January 01, 2015

2014, what a nightmare. May 2015 bring sanity and humanity!

editor:	Murat Suner

In 2014 the world was a mess. Any continent where the political, societal and humanitarian situation wasn’t in devastating disorder?

In Europe, 20 years after the war in former Yugoslavia, another hot war has come back in Ukraine, taking thousands of people’s lives at the interface between Middle Europe and Russia. Western sanctions against Russia and its falling economy, potential instability accompanied the initiation of a new Cold War.

The Gaza War with its numerous civilian victims drove Israel and the Palestine Authority into a muddled situation, pushing potential peace scenarios even more out of sight and believe.

In West-Africa, Ebola killed more than 8,000 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, and just because the deadly disease fell from the media’s agenda, it doesn’t mean we’ve beaten the plague.

The Syrian regime’s war on its own people has led to one of the world’s most devastating humanitarian crisis after WWII, with more than 200,000 people losing their lives and about 10 million their homes. And, as if that wasn’t enough, the rise of the so-called Islamic State (IS) has brought terror and civil war to an already instable, vulnerable region, destroying the Middle Easts’ cultural, religious and political diversity with the largest stream of refugees since 1945.

These, and other refugees from mostly African countries, are desperately knocking at Europe's door while the world's most advanced democracies are being threatened by rising right-wing political parties and movements.

In Pakistan the Taliban’s latest attack on a school led to a massacre on nearly 130 children - with no end in sight for the war on civilians and human rights. Against this background the Nobel Peace Prize for Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai "for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education" seems like a helpless sign of humanity.

Let's put it straight: 2014 was a humanitarian nightmare, a year of political earthquakes, where politics and diplomacy failed against nationalistic and religious delusion.

So, let’s keep up hope that in 2015 we reflect and take action on what really makes us human.