The Ten Most Unreported Human Crises in 2017

If you live in a first world country, like Australia or the United States, it is too easy to become caught up in your own problems. Perhaps because it’s the age of the “selfie” – the focus is always on the “me, me, me” but around the world millions of people are suffering because of political instability, natural disasters and famine, and yet we hear very little about the anguish of these people. The aid agency, CARE International, has just released a report documenting the ten most desperate, but under reported, crises of 2017. I’ve been reading this report and want to share some of it with you, so you know more about the challenges facing our planet. Tragically seven of these crises were in Africa – still the poorest and most troubled continent on the globe – but the worst, under-reported crisis was in Asia.

1. Famine in North Korea

There has been no shortage of media reports about the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, and his plans to produce nuclear weapons, but the vast majority of people in that country are desperately poor. About 18 million people, or 70 percent of the population, are in need of food and medical services. They rely on government food-aid just to eat. The oppressive regime and climate change (more frequent floods and droughts) is only making the situation worse. Two in five North Koreans are undernourished.

In July 2017, North Korea experienced the worst drought since 2001. Below-average rainfall in key areas for crop production severely disrupted planting activities and damaged the main season crops. As a result, people urgently require food – particularly nutritious food – medical and health services, water and sanitation facilities.

2. Drought in Eritrea

In the African country of Eritrea, more than 700,000 people are suffering from drought, lack of food and water shortages. The weather pattern, El Niño, caused the drought, which started two years ago. About 80 per cent of the population, almost 3.6 million people, survive on subsistence agriculture. Women and children are most at risk of malnutrition and disease. The growth of half of all children in Eritrea is stunted because of lack of food. This means they cannot achieve their full mental and physical potential, because they do not have enough food to develop and grow normally, and yet we hardly hear about the Eritrean crisis in the news. Sometimes we hear about Eritrean refugees drowning in the Mediterranean. Now you know why these people are trying to get to Italy. Widely cut off from the outside world, media and aid organisations have limited access to the East African country.

3. Political unrest in Burundi

Burundi is a landlocked country in East Africa, bordered by Rwanda to the north, Tanzania to the east and south. The country is racked by political unrest and human rights abuses. More than 400,000 people, half of them children, have been forced to flee their homes. They suffer from food shortages and a lack of services, like health care, clean water and food. More than 2.6 million people, 27 per cent of the country's population, do not know how to feed their families. The country is experiencing rising food prices resulting from economic and agricultural decline and disruption to markets and trade. Severe weather conditions, including drought and floods, led to an exceptionally poor harvest in 2017.

4. Sudan – 13 years of war and hunger

Sudan’s population of five million, including two million children, are struggling for survival following 13 years of war and a changing climate. In addition to this, more than 460,000 refugees from South Sudan (fleeing violence) are in Sudan seeking aid and shelter. 88 percent of these are women and children. Overall there are 2.3 million displaced people in Sudan. The country is also seeing more frequent periods of drought than floods.

5. Congo – eight million people need help

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, there has been more than 20 years of conflict – 1.7 million people had to flee their homes just last year – that’s 5,500 a day! More than six million Congolese are now displayed with about 620,000 seeking refuge in neighbouring countries. Almost two million children are suffering malnutrition, making up 12 per cent of the world’s acutely malnourished children. Few Congolese have access to clean water. Outbreaks of diseases, including cholera, measles and malaria, affect tens of thousands of people every year. The effect of escalating conflict has restricted Congo’s economic growth and increased inflation.

6. Mali – aid-dependent and suffering

Mali (officially the Republic of Mali) is a landlocked country in West Africa. Mali is the eighth-largest country in Africa, with an area of just over 1,240,000 square kilometres. It has a population of 18 million. In 2012, Tuareg rebels took control of the north of the country. The French military launched Operation Serval in January 2013 and a month later Malian and French forces recaptured most of the north.

Insecurity persists in northern and central parts of the country. Last year inter-communal violence and clashes between armed groups cause wide-scale displacement and disrupted the lives of thousands of people. Many crisis-affected communities solely depend on humanitarian assistance and still struggle to access food, water, healthcare, education and work. About 900,000 people are without clean drinking water. In regions where fighting occurred, women reported cases of physical, psychological and sexual violence.

