FACTSHEET: Poll spotlights grim litany of neglected crises
If massive crises like Congo and Uganda are all but ignored by the media, what hope is there for the world's other 'forgotten' emergencies? |
Brutal conflicts in Africa and the scourge of infectious diseases from AIDS to malaria have emerged as the world's biggest "forgotten" emergencies, according to an AlertNet poll of humanitarian experts.
While respondents clearly chose 10 crises - including non-African hotspots Colombia, Chechnya, Nepal, Haiti - as the planet's top emergencies that rarely hit the front pages, they also urged global media to focus on even lower-profile calamities.
"The irony with forgotten disasters is that in order to capture them you need some data, but the less data there is, the worse it could be," said Jonathan Walter, editor of the annual "World Disasters Report" published by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).
"I polled about 30 people last autumn to find out their most forgotten disasters and faced a paradox - do I list those disasters most mentioned or those least mentioned?"
Following is a list of "forgotten" emergencies that didn't make it into AlertNet's "top 10" yet scream out for global attention, according to respondents, with key facts and comments from experts.
A failed state struggling to put 14 years of bloody strife behind it and grappling with massive displacement and severe drought
"Somalia is the quintessential example of a country which has little strategic value and no natural resources and therefore little interest for humanitarian aid."
Deberati Guha-Sapir, director, Centre for Research on Disasters, School of Public Health, University of Louvain, Brussels
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Chronic hunger and malnutrition kill more people every year than total deaths from HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined, the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) says, yet many hunger hotspots go unreported
"Of the 10 million people who die each year from hunger and malnutrition, just 8 percent die in the kind of emergencies we hear about in the evening news. More than 9 out of 10 victims of hunger and malnutrition die in some dusty village in Malawi, up in the highlands of Peru, or in the slums of Dacca. They are most often children who are too malnourished to ward off disease. They do not make the news. They just die."
James Morris, executive director of U.N. World Food Programme
War between the government and ethnic-based insurgencies has created Southeast Asia's biggest population of displaced people in a country off limits to journalists and aid workers
"This is a classic example of how an emergency can be forgotten when a government ruthlessly restricts access to the conflict zone… We have some sense of what is happening inside the country from interviewing refugees and asylum seekers in Thailand, but on-the-ground access inside Burma (Myanmar) is virtually impossible."
Joel Charny, vice president for policy, Refugees International
Deliberate campaign to use AIDS as a weapon during 1994 Hutu-led genocide left thousands of Tutsi rape victims HIV-positive
"The Rwandan genocide happened 10 years ago, but its legacy continues to destroy lives today. The women and girls raped and deliberately infected by HIV-positive men then are now dying from AIDS. We have a duty to help relieve their suffering, which is largely ignored in the media."
Lucinda MacPherson, senior communications officer, The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund
Natural disasters are on the rise due to environmental and human-made factors, yet lack of preparedness in many parts of the world leave millions highly vulnerable
"It is like people walking blind-folded towards a precipice. When do you declare it an emergency? Once they fall and kill themselves, or while they are approaching the cliff and are still able to stop?
Salvano Briceno, director, U.N. International Strategy for Disaster Reduction
Thirty-six year separatist insurgency by Muslim rebellions in the south has claimed 120,000 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands more
"It only makes it into the papers when rebels kidnap or behead foreigners - but, as with Chechnya, such terror will only intensify unless the world takes notice and tries to understand."
Jonathan Miller, foreign affairs correspondent, Britain's Channel 4 News
Severe poverty is the norm for a quarter of the world's population, or 1.3 billion people, fueling armed conflict, malnutrition and disease
"Within a focus on poverty, humanitarian emergencies will continue to cause unnecessary hardship and suffering. Poverty is the root cause of so many conflicts. Fight it and focus on its alleviation."
Graham Wood, head of policy, Ockenden International
Some 1.1 billion people live without access to safe drinking water, while growing shortages due to climate change and population growth are seen fuelling conflict and exacerbating humanitarian emergencies
"If current trends continue, water will become even more scarce in the decades to come. Yet it is very easy to forget about this looming catastrophe."
Laurie MacGregor, information section, Norwegian Church Aid
Crippling foreign debt leaves many countries trapped in a spiral of poverty, increasing the vulnerability of millions to disasters, food insecurity and disease
"The depth of the crisis caused by the noose of international debt around the necks of the most marginalized has resulted in cutbacks in public expenditure programmes such as social safety nets, health care, education and sanitation programmes - a sure recipe to convert natural and man-made disasters into famine and other emergency situations."
Anuradha Mittal, executive director, Oakland Institute
Thirty-year conflict in Western Sahara between Morocco and insurgents mainly comprised of nomadic Sahrawi people has sent tens of thousands of refugees into Algeria
"Their 'emergency' isn't acute in the way that it is for the victims of the tsunami but the psychological effects of such long-term displacement are perhaps as serious, just in a different way."
Alec Leggat, programme funding manager, Ockenden International
Hundreds of thousands of people, mostly women and children, are trafficked internationally each year and forced into servitude or the sex industry
"Poverty is the primary driving factor for this tragedy. While poverty in Asia has fallen rapidly during the last decades, this has not led to a reduction in human trafficking. The problem persists partly due to cultural values in some parts of the region. Growing income disparity within and between countries fuels the human trafficking industry."
Geert van der Linden, vice president, Asian Development Bank
Nearly three decades of conflict between Indonesian government forces and Acehnese separatists has devastated infrastructure and left thousands of civilians caught in the crossfire
"The tsunami put Aceh on the map, but few of the hundreds of reporters who went there to cover it had any idea of what the people of Aceh had already suffered before the wave hit."
Jonathan Miller, foreign affairs correspondent, Britain's Channel 4 News
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Several successive dzuds - extreme winters and summer droughts - have devastated traditional herder way of life and prompted massive migration to urban areas, IFRC says
"Living standards have deteriorated markedly during Mongolia's socio-economic transition, with incidence of unemployment and crime rising and access to social care services falling."
Roy Probert, head of communications, IFRC
Eighteen years after Chernobyl nuclear disaster, state of health of population in three affected countries - Belarus, Russua and Ukraine - remains alarming
"There is a high incidence of thyroid cancer and other pathologies, the psychosocial impact of the accident on the population living in the contaminated areas is evident and concerns about other diseases attributable to the accident are still high."
Lynette Lowndes, head of IFRC's Europe Department
Failure to test for underground chemicals before mass installation of water pumps has left millions affected by fluoride poisoning
Half a million women around the world die each year of pregnancy-related causes, a quarter of them through loss of blood during childbirth, IFRC says
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