North Korea’s ongoing hunger emergency topped a list of the 10 most under-reported humanitarian crises of 2017, according to a new report from aid and development organisation CARE Australia.
The report, Suffering in Silence, said that some 18 million people in North Korea – 70 per cent of the population – rely on government food aid with two in five of the population malnourished and women and children among the most vulnerable.
“The impacts of the country’s political regime together with global warming and frequent natural hazards, such as floods, rising temperatures or prolonged droughts, exacerbate the dire humanitarian situation,” it added.
Others in the top 10 included Eritrea – where more than 700,000 are suffering from an ongoing drought, lack of food and water shortages, Burundi – where political unrest and human rights abuses have seen more than 400,000 people flee, and Sudan – where more than a decade of conflict, chronic poverty and climatic shock have put almost five million people “on the edge of survival”.
The Democratic Republic of Congo, where violence and inter-communal tensions saw an average of 5,500 flee their homes each day in 2017, came in at number five, followed by Mali, Vietnam, the Lake Chad Basin, Central African Republic and Peru, where floods severely affected large parts of the country.
Rachel Routley, of CARE Australia’s Emergency Response Unit, said that while “a single photo can shake the world’s consciousness and galvanise the global community into taking action”, “the majority of people affected by humanitarian disasters suffer in silence, far away from the world’s cameras and microphones”.
“These crises might not make media headlines but that doesn’t mean we can forget about them.”
More than 1.2 million global online news sources were monitored as part of the research, which drew on the resources of media monitoring service the Meltwater Group. The analysis focusing on 40 specific natural disasters and conflicts that each affected at least a million people.
