Food crises in Eritrea and North Korea, ongoing fighting in the Lake Chad Basin nations of Chad, Cameroon and Niger, and floods in Bangladesh were among the most under-reported humanitarian crises in 2016, according to aid organisation CARE International.
The top 10 list also includes food crises in Madagascar and Papua New Guinea as well as conflicts in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and Sudan. The vast majority of the top 10 under-reported crises are taking place in African nations.
The list was compiled based on an analysis of more than 30 natural disasters and ongoing conflicts that each affected at least a million people and looked at how often they were mentioned in news articles. More than 250,000 online news sources in several languages were monitored for the report.
Number one on the list was the food crisis in Eritrea (only mentioned in 91 articles) followed by the conflict in Burundi (189) and the food crisis in Madagascar (243).
Philippe Guiton, CARE International’s humanitarian and operations director, said that the report aimed to “shine the spotlight on those humanitarian crises that have been neglected or eclipsed by others grabbing the world’s attention”.
He said that the fact politicians “prefer to focus their attention on the most visible emergencies to show their constituencies they are acting” meant that, as a consequence, “many of the humanitarian crises in this report are not simply forgotten, they are wilfully ignored and neglected by world leaders”.
Noting what it called the “CNN effect” – the role media attention plays in encouraging people to engage and donate with regard to humanitarian crises, the report said that the lack of access for journalists to countries like Eritrea and North Korea was a factor in the lack of coverage as were the “years of massive budget cuts” in traditional media.
The report calls for a range of actions to address the situation including the reform of the UN Security Council so that it can “effectively stop atrocities around the world”, for world leaders to stop making humanitarian aid funding decisions based on political interests, and for “much stronger monitoring and accountability mechanisms” to hold those breaching international laws protecting civilians, humanitarian workers and supplies to account.
It also says that while the “‘CNN effect’ might prove to be an unsolvable dilemma in a media world where news cycles turn faster and faster”, CARE was “hopeful that by shining a light on the word’s ignored crises we can start to raise the voices of those affected”.
