Why Doesn’t the World Care?

How do we explain the logarithmically different levels of humanitarian response to seemingly similar catastrophes. What makes the UN Relief Coordinator praise the Tsuami relief efforts with accolades like "International compassion has never, ever been like this". And why is the same Jan Eglend incensed over “the world not doing enough" after the earthquake in Pakistan. How did the world, which raised much more than the $9b needed for Tsunami does not even come close to the $312m to the emergency aid appeal to "UN’s worst nightmare". How did the world change so dramatically in nine months? Or did it?

While many Pakistanis sew-sawed between unprecedented heroism in helping their countrymen and their compulsive obsession to find a blameworthy demon, I set out to explore the underlying reasons why such a monumental human tragedy remained hugely irrelevant for so many people, communities, corporations, and indeed nations. And why so many Western newspapers, radio & TV stations so eagerly refreshed the earthquake headlines with news of their own parochial problems and mundane issues.

Firstly, we must recognize that for people to act charitable, they must care. And its difficult to care for someone we don’t know, or worse, don’t like. Unlike Pakistan, Tsunami affected countries that most of the developed world had tangible, positive, affinity with.

Indonesia’s white sandy beaches are the first choice for a vacation for the entire continent of Australia. India connects with the world through its IT exports, a billion people consumer market, through Bollywood and its Incredible India tourist campaigns. Thailand revels on an affinity it created with the rest of the world through its centuries old Bhuddist traditions, its exotic & internationally popular cuisine, and its more recent flesh trade.

Collectively, the 13 countries affected by Tsunami attracted a total of 30m tourists and $24b in receipts from tourists in 2003. When the disaster took place half of the casualties in Thailand alone were tourists from no less than 36 countries. Such affinity can effectively transform past tourists into a tsunami of fund raisers, as seen by the response of the British public, which alone donated $115m within the first week of Tsunami and forced its government to dramatically increase the aid from the embarrassingly low number it had pledged earlier.

By comparison Pakistan, which is perpetually on a travel advisory by most countries, attracted only 500,000 visitors 2003. In its hour of need, Pakistan had only a handful of good will ambassadors who failed to amass much support from non Pakistani segments of international communities.


Secondly, countries too, must care about other countries before being triggered into taking the checkbook out. At a macro level, individual affinity becomes national affinity and manifests itself through foreign & trade policies.

The images one conjures up of Pakistan have been jaundiced by how it has failed to connect with most of the more affluent, western world. Pakistan may be America’s lackey in the post 9/11 War on Terror. But where was it before and where will it be after the war fever has subsided? Many nations question both Pakistan’s geo-political and its socio economic contributions; its past & present relationships, its alleged ’terrorist training camps’, it’s on going aid requirements and the corrupt governments which administer it, its parliament as well as its barracks. And the western media refreshes these questions on every given opportunity. Sadly, even respectable publications like Newseek & The Economist (while covering the earthquake stories), felt it obligatory to caveat every mention of Kashmir as the location where India and Pakistan had fought two wars and an area that as recent as 2002 remained a nuclear flash point. Hardly the kind of publicity that strikes a charitable or humanitarian cord.

Because of Pakistan’s overwhelmingly negative image and its lack of political goodwill, fewer than 20 countries came to its help compared to the 92 countries that contributed towards the post Tsunami relief & reconstruction efforts.


Thirdly, donor nations and corporations will protect their business interests – usually at any cost. Conversely, the absence of business potential further weakens the potential of aid received whether from big corporations or from the countries they are housed in. Corporate responsibility, fashionable as it nowadays, must also be backed up by a business case. Pfizer pharmaceutical group donated 11 million dollars in cash and another $45million in medicine to the Tsunami victims compared to the $6m committed to the South Asian earth quake. Admittedly more than 200,000 died in the Tsunami compared to the 100,000 expected to have perished in the earthquake. But the dead don’t generally need medicine and the number of displaced and homeless is far more for the South Asian earthquake (3.3m) than what it was for the Tsunami. What could then explain the ten fold more charitable Pfizer for Tsunami? Surely the potential of selling Viagra is far higher in Bangkok than it is in Muzzafarabad.

Years of sanctions, political instability, anti-west sentiment, and absence of protective business laws have shunned away whatever foreign direct investment Pakistan was capable of attracting through its cheap labor and cheap brain power. The dwindling FDI, and the absence of multinational corporations is yet another reason why Pakistan will receive the short end of the stick when it comes to corporate donor generosity.


