In 2008, 260 humanitarian aid workers were killed, kidnapped or seriously injured in violent attacks. This toll is the highest of the 12 years that our study has tracked these incidents. The absolute number of attacks against aid workers has risen steeply over the past three years, with an annual average almost three times higher than the previous nine years. Relative rates of attacks per numbers of aid workers in the field have also increased — by 61%. The 2008 fatality rate for international aid workers exceeds that of UN peacekeeping troops. This HPG Policy Brief updates the findings from the 2006 report Providing Aid in Insecure Environments: Trends in Policy and Operations. Its analysis follows on from that report, providing the global incident data for the last three years. It identifies new trends and highlights issues in the three most violent contexts for aid workers at present: Sudan (Darfur), Afghanistan, and Somalia.