Stone died and two other monitors were injured on Sunday after an explosion damaged a mission vehicle near Pryshyb in eastern Ukraine. The Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) is an unarmed civilian mission tasked with working to help normalize and stabilize the situation in eastern Ukraine. Stone was there as part of the mission on behalf of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), a worldwide security-oriented group.

Fighting continues between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian armed forces in eastern Ukraine, according to OSCE Special Monitoring Mission Chief Monitor ErtugrulApakan said Monday. It is the first time a member of an SMM patrol has been killed while on duty.

SMM was sent to Ukraine to see who is violating the Minsk Agreement, an agreement to halt the war in the Donbass region of Ukraine. It was signed after extensive talks in Minsk, Belarus under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). Stone’s job was to help and treat if somebody was injured.

According to Joseph’s brother, Matthew Stone, Joseph liked going to those places where he could make a difference. He liked going where people needed him — that’s just who he was. He worked in Afghanistan for a while and went to Liberia for about a year, and after that he spent some time in Iraq. Matthew said his brother got his final job with the Global Rescue Company and worked in Ukraine with the OSCE monitoring mission. Joseph said he has met a lot of nice people there and felt bad for them.

As CNN reported, Matthew describes his brother as a "secular activist" and a "humanist" and had a great passion for thinkers in the secularist and atheist traditions. He was a "voracious reader" of Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Lawrence Krauss, and Maajid Nahwaz. "The world," Matthew said of his brother, "is a lot worse off without him."

Photo Credits: Nile TV International