CARE’s second annual “Suffering in Silence”report, highlights the ten most under-reported humanitarian crises of 2017. This year’s report placed North Korea’s ongoing food shortage as of most concern, noting that worldwide media attention on the Korean Peninsula in 2017 instead focused on rising political tensions in the Korean Peninsula. Some 18 million North Koreans, around 70 percent of the country’s population, do not have sufficient access to nutritious food, the report said, citing the United Nations.
The dire humanitarian situation in the internationally-isolated country has been aggravated by the North Korean regime, CARE explained, along with global warming and frequent natural hazards, such as floods, rising temperatures and prolonged droughts. The situation deteriorated last summer when the country suffered its worst drought since 2001. “Among the most vulnerable are women and children,” the study stressed, adding that “Almost a third of all pregnant and lactating mothers and more than 200,000 children are estimated to suffer from severe acute malnutrition.”
CARE does not have permission to access North Korea, where the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) are among the few agencies operating aid programs inside the country.
All but three of the ten crises on the report’s list are African. In order, they are North Korea, Eritrea Burundi, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Viet Nam, the Lake Chad Basin, Central African Republic and Peru.
Read the full report here:
