This week, Houston had all of the attention which it indeed deserves. Hurricane harvey struck, claimed 44lives and forced other 32 thousand to shelter creating distress across the West. But across the world, there were more devastation that did not receive enough recognition by media to become public knowledge. In Southern Asia this week, over 1,200 lives were lost and 40 million displaced by torrential rain in southern Nepal, northern Bangladesh, and southern Pakistan. But somehow, the media has decided to direct all of public empathy at Houston while ignoring the plight of other parts of the world. One possible reason is that a Westerner’s mind can relate well with occurrences within his space than a 2000 miles distance away from his continent. So if I put out a quiz question about where the worst humanitarian crisis is in the world or the situation in Syria, I won’t be surprised to see that a lot of people are ignorant about the world around them and the Western media has played a big role in shaping our empathy in that manner.
While our attention is focused on our space, Yemen experience the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and the Bashar al – Assad has killed hundreds of thousands of his own people in Syria. In Yemen, the proxy war that began in 2015 has killed over 10 thousand people and displaced 7 million others. Cholera is becoming an epidemic in this country, killing over 2,000 people of 540 thousand infected in the population. But many are ignorant that the US and the UK have hands in this crisis. In fact, the 3.3 billion dollars arms used in executing this crisis were obtained by the Saudi-led coalition from UK. But that is not our problem and the media has chosen to be silent on that since that won’t bring the best pay.
The unfortunate thing is that these crises are real and while we are ignorant, they need as much help as the Texans trapped in hurricane Harvey (maybe greater help). And it is certainly wrong if our empathy is not channeled in the direction of their plight. All lives matter, whether in Texas, Nepal, Yemen or Syria and equal amount of attention and empathy should be directed in their paths. It is the duty of the media to empower us with this information from an unbiased perspective in the quest to make the entire world, not just the West, a better place.
I have made it a duty to know about different situations across the world and sometimes make donations to help the afflicted. World attention of their situations can fasten aids and help to proffer solutions to their problem. In a nutshell, all crises deserve equal level of attention. Before they degenerate into something seemingly irreparable, the right amount of attention might be the suited panacea.
