According to Barschdorf-Hager, the number increased by 65 million in one year. The report itself, which was published for the seventh time this year and released on Thursday, is also a record-breaking one, and not in a good way. In particular, the numerous catastrophes on the African continent seem to interest only a few media professionals: All ten of the least reported crises in the previous year occur for the first time in Africa – from Angola to Niger. And if you look at the following places up to 19, there are only two non-African countries among them: Peru in 12th place and Indonesia in 13th place.
Barschdorf-Hager sees the cause, among other things, in the fact that “there is no crisis region in the world to which it is so difficult and expensive to travel (as the catastrophes in Africa, note)”. CARE’s director general also emphasized that there are no single-cause crises. Several factors tend to come together, but virtually all disasters have one thing in common: climate change. Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe and – if you add 14th place – Mozambique are on the list, all of them hit hard by climate change in southeastern Africa with cyclones and long dry spells.
It is also significant that virtually all crisis regions in Africa are massively struggling with the effects of the war in Ukraine, and this has once again massively aggravated the already intolerable situation. In Angola, number one on the list, there were exorbitant price increases for grains and cooking oil, for example. The country is one of four countries in the world where the price increases for these products caused by the war had the greatest impact. From January to mid-October, only 1,847 articles were published online about the situation in Angola.
CARE, in cooperation with the media monitoring company Meltwater, proceeded as usual: first, they defined those crises around the world in which more than a million people are permanently dependent on humanitarian aid. There were 47 in 2022 – “a slight upward trend”, said Barschdorf-Hager. Using keywords such as climate change, drought, conflict and war, over 5.8 million reports were searched and the ranking created. The war in Ukraine made the crisis there the most publicized in the world – “suddenly”, as Barschdorf-Hager noted. In the previous year, the humanitarian crisis that existed before the war was still the second most neglected.
CARE’s managing director expressly emphasized that this is not about bringing crises into a competitive situation. “The focus is on what is currently happening. But that doesn’t mean the other crises don’t exist anymore. You have to provide emergency aid everywhere. It’s very clear that people in Angola or Malawi need help as much as they need it. do in Afghanistan, Syria or Ukraine.”
Unfortunately, the report also contains regular guests: the Central African Republic, for example, has so far been represented in each of the seven reports, and Burundi has only been absent once from the “Breaking the Silence” report. “It’s important to have this report shine a light on these forgotten disasters,” said Claudine Awute, CARE vice president for international programs. This is the only way to persuade decision makers, donors and supporters to help people in these crisis areas.