Child Soldier to War Criminal - The Cycle of Violence in Uganda

Dominic Ongwen, Brigade Commander in the Lord’s Resistance Army under the leadership of Joseph Kony, stands on trial at the International Criminal Court on 70 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes. His charge list makes for grim reading: murder, enslavement, inhumane acts of inflicting serious bodily injury and suffering, cruel treatment of civilians, intentionally directing an attack against a civilian population, torture, rape, and pillaging.

But Ongwen’s trial is not unique in the nature of the brutality it will examine; these stories are unfortunately all too familiar in the region of central Africa that the LRA has terrorised for over three decades. Rather, it is unique in that it marks a first for the International Criminal Court. This is the first time that an inductee is being charged with the same crimes that have been done to him. Thomas Obhof, a defence lawyer on the case, has emphasised this point in discussing the charges against Ongwen: ““He was tortured … forced to watch people being killed, was used for fighting as a child soldier. Even the prosecution have said that what he went through is a serious mitigating factor.”

Ongwen was abducted by LRA soldiers when he was around ten years old (he claims in his own testimony that he was 14, but this is disputed by other LRA captives who think he was younger). Once captured, he was tortured and forced to watch videos of people being killed. As he became indoctrinated, he was taken under the wing of Kony’s deputy commander, Vincent Otti, who acted as a father figure to the young boy (and would later be indicted alongside Ongwen by the ICC, though he would be executed by Kony before facing justice). He was told he was fighting for the future of his people, the Acholi of northern Uganda, and that his missions had come from God. He was told he would grow up to be a leader of a feared and elite military unit. And he did, impressing Kony and Otti with his military tactics, and striking fear into the heart of any civilians who knew his name.

Now in the dock, this former child soldier stands before the world as a perpetrator of the very acts he witnessed and suffered through as a boy. Almost 2,000 people will be represented by the prosecution in his case, which is currently ongoing. As far as many are concerned, life imprisonment will not be justice enough for Dominic Ongwen. Joseph Akweyu Manoba, appointed by the ICC to represent the victims, told the Guardian “They tell me that if the ICC doesn’t punish him and he returns to Uganda then they will kill him themselves”.

And who can blame them? Ongwen’s Sinia Brigade ravaged northern Uganda between May 2004 and October 2005, attacking IDP camps, and killing, raping, and plundering their way across the land they were supposedly liberating.

Ongwen’s childhood abduction by Kony’s men does not excuse his own abhorrent acts. He remains responsible for his own crimes, and if he is found guilty he should be held accountable for every single life he ended or ruined. But his story should remain a warning for those seeking revenge for horrors inflicted upon themselves.

Perpetrators are rarely simply perpetrators. Many were victims first. This does not absolve them of their moral duties, and nor should it change our opinion of them or their actions. But the contexts in which a monster is made should be examined, because only then can we work towards ending the cycle of violence that only breeds more violence.

Dominic Ongwen, child soldier turned war criminal, now faces some form of justice at the ICC. His captor, torturer, commanding officer, and spiritual leader, Joseph Kony, remains at large. The LRA has abducted 3,400 more children since 2008. Child Soldiers International reports that active recruitment of child soldiers occurs in at least 46 countries globally, and that children have served in at least 18 conflicts since 2016. All will live with the consequences of violence for the rest of their lives.

As the ICC tries to find a semblance of justice in the case of Dominic Ongwen, it falls to all of us to work towards ensuring that we do not have to do this again. As Ongwen’s story demonstrates, it is far easier to harm than to heal. Violence can undo in seconds what peace takes years to achieve. We must strive for peace, however hard that may be.

You can find out more about child soldiers here.

Humanitarian Commandos - The Problem with Politicising Aid

The international humanitarian sector faces a host of challenges in improving its capacity to respond to complex emergencies across the globe. In the context of increasing violence being perpetrated against aid workers globally (174 aid workers were killed in 2017 alone, a 30% increase from the year before), international NGOs and humanitarian organisations are facing difficult decisions regarding how best to remain effective in supporting civilians affected by conflict, and also safeguarding their own personnel.

When a situation becomes too unsafe for humanitarian work to continue, the consequences can be disastrous. For example, when MSF was forced to suspend operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 450,000 people were affected. Therefore, humanitarian organisations and development actors are searching for new ways of working that can allow for continued aid support in dangerous areas, and that also provide a modicum of protection for the aid workers themselves.

According to a recent report from USAID’s Global Development Hub, the answer may be to train aid workers as commandos. The proposal of the development of so-called Rapid Expeditionary Development (RED) teams within USAID would allow humanitarian work to continue in areas where other civilian American personnel are unable to reach, according to the report’s authors. The suggestion is that “RED Team members would be specifically recruited and trained ... to secure communities vulnerable to violent extremist radicalization and exploitation” and that these individuals would then be able to act independently of partner organisations in delivering support in austere environments.

This sort of “elite humanitarian” capability may well increase the capacity of USAID to respond in hard-to-reach areas and allow for a more hands-on approach to complex emergencies as they unravel, but it also risks further blurring the line between humanitarian action and military activities.

Traditional humanitarian approaches to security are characterised by ‘acceptance’, or the idea that aid and development workers will be kept safe by the fact that they are not perceived as a threat (as enshrined as a fundamental principle of humanitarian action by the Red Cross movement). In contrast, the use of military-style tactics and techniques help to contribute to a “culture of war” that can lead to the perception of foreign actors as combatants rather than benign actors.

The growing number of attacks on humanitarian actors since 2003 has been attributed to the increasing link between INGO activity and the agendas of western governments. USAID, as an American organisation, can be expected to work in support of wider US strategic goals, but humanitarian actors more generally must be seen to remain neutral in the conflict situations in which they respond. A 2017 article published in International Peacekeeping found that “there is a growing consensus that the politicization of aid and its embeddedness within military operations may be contributing to greater humanitarian insecurity…”. This extends to the humanitarian sector in its broadest sense. If one organisation is seen to be acting in a way not befitting of the humanitarian agenda then the entire sector is held responsible - and suffers the consequences.

The USAID proposal argues that RED Team members could be used to help win the “hearts and minds” of local communities, but this very terminology was borne from the counterinsurgency movement in the US military (as the report itself references). Humanitarian action should not be about “winning hearts and minds”. It should be about saving lives. Governmental agencies like USAID or DFID will of course work to uphold national interests, but the co-option of humanitarian activity to meet political ends puts the whole sector in the firing line.

The legitimacy of the humanitarian sphere as