Every year on 28 April, we stop, we remember, we recommit.
This year, on International Workers’ Memorial Day, our collective grief is fresh and the urgency for change is acute. In the past twelve months, transport workers have been killed on runways, crushed by cargo, run over at picket lines, caught in the crossfire of wars they did not start – with many more suffering harms that still go uncounted: the stress, exhaustion, isolation and fear that too many carry alone.
We represent 16.6 million transport workers across more than 150 countries. We honour every one of them.
War and its human cost
In 2025 alone, armed conflicts killed more than 240,000 people globally – in Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo and beyond, all theatres of mass civilian death. In 2026, the Middle East has become the epicentre of renewed devastation. Since the US/Israel-Iran war began on 28 February 2026, over 3,600 people have been killed in Iran – more than 1,700 of them civilians. In Lebanon, where Israeli strikes resumed in March 2026, at least 2,450 people have been killed and over 1 million displaced. In Venezuela, a US attack in January resulted in the deaths of military personnel and civilians, with the blockade further driving hardship for workers and their families. (....)