It has been nearly a month since tragedy suddenly swept through Southeast Asia, and the globe is still ardently collecting emergency relief funding and supplies for the victims. Even at a small college tucked away in Hanover, New Hampshire, there have been events every day to raise money and awareness. I've received dozens of blitzes telling me how to help. The response by everyone has been tremendous in the wake of this rare, horrific tragedy.
Right?
Yeah, well, at least about the response being tremendous. But is such a tragedy so rare? Sure, tsunamis don't happen very often. But what about 150,000 people dying and many more left homeless, hungry and in despair? Unfortunately, tragedy of this nature is not as rare as we'd like to think, but at least we're awesome at pretending that it is.
Take, for example, the nation of Congo in central Africa. The crisis in this country is considered by many to be the world's deadliest. Four million people have died since conflict erupted in 1998, and over 30,000 continue to perish every month. These aren't just battle wounds. These deaths are from the lack of the very things we are trying so eagerly to get to those in Southeast Asia, such as clean water, food and medicine.
Think about that number. Over 30,000 per month. That's one thousand people every day, half of whom are younger than the age of five. That's the equivalent of one tsunami (on the scale of the recent catastrophe) every five months.
The United States Agency for International Development spent a total of $54 million in the Congo last year, and the request for 2005 is $32 million, a decline mostly reflecting the elimination of food aid. In contrast, the Bush administration has already pledged $350 million for tsunami relief. Add to that the huge amounts being raised privately in this country and being donated directly to agencies like the Red Cross, and it's as if the plight of the Congolese has completely missed us.
Critics viciously attacked President Bush after his initial offerings to tsunami victims were deemed to be too small (which they were). So where's the outrage about the shrinking aid to Congo? The media was quick to pick up the story about the President's aid package and the anger of many people at its paucity. Yet the media all but ignores the situation in Central Africa. Why? The answer reasons to be because we all ignore it, too. After all, news organizations will run what stories they can to gain a larger share of the market audience. Tragedy in Asia must be "more tragic" than tragedy in Africa.
But why? Is it racism? That's not my argument, per se. I think that we, as an advancing global community, and individually as Americans, have grown to expect suffering in Africa, tragedy in Africa, death in Africa. From when we are young and our parents inform us that "there are children starving in Africa," so we had better eat our vegetables -- it's made to be a fact of life. An unfortunate one? Of course it is. But you can't change a fact of life. You can try to make it better; give a few dollars to the UNICEF trick-or-treaters every year. But there is no changing this immutable law that Africans tend to suffer more than those living elsewhere. We accept this.
Tragedy in Southeast Asia is something different. The tsunami was sudden. It was wrong. It didn't belong in the natural order of things. The world began immediately to work together. Humans began to bond in that beautiful way that only tragedy can bring. Matt Damon was taking phone calls on TV, Jay Leno was auctioning off a phone once used by Leonardo Dicaprio for $3,000, fast food restaurants asked if you wanted to donate to tsunami relief instead of (or after) asking if you wanted to "super size" it, school children across the country raised thousands of dollars selling lemonade to strangers.
I don't mean to criticize those who have helped the victims of the tsunami. Indeed, they deserve commending. Instead, I just want to call attention to a world of suffering, not just a region. I think society has entrenched in us certain inherent assumptions and prejudices that make our philanthropy less just but more rewarding. Ask anybody who has donated to the tsunami victims recently if they would donate their time or money to prevent another similar catastrophe, and the answer would, I assume, invariably be yes.
Now tell them that they can.