Fourthly, the role of media and the stickiness factor of the news has a huge impact on the relief efforts. For the western media, it is clear that their lives have a different order of importance from those that have died in thousands, but have no known biography, and, apparently, no intelligible tongue in which to express their feelings.

Furthermore, Tsunmai’s many western tourists, equipped with camcorders deluged the media with live images of the disaster. “We saw the tsunami happening, we saw the airplanes flying into the Twin Towers in New York, these have an impact on the minds of people" explained Jan Vandemoortele, UN’s resident coordinator in Pakistan. The earthquake had no such footage, nor any not white tourists.

On the other hand, media is known to create schisms between knowledge and information, between fact and conjecture. It generated self fulfilling myths like ‘donor fatigue’, distracted the issue of fund raising by focusing more on the inadequacies of the Pakistan government’s relief efforts, and occasionally high jacked the story altogether and got fixated on the sophomoric political gamesmanship between India and Pakistan. And just when the momentum stated picking, it switched off, unceremoniously.

However, media is both a cause and an effect that explains the underwhelming support from the international community towards the Pakistani earthquake. At the end of the day it too is a business with customers and sponsors who will eventually decide what they want to read, how often, and with what spin. And if its customers have no affinity with the victims, nor its sponsors any commercial interest in the affected areas, it is time to move on to the next story. Fortunately for it, Katrina and Bird flu were waiting.

Unpleasant as these factors may sound, one must recognize that the world is not singling out Pakistan or its earthquake victims. Far less has been done for greater, albeit, man-made, tragedies. Ethnic cleansing in Rawanda, the genocide in Liberia and the famine in Darfur are recent examples of where, we as a world, failed to respond. The reasons for global indifference are the same; lack of affinity, absence of business potential, unsustained media coverage.


What is perhaps unique about the Pakistani earthquake is another factor which will dominate global politics and which Samuel Huntington calls ’the clash of civilizations’. "The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future”.

But for the last minute diplomatic surgery, Austria had almost successfully closed the door on Turkey’s 42 year dream of joining the EU. 57% of EU citizens (80% of Austrians) are opposed Turkey’s inclusion into Europe, based on paranoia of Turkey’s imperialistic past, but more on the thought of 75m Muslims gate crashing the white Christian clique.

Three weeks later and far away from Brussels’ political battlefields, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan became the first international leader to visit the site of the Pakistani earthquake and offered US$150 million in aid – the largest by any single donor, surpassing even Saudi Arabia, Pakistan’s most trusted benefactor. Could this sudden rush of generosity be ascribed to the forgotten 40 year old development pact Turkey had signed with Pakistan or to the more recent seismic tragedy it too suffered in 1999. Perhaps to both and perhaps to neither but there is no denying the emerging reality that both Islamabad and Ankara are gravitating to the same Islamic civilization which since 9/11 has picked up unprecedented momentum. The revival of religion, "la revanche de Dieu," as Gilles Kepel labeled it, provides a basis for identity and commitment that transcends national boundaries and unites civilizations.

The growing intensity of this clash, between Islamic and Western civilizations, duly abetted by the terrorist attack in two of Europe’s biggest capitals by fundamentalist Islamic terrorists, explains the different responses of EU to Tsunami (affected countries not identifiable with Islamic civilization) and to Pakistan’s quake (a stronghold of Islamic civilization). Where as within 13 days of the Tsunami, the EU alone had pledged € 350 million for rehabilitation and reconstruction assistance through an extraordinary meeting of the General Affairs and External Relations Council, EU’s purported support € 93 million for the Pakistani earthquake is still in its proposal stage after similar number of days. Helping militant Muslims is a far lesser humanitarian imperative for the other 5 billion people in this world.

The world doesn’t care but its no fault of the world. And while it is unlikely that any of the underlying reasons for this indifference will change any time soon, hope should not be lost to the victims of this tragedy. If the outpouring of self generated funds continues and examples of scores of acts of selfless heroism remain unabated, it is unlikely for the world to crack the national cohesion Pakistanis have finally started exhibiting. Pakistan’s greatest tragedy may ironically herald its finest hour. And if this phoenix is to finally to rise from its ashes, the world will notice, and who knows, might just start caring.