7. Vietnam – a poor country pounded by a powerful typhoon

Typhoon Doksuri tore through seven central provinces in Vietnam in September, 2017, flooding hundreds of thousands of homes, shredding roofs and knocking out power for about 1.5 million people. Homes, schools, public buildings, as well as river and sea banks, were damaged. Over 11,000 hectares of rice fields and other crops were ruined by the heavy rains, affecting the livelihoods of local farmers. The good news is that government and aid agencies were able to quickly help communities and restore most of the damaged infrastructure, including powerlines and communications systems, but there is still work to be done in Vietnam.

8. Lake Chad Basin – a crossroad of conflict

Eleven million people live in the Lake Chad Basin region (North Cameroon, West Chad, South-East Niger and North-East Nigeria) but there has been eight years of conflict and attacks related to Boko Haram. Villages have been abandoned and farmland deserted, crippling large parts of the Lake Chad Basin. Seven million people and almost half a million children are acutely malnourished and the number of displaced people has tripled in the past two years to 2.4 million people. Most are sheltered by communities already poor and struggling. Continued cycles of displacement, and insufficient services worsen the situation, increasing people’s need for aid and protection. Lack of food has reached critical levels.

9. The Central African Republic – an extremely underdeveloped country

This small country is racked by communal violence and political turmoil. Nearly 70 per cent of the country is controlled by armed groups. About 2.5 million people, more than half of the population, are in need of aid and food. Attacks against women and children have increased drastically. By September 2017, a total of 1.1 million people were displaced. This includes 600,000 people still within the country and about 512,000 in neighbouring countries, such as Cameroon, Chad or the Democratic Republic of Congo.

10. Peru – the worst floods in a decade

In March last year, torrential rains, led to flooding, landslides and mudslides in coastal Peru. Large parts of the country were affected, including the capital, Lima. The rains caused the worst flooding in 20 years, with 10 times the normal levels of rainfall across the county. By April, nearly half the country was in a state of emergency. Public health emergencies were declared in seven regions. The rain affected more than 1.7 million people; almost a third of these were children and adolescents. The flooding and landslides killed more than 150 people and caused US$3 billion worth of damage. Over 210,000 homes were taken away by the floods or severely damaged, leaving thousands homeless. Affected communities, most of them extremely poor, lost their livelihoods. Agriculture was the main source of income for most of the communities impacted. More than 260 bridges collapsed and almost 3,000 km of roads were destroyed, cutting off hundreds of villages and towns. The clean-up in Peru continues.

Care International

I have learned that the aid organisation, Care International, is active in all of these areas. Care operates in 94 countries and currently has 962 projects helping people in poverty. It estimates that it has directly helped 80 million people. Care was founded in 1945.

You can visit Care’s website at: https://www.care-international.org/

To prosper you must give to others

My prosperity mindset is that you can’t expect the world to be good to you, unless you are good to the world! What can you do this year for the world’s poorest people? I’m not specifically advocating that you give to Care International, just telling you that they are one of the aid organisations out there along with Save the Children, the Red Cross and many others, such as Medicine Sans Frontiers.

A suggestion for Lent …

This year lent starts on February 14 (Valentine’s Day!) You may not be religious, but studies increasingly find that it does most of us good to have periods of lean times during the year. Cutting down on fatty foods and sweets has been shown to reduce the risk of developing many diseases, everything from Alzheimer’s to diabetes!

What about giving up an indulgence this Lent (like take-away coffee or cake or chocolate) and donating the money you save to an international aid organisation. If everyone in the first world did that over Lent, we would be able to help millions of people in poverty! Why not suggest the idea to friends, family and work colleagues. I know the Uniting Church runs a formal LentEvent in the lead up to East, asking people to give up an indulgence, donate money to the third world and spend 40 days reading the scriptures and meditating. You might want to check out the LentEvent website:

https://chuffed.org/project/lent-event