海角大神

Battered by drought and civil wars, more than 20 million people from Yemen to Tanzania are at risk of starvation in what aid workers call the largest humanitarian crisis since World War II. But over the past two decades, nations that once produced searing images of famine's toll have moved to thwart it by strengthening community resilience. Our reporters traveled to Madagascar, Ethiopia, and Somaliland to investigate the daunting challenges as well as the long-term efforts that are saving lives.听

The world is facing its worst humanitarian crisis since World War II, with 20 million people on the brink of famine, and hardly anybody knows about it.

Out of the media spotlight, the droughts and civil conflicts that are pushing听the Horn of Africa,听Yemen, and Nigeria into starvation are going unnoticed. And the humanitarian agencies trying to help are struggling to collect the money they need to help.

鈥淲e鈥檝e found it very difficult to raise funding for this set of emergencies,鈥� says Carolyn Miles, head of the US branch of Save the Children, 鈥渏ust because we have had such a hard time breaking through in the media.鈥�

The effects are clear: only 15 percent of Americans are aware of the current hunger crisis, according to a poll released July 12 by the International Rescue Committee, an independent humanitarian agency.听But once they are informed of the depth of the problem, 73 percent say it is one of their top global concerns,听just behind North Korea鈥檚 ballistic missile capability.

Global humanitarian agencies such as Save the Children and Oxfam get most of their money from governments and foundations 鈥撎齭ometimes, in response to public pressure. But public appeals can raise millions of dollars, too,听and the fact that it is not happening this time has pushed eight big US charities to join forces.

They听have launched听a common fund-raising campaign听(July 17-28) to raise awareness of the situation. 鈥淕iven our inability to get people to pay attention, we are getting together to try in a group,鈥� explains Ms. Miles. (At press time, the campaign had raised $3.3 million.)

But any campaign鈥檚 success with the general public depends on humanitarian organizations鈥� ability to first get media coverage.

鈥淧eople will only donate if they know there鈥檚 a problem,鈥澨齭ays听Ian Bray, humanitarian press officer for Oxfam.

Getting outlets鈥� attention

Victims of sudden natural disasters,听such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami听or the Nepal earthquake in 2015, attract public donations easily. But starvation is a long, slow process, 鈥渁nd it鈥檚 difficult for the media to deal with that if there are no events鈥� to hang a story on, says Mr. Bray.

Publishers hesitate to spend resources on a story they fear won鈥檛 feel fresh to far-away readers. Essentially, editors are asking, 鈥溾�楬ow much deader are the camels going to be than the last time we covered this story?鈥� 鈥� Bray adds.

Programs designed to build up long-term resilience against famine, from waterholes to nutrition education, also face an uphill battle for airtime. And on-the-ground reporting is costly.听

And in the United States, aid agencies face a particular problem: Donald Trump鈥檚 presidency has absorbed an unusual amount of media bandwidth.听

鈥淕etting through to people in the media has been harder,鈥� Miles laments. She says she had difficulty rustling up media interest even among the Nairobi-based press corps in a trip she made to northern Kenya, where drought is ravaging the land.

Agencies are more than willing to help journalists who want to see their programs in action. 海角大神 correspondents who visited Ethiopia, Somaliland, and Madagascar to report this series were given logistical assistance by the UN Children鈥檚 Fund (UNICEF), Save the Children and Concern Worldwide, an Irish NGO.

When the message gets through

The听reporting almost always bears fruit. Sometimes it is small: A Monitor article about a young Ethiopian couple who could not marry because drought had killed the would-be groom鈥檚 camels, which he needed for the bride-price, prompted two readers to offer to purchase the needed livestock. Another Monitor story about a mother and her children in Madagascar prompted a similar offer of help.

Sometimes it is bigger: When Save the Children persuaded ABC television to send a reporter to Somalia, his coverage sparked donations worth听$3 million听in two weeks.

Similarly, a group of UK aid agencies launched two recent campaigns听soon after the airing of BBC television reports by star correspondents from starvation-hit countries.听They raised a total of 拢84 million ($108 million.)

When Oxfam is deciding where to focus a campaign, 鈥渋t鈥檚 a question of balancing where we think we will get the best response from the public ... and where the biggest funding gap is,鈥� says Dave Hillyard, director of philanthropy and partnerships at Oxfam. 鈥淚f we can鈥檛 generate support from the main (TV) broadcasters an appeal is unlikely to be viable.鈥�

Television is听the most important medium. But thanks to social media, TV images can reach a far bigger audience than network news-viewers. The ABC footage can be found on YouTube, and Facebook, Google, and Twitter are all supporting the Global Emergency Response Coalition campaign in the United States.

A frustrating view of 'news value'

The agencies鈥� critical need for media coverage of the crises they are battling makes them especially frustrated by journalists鈥� difficulty getting into Yemen, where 7 million people are on the verge of famine. The Saudi government,听angered by past reports of wide-scale civilian deaths at the hands of the Yemeni government it is supporting, has prevented the UN from bringing journalists on its flights.听The UN is the only organization operating flights into the capital, Sanaa.

But even absent such political pressure, 鈥渋t is a constant, constant challenge鈥� to generate interest when 鈥渞ich, powerful people have high news value, and poor powerless people thousands of miles away have low news value,鈥� rues Bray.

That is especially true when it comes to the sort of projects that many international aid organizations run that are designed to strengthen communities鈥� defenses against famine. Such resilience-building initiatives include water projects, cash handouts, and help for women launching micro-businesses.

Though governments and institutional aid donors know that 鈥渂uilding resilience makes sense鈥� economically, since it is cheaper than the emergency aid it is designed to forestall, 鈥渨e have not found a way to be successful with that messaging鈥� with the general public, Miles says.

Though 鈥減eople are getting better at understanding that you can make things better if you respond early,鈥� she adds, 鈥済enerally you need something that is further along [the path to catastrophe] to generate interest.鈥澨�

Pushing past the pipeline

But it鈥檚 not only the media and agencies who can generate that interest. Aid groups call on the public for more than cash; they also encourage supporters to raise their neighbors' awareness of crises and to badger their political representatives.

Save the Children, for example, has a network of 160,000 grassroots advocates who can spread the word on social media and get involved in the political process when needed.

Earlier this year, as US government aid for the four current crises seemed to get stuck in the pipeline, the agency asked its supporters to get in touch with their local representatives and send a message that they cared about that aid.

鈥淲ith other organizations, we did a lot to get approval for this funding,鈥� says Miles, and the campaign 鈥渨as very successful.鈥� Earlier this month the US State Department announced it was听releasing $639 million to stave off famine in听Yemen, South Sudan, Nigeria, and Somalia, bringing its total aid this year to $1.8 billion.听

鈥淲hen you can get the American public to stop a minute they do get enthusiastic about helping,鈥� says Miles.