The Channels

Issue date: 12/2/09 Section: Opinion

Who chooses what life to despair and what life to heroically save?

Aren't all people no matter of race, color, ethnicity, religion, and sexuality equal? Africans included?

Despite what many organizations such as the United Nations and "Big Brother countries" say, I question their efforts to help the lost continent of Africa.

Since birth, I have been told Africa is a troublesome continent corrupted with war, famine, poverty, and disease.

When will it come to an end? Not anytime soon. As of today, about fifteen countries are at war in Africa.

I'm curious to know how the U.N. is discussing the issue. According to the Globalissues.org, the forgotten conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo is one thousand times greater than the Israel-Palestine conflict, but they are far away from receiving equal attention and coverage in the media.

After the genocides in Rwanda, people said that it wouldn't happen again. However, the Congo conflict is happening right in front of our eyes, and again without enough coverage and action.

Virgil Hawkins, author of the book "How the World's Worst Violence is Ignored," reported only 10 percent of the media focuses on Africa.

Generating more than 5.4 million deaths and counting-Africa has been facing the second deadliest war since World War II.

The border conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia has been on and off for more than 30 years. That is a longer time than most of us students have spent on earth.

The media is to blame for the ignorance of this situation in several African countries. The media tends to have minimal coverage on the wars in Africa, and doesn't seem to consider these issues front-page material.

Hawkins reported that Africa has the highest death toll concerning conflicts in continents or regions. Africa comes in at 88 percent, while Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and America came in with percentiles ranging between 8-1 percent.

Something is terribly wrong.

In addition to this, more than 9 million people are internally displaced, people who are refugees in their own countries.

Hawkins claimed that if the conflicts and killings in Africa had happened in Europe, the majority of people would have gone as far as calling it World War III.

How can this be more complicated than the conflicts in former Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Israel- Palestine and Iraq? The media coverage and solutions to these conflicts were massive. We should try to do the same with African conflicts.

Rubbing the "dirt" under the rug wont cut it and neither will handing out money to these countries. Instead, the U.N. and leading countries should intervene the corrupted politics.

But most importantly we should install stability. Then, the children, men, and women of Africa could have a brighter future just as the people in the rest of the world. That is if the world unites and as the marines say, "leave no man behind."

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools