said on Monday that hunger-related deaths continue to be reported in the Strip, including among children.

More people displaced

As the Israeli army intensified its attacks in the north of the enclave, it has continued to issue displacement orders for Palestinians, Mr. Al-Kheetan said.

He noted that Gazans have been told to move to the Al-Mawasi area, despite continuing airstrikes and disastrous conditions there.

“Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced to Al-Mawasi have little or no access to essential services and supplies, including food, water, electricity and tents,” he warned.

Deadly pursuit of aid

The OHCHR spokesperson stressed that reaching humanitarian aid “can be a deadly pursuit” with latest data indicating that 1,857 Palestinians were killed while seeking food from 27 May, when the US and Israel-backed militarized aid distribution scheme known as the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation started its operations.

Out of that number, he said that 1,021 were killed in the vicinity of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites and 836 on the routes of supply trucks.

“Most of these killings appear to have been committed by the Israeli military,” Mr. Al-Kheetan said.

Asked how the situation could get even worse, Jens Laerke, the spokesperson for the UN humanitarian affairs coordination office (OCHA), said that “it has already gotten worse”, insisting on the devastating effects of the Israeli ban on the entry of shelter materials into the enclave.

While the Israeli authorities recently announced that they would lift the ban on shelter supplies, Mr. Laerke said that “the United Nations and our partners have as of last night not been able to bring in shelter materials following the Israeli announcement.”

“There’s a set of impediments that still needs to be addressed, including Israeli customs clearance,” he added.

Need for shelter

The UN said on Monday that according to partners’ estimations at least 1.35 million people in Gaza need emergency shelter.

Aid agencies have warned that tents being used in Gaza are worn out from prolonged sun exposure and frequent displacement.

Asked about the reasons given for the ban on shelter items, Mr. Laerke explained that in a conflict, some shelter items such as tentpoles can fall under the “dual-use regime” as they could be used for both civilian and military purposes.

“Shelter has been banned entry for about five months and in that period over 700,000 people have been displaced or re-displaced,” he said.

People forced to flee time and again often have to leave behind the tents that they have been provided, Mr. Laerke explained, which creates a challenge for aid workers “trying to respond to people where they are”.

The looming expansion of Israel’s military activities in Gaza City is another major concern for UN humanitarians, as it would again push thousands of people into a severely overcrowded area in the south of the Strip.

Asked about the impact of Israel’s plans to occupy Gaza City, Mr. Al-Kheetan underscored a “huge risk” for civilians.

“There are risks of mass displacement… more killings and more misery that we have already seen in the Gaza Strip,” he warned. “Among those who will be affected are the most vulnerable, people with disabilities, the injured, the children, women”, he concluded.

Response to prison video

In other developments, the human rights spokesman said that video footage showing Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir berating and taunting Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouthi inside an Israeli jail was “unacceptable.”

He said the minister’s behaviour and the publication of the images constitute an attack on Mr. Barghouthi’s dignity.

He added that international law requires that all detainees be treated humanely, with dignity, and that their human rights be respected and protected.

“Such conduct by the minister responsible for the Israeli Prison Service may encourage violence against Palestinian detainees, enabling human rights violations in Israeli detention facilities,” he said

The first eight months of 2025 show no sign of a reversal of this disturbing trend, with 265 humanitarian workers killed as of 14 August, according to figures released on World Humanitarian Day.

Attacks on humanitarian workers, assets and operations violate international law and undermine the lifelines that sustain millions of people trapped in war and disaster zones.  

“Even one attack against a humanitarian colleague is an attack on all of us and on the people we serve,” said Tom Fletcher, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), speaking in Geneva.

At Headquarters in New York City, the UN hosted a commemoration ceremony for the victims of the bombing of the United Nations headquarters its office in Baghdad in 2003, which cost the lives of 22 people. Some of the survivors attended the event.

Protect aid workers

“Humanitarians carry hope where there is despair,” said Mr. Fletcher at the World Humanitarian Day 2025 Commemoration Ceremony in Geneva.  

“They bring humanity where there is inhumanity.”  

Yet, humanitarian workers are under attack.  

In 2024, most of the aid workers killed were national staff serving their communities and were attacked in the line of duty or in their homes.  

Since October 2023, 520 aid workers, mostly staff with UN Palestine refugee agency UNRWA, have been killed in Gaza — the deadliest place for humanitarians for the second year running.  

OCHA demanded that Member States protect civilians and aid workers, and hold perpetrators accountable.

Despite the dangers, “humanitarians will not retreat”, said Mr. Fletcher.

Humanitarians in the Middle East  

Across the Middle East, civilians, including humanitarian workers, “are being killed, injured, and attacked in shocking numbers,” said the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinators in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), Syria, Yemen and Lebanon in a joint statement this Tuesday.  

Since August 2024, at least 446 humanitarian workers have been killed, wounded, kidnapped or detained in these locations. “The world is failing humanitarian workers and the people they serve,” the statement read.  

Renewing their call for the respect of international humanitarian and human right laws, the officials called on the international community to “protect those who protect humanity.”