Skip to footer

World Humanitarian Day: 5 crises and how you can help

Here are five of the world’s worst humanitarian crises in 2013 – and what you can do to help. 

Central African Republic

Krista Larson/AP
Children walk along a street in the town of Ndele, Central African Republic, April 11, 2013.

Life has rarely been easy for citizens of the Central African Republic, a sprawling landlocked nation that ranks near the bottom globally in almost every indicator of health and development. But the situation disintegrated further this year when a loosely organized rebel movement called Seleka seized control of the government from President Francois Bozize, triggering a mass exodus of refugees and leaving millions more hungry, sick, and destitute.

The UN estimates there are 1.6 million people in the country ­­– population 4.6 million – in “dire need” of food, security, healthcare, sanitation, and shelter. Sixty thousand refugees have already fled the country and 200,000 more have been displaced within the CAR’s borders. As sporadic fighting continues, UNICEF estimates that some 3,500 children have been recruited to fight as soldiers for the rebels.

Kristalina Georgieva, the European Union’s commissioner for humanitarian aid, said this week that the CAR was “one of the most destitute places” she had ever seen, and warned that “Unless the international community mobilizes fast, we may be seeing another Somalia in the making."

To help:

Donate to Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF, or Save the Children to contribute to medical and nutritional aid work in the country. 

5 of 5
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.