The most under-reported humanitarian disasters of 2012

By David Bull, Executive Director UNICEF UK

Every year, humanitarian disasters take a devastating toll on the lives and futures of millions of children around the world, and 2012 was no exception. The numbers of children affected are staggering, so much that it is hard to comprehend why so many of these disasters rarely make the headlines.

UNICEF began the year having issued a stark warning in December 2011 that more than one million children would suffer from severe, life-threatening malnutrition in the Sahel region of West Africa and would need specialist treatment. This nutrition crisis, caused by a combination of drought and high food prices, would require an unprecedented response by governments, UNICEF and other UN agencies, and humanitarian organisations if we were to avert a catastrophe.

It was not a famine, but we were talking about a huge number of very young children at risk of starvation, and the lack of media interest in this crisis was both surprising and incredibly frustrating. When fighting escalated in Mali (one of the nine affected countries in the Sahel region), the number of people needing emergency assistance increased not just in Mali, but also in neighbouring countries that were hosting refugees. The conflict and the political crisis sparked some media interest, but once again, there were hardly any reports of the situation of people being forced to flee their homes, or of the worsening nutrition crisis.