This is a fine thing too but not at the expense of other hapless victims surely?
Read this from today's Guardian:
More than 3m Ukrainians will need food assistance, says World Food Programme
But not a peep about Yemen or Afghanistan in the news, so:
What’s happening in Yemen?
andUnicef wrote:Yemen remains one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world, with around 21 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, including more than 11 million children.
Since the conflict escalated in March 2015, the country has become a living hell for the country’s children. Less than half of health facilities are functioning, and many that remain operational lack basic equipment. Many health workers have not received a regular salary in several years.
And Afghanistan:Unicef wrote:At least 10,000 children have been killed or maimed since the beginning of the conflict, and thousands more have been recruited into the fighting. An estimated 2 million children are internally displaced. The damage and closure of schools and hospitals has also disrupted access to education and health services. More than two million children are out of school, leaving them even more vulnerable.
Meanwhile, Yemen has been plagued by one of the world’s worst food crises, with nearly 2.3 million children under the age of five suffering from acute malnutrition. Of these, 400,000 are expected to suffer from severe acute malnutrition and could die if they do not receive urgent treatment.
andThe country of thirty-eight million people heavily depended on foreign aid before the Taliban came to power in August. Now, experts say it has been devastated by the international response to the hard-line Islamist group’s seizure of power: halting billions of dollars in assistance and enforcing sanctions that have impeded relief work.
andWFP wrote:KABUL – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is rapidly ramping up humanitarian operations in Afghanistan to assist more than 23 million people facing severe hunger in the country in 2022, as inflation and currency depreciation make it even more difficult to feed themselves. WFP has assisted 15 million people so far in 2021, with 7 million assisted in November alone – up from 4 million in September.
Even more sickening is the Saudi demands for US support in the bombing of Yemen, they are also refusing to consider releasing more oil reserves to the US unless the US provides that military assistance.“Afghanistan is facing an avalanche of hunger and destitution the likes of which I have never seen in my twenty plus years with the World Food Programme,” said Mary-Ellen McGroarty, WFP Country Director in Afghanistan.
“I’m proud of what we’ve been able to achieve so far, but the needs are enormous, and we have a huge amount to do to stop this crisis from becoming a catastrophe. We urgently need US$ 220 million a month in 2022 to assist 23 million Afghans,” she warned.
According to the latest WFP phone surveys, an estimated 98 percent of Afghans are not consuming enough food – a worrisome 17 percent rise since August. The spiraling economic crisis, conflict and drought has meant the average family can now barely cope.
Families are resorting to desperate measures as the bitter winter sets in; nine in every ten households are now buying less expensive food, eight in ten are eating less, and seven in ten are borrowing food to get by.
So are the media hypocritical? are our governments hypocritical?