“Suffering in silence”: these ten crises do not make the headlines.

Madagascar’s chronic food crisis affects millions of people but hardly gets any media attention. It is therefore number 1 in the ranking of underexposed crises in 2019, prepared by the humanitarian organization CARE.

For the fourth year in a row, the organization has drawn up a ranking of crises that affect millions of people but have received little or no attention in world news.

Photo: CARE/Clément Radar

Madagascar, where 2.6 million people suffer from the ongoing drought, tops the rankings. More than 916,000 inhabitants are in urgent need of food aid, and half of the young children experience stunted growth.

Photo: CARE/Sebastian Wells

The Central African Republic is in 2nd place. Due to the brutal conflict in the area, 2.6 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian aid. One in four residents tries to flee the country.

Photo: Darcy Knoll

The top three is completed by Zambia, which is suffering heavily from climate change. The temperature is rising twice as fast as the global average. Because of the continuing drought, 2.3 million people are in urgent need of food aid.

Violence and extreme weather

Further on the list: Burundi, where natural disasters, diseases such as malaria and the risk of Ebola, and uncertainty cause chronic hunger for 1.7 million people. Eritrea, where half of the children suffer from malnutrition growth, and Korea, where nearly 11 million people are undernourished and have to deal more often with heatwaves, droughts and floods.

Photo: CARE/Irenee Nduwayezu

Photo: Getty Images

Photo: CARE/Josh Estey

The other crises in the top 7 are the drought and floods in Kenya, the escalating violence in Burkina Faso, the increasing hunger in Ethiopia, where 7.9 million people are suffering from a serious level of malnutrition, and the violence around Lake Chad Basin, where 10 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance.

Climate change

The causes of the crises vary from migration and epidemics to hunger and violence, but it is striking that nine out of ten countries are in Africa. The link with climate change is also becoming clearer, says Sally Austin from CARE.

We’re seeing increasing linkages between the effects of man-made climate change and the longevity and complexity of humanitarian crises. From Madagascar to Lake Chad to North Korea, the majority of crises ranked in our report are partly a consequence of declining natural resources, increasing extreme weather events and global warming more broadly.

According to Austin, the increasing worldwide attention for the climate crisis is encouraging, but it’s important to not only look at the Global North:

but we must ensure that the conversation is not limited to the Global North and much-needed transformations there. It is shocking to see how little media reporting there is about human suffering related to global warming in the South, the lack of political action to address this injustice, and solutions applied to ease the burden for communities.

Read the full report here.

Website CARE: http://www.care-international.org/