So that they can aid

 
Published: Wednesday 15 February 2006

Disasters The West

What does it take to attract the attention of news cameras in the West? Famine, hunger and natural disasters; in comparison, thousands deaths, large-scale movement of refugees, and/or senseless violence and mayhem get little press. Doctors without Borders, an international humanitarian group, recently issued its eighth annual list of the top 10 under-reported humanitarian stories of 2005. Included were stories such as the conflict in Chechnya, violence in Haiti, and the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"Famines in Africa, the after-effects of the tsunami, and the earthquake in Pakistan got far more coverage than human-caused disasters, such as civil wars," said Andrew Tyndall, the report's author. "It's easy to attenuate causes when the victims are ones hit by nature. Civil wars in contrast have complex human causes," he said.

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