The Russian-Ukraine crisis has had a devastating impact on Ukrainains who have been fleeing the country in the millions. With nearly 5 million refugees, it has surpassed its number of refugees in World War II.
But while Europe hasn’t seen that in over 75 years, many non-European nations have seen it in very recent times. Some are currently in its midst. And the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Tedros Adhanom, has pointed that out poignantly.
“Nowhere on earth where the health of millions of people is more under threat” Dr. Tedros says, in reference to the crisis in Ethiopia. “As we speak, people are dying of starvation.”
Ethiopia is in its second year of a brutal civil war that has left millions dead and many more millions displaced and in destitute. And Dr. Tedros is pointing out the disparity of the public outcry and humanitarian aid in Ukraine vs countries like Ethiopia, questioning “whether the world gives equal attention to Black and White lives.”
On March 24, the United States pledged $1 billion to help European countries that take refugees from Ukraine. Additionally, at a fundraising conference, several countries raised another $1.5 billion dollars in early April to help humanitarian operations in Ukraine and its neighboring countries. After the conference, UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told journalists “This is among the fastest and most generous responses a humanitarian flash appeal has ever received.”
One week before the fundraising conference, on March 25, in collaboration with Sweden and Switzerland, the UN had a conference regarding the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. Less than one third of the required $4.3 billion was raised for “the world’s largest humanitarian crisis” in Yemen.
Martin Griffiths, the UN Chief Humanitarian, expressed his “disappointment” after the Yemen pledge ceremony. Jan Egeland, the Head of Norwegian Refugee Council, was a little more direct: “The people of Yemen need the same level of support and solidarity that we’ve seen for the people of Ukraine,” he said.
Dr. Tedros, who is originally from Ethiopia, didn’t stop at just the humanitarian crisis in his home country. This list goes on to many countries that have suffered and that are still suffering, such as Yemen and Syria. “I need to be blunt and honest that the world is not treating the human race the same,” Dr. Tedros says. “Some are more equal than others.”
While the response to the crisis in Ukraine may be different than the response to crises in other countries, Smruti Patel, a coordinator at Alliance for Empowering Partnership (A4EP) purports that it’s not racism. “When something is near and you can see and feel it, it has a different way of tugging on your heart than other, more far away places,” Patel says. Therefore “the imbalance with Ukraine is not due to pure racism” he adds.
But clearly, others have disagreed, like Gabriella Waaijman, a global humanitarian director at Save the Children.”What the children in Ukraine have gone through is horrendous and deserves our support,” Waaijman says. “But there are children in so many other places who have equally gone through hell and survived the bombardments and displacements and had to leave everything behind. They deserve our love and solidarity too.”
While Patel is focusing on these children in “far away places,” the global community that we live in today brings those children and many more much closer to home, as we’ve seen the outpour of empathy from places very far from Ukraine.
