There's something about the way we consume the news that has been bothering me for a long time.
Some wars become impossible to ignore. They're on our phones when we wake up, on television during dinner, and all over social media. We see the same images every day. We learn the names of cities, recognise the faces of leaders and start to feel like we're watching history unfold in real time.
Then there are wars happening at the same moment that barely get a mention.
And I keep asking myself why.
According to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, the world recorded 61 active armed conflicts involving at least one state in 2024, the highest number since its records began in 1946. Eleven of those conflicts reached the threshold of war, meaning at least 1,000 battle-related deaths in a year. Nearly 160,000 people died in organised violence during 2024. <Cite refs={["turn458724search2"]}/>
That's a staggering amount of suffering.
Yet most of us couldn't name even a fraction of the conflicts taking place around the world. We follow two or three closely, perhaps a few more when something dramatic happens, and the rest barely enter our conversations.
I've been thinking about Sudan in particular.
The war between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces began in April 2023. Since then, millions of people have been forced from their homes, families have been separated and entire communities have been devastated.
By 2025, around 13 million people had been displaced, and more than 30 million needed humanitarian assistance. UNESCO also reported that roughly 90% of Sudan's media infrastructure had been destroyed, leaving large parts of the country without reliable access to news or essential information.
Think about that for a moment.
Millions of people have had to leave their homes, and the people who might tell the rest of the world what's happening are struggling to do their jobs. Journalists have been killed, threatened or forced to flee. Newsrooms have been destroyed. Getting reliable information from inside the country has become incredibly difficult.
And when the people who can tell a story are silenced, the rest of the world often stops hearing it.
That's one reason Sudan receives so little sustained attention. It's dangerous for journalists to work there, access is difficult, and the conflict is complicated. There are no easy pictures that explain everything, no simple narrative that fits neatly into a headline.
But none of that makes the suffering any less real.
The people living through this war aren't experiencing a media blackout. They're experiencing the war itself.
They're the ones searching for food, looking for somewhere safe to sleep and wondering whether the people they love are still alive.
We may not see their faces on our screens every day. That doesn't mean they aren't there
Yemen is another example that I can't get out of my head.
The war there began in 2014, and by 2021, a UN Development Programme assessment estimated that the conflict had caused around 377,000 deaths, including people who died indirectly from hunger, disease and the collapse of essential services. The UN also reported that 20.7 million people in Yemen needed humanitarian assistance or protection that year.
These aren't small numbers. They represent families who lost their homes, children who grew up knowing hunger and people who spent years living without the things most of us take for granted.
And yet, how often do we actually talk about Yemen?
How often does it lead the news? How many people around us could explain what's happening there, even in broad terms?
I sometimes think about how quickly we move on from one crisis to another. A war dominates the headlines for a few weeks, then another story takes its place. We scroll, we react, we share a few posts, and eventually the suffering becomes background noise.
For the people living through it, of course, the story doesn't move on. They're still there when the cameras leave.
I remember seeing a claim that the slap Will Smith gave Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars received more attention on Swiss television than the wars in Yemen and Ethiopia combined. I haven't been able to establish that comparison with enough confidence to repeat it as a fact.
But the reason it stayed with me is that it points to something we all recognise. A celebrity moment can capture the world's attention overnight, while a humanitarian catastrophe can continue for years without becoming part of everyday conversation.
And that should make us uncomfortable.
There are several reasons this happens, and I don't think any one of them explains everything.
Sometimes it's geography. A war happening closer to home feels more immediate. Sometimes it's politics. A conflict involving a major power or a strategic ally receives more attention because the consequences could affect governments, economies and international security.
Sometimes it's simply access. If journalists cannot safely enter a country, it's harder to report what's happening. Without photographs, interviews and footage, editors have less material to work with, and audiences have fewer ways to connect with the people affected.
Then there's something more personal.
