Russia's war in Ukraine drains attention from crisis in Afghanistan, Yemen, Horn of Africa

It’s driving people into a state of desperation,” she said.Rayburn said governments were dipping into their humanitarian aid budgets earmarked for Afghanistan and other crisis-hit countries to “make room for their response to the Ukraine.”Reports surfaced last month that Germany had even evicted Afghan refugees from their accommodations in order to make way for arrivals from Ukraine. Sharafuddin said the disparity in public fundraising was due to people in donor nations “feeling more connected to what’s happening in Ukraine.” “When they hear about Yemen, they focus on the political coverage, which worries or scares them,” she said. My opinion, as a Yemeni and as a mother, is that if governments got involved, this could all end tomorrow.”The humanitarian community has long struggled to hold public attention on crises that drag on interminably, such as Syria’s civil war, which just entered its 11th year.Whether it is donor fatigue or a lack of media coverage, audiences are increasingly struggling to keep their attention on multiple disasters at once, according to Rebecca Rozelle-Stone, professor of philosophy at the University of North Dakota.She said the advent of 24-hour news and social media has left people inundated with information that may or may not be relevant to their interests, squeezing their bandwidth and effectively “training us to skip around from one issue to the next.”“That’s not to mention the emotional and mental psychological capability to sort out and to feel effective in responding to these multiple crises, many are on a global scale,” Rozelle-Stone said.