We tend to respond more strongly to people and places we recognise. When a crisis feels familiar, we can imagine ourselves in it. When it feels distant, complicated or culturally unfamiliar, it's easier to keep scrolling.
Nobody likes admitting that about themselves. I don't either.
But I think it's worth being honest about it.
Our attention isn't distributed according to how many people are suffering. It is shaped by what gets reported, what our governments consider important, what news organisations choose to prioritise and what social media platforms keep putting in front of us.
The result is that some human tragedies become global events, while others remain almost invisible.
Look at Ukraine. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, the war received enormous international attention. Governments responded, news organisations sent reporters, and millions of people followed the developments closely.
That attention mattered. The invasion had enormous consequences for European security, and the public deserved to understand what was happening.
But it also raises a difficult question: why is it so much harder to sustain that same attention for Sudan, Yemen or the Democratic Republic of Congo?
I'm not suggesting that every war should receive exactly the same amount of coverage. Conflicts differ in scale, urgency and international significance. Some developments genuinely have wider consequences than others.
But surely the number of people suffering should count for something.
Surely the fact that a child is starving should matter whether that child lives in Europe, Africa or the Middle East.
And surely a family forced to flee its home deserves our concern even if its journey never brings it anywhere near a country we recognise.
The problem is that attention doesn't always follow need.
And the consequences go beyond what we see on our screens.
In August 2025, the United Nations warned that less than 17% of the $46 billion it had sought to meet global humanitarian needs for that year had been received. The funding shortfall meant aid organisations were being forced to make painful decisions about which needs they could meet and which people they might have to leave without help.
Meanwhile, the OECD reported in April 2025 that official development assistance from donor countries had fallen by 7.1% in real terms in 2024, with further cuts projected for 2025.
These figures cover wider humanitarian and development funding, not just assistance for forgotten wars. But they show the pressure the system is under at a time when millions of people need help.
And when money becomes scarce, the places with the strongest political support and the most public attention can have an advantage.
The people living through less visible crises may have neither.
That's what worries me most. The silence doesn't end with a lack of headlines. It can mean fewer resources, less political pressure and less urgency to find a way out.
A war that disappears from public conversation doesn't stop being a war. It simply becomes easier for the rest of the world to ignore.
I wish I had a simple answer to all this, but I don't.
I know that sharing more stories about Sudan won't end the fighting tomorrow. Talking about Yemen won't magically rebuild its hospitals. And asking people to care about every conflict in the world is unrealistic when we're all trying to make sense of our own lives.
But I don't think the answer is to accept that some suffering will always matter less than other suffering.
Maybe it starts with paying attention to the stories that don't make it onto our feeds. Maybe it means reading beyond the headlines, listening to journalists and aid workers who are trying to report from places the world has forgotten, and questioning why certain crises receive so much attention while others struggle to receive any.
It's a small thing, I know. But looking away is also made up of small things: one story we skip, one crisis we forget, one headline we never bother to open.
Over time, those choices add up.
We live in a world where information can travel across continents in seconds. We can watch events unfold thousands of miles away almost as they happen. And yet, there are people enduring years of violence whose lives barely register in our daily conversations.
That contradiction says something about us, too.
I've been thinking about the title of this piece, and I keep coming back to the same idea.
It's not really about cameras. Cameras are just the most visible part of the problem.
It's about who gets seen, whose suffering gets explained, whose stories get repeated and whose pain we're allowed to forget.
We cannot follow every conflict every day. None of us can.
But we can refuse to believe that a war matters less simply because we hear less about it.
Sudan matters. Yemen matters. Congo matters. So do the countless other places where people are trying to survive violence while the world looks elsewhere.
The people living through these wars don't get to switch off the news and move on with their lives. For them, this isn't a headline that will disappear tomorrow. It's the reality they wake up to every morning.
And whether or not the cameras are there, they're still losing their homes, their families and their lives.
Their suffering doesn't become less important just because the rest of us aren't watching.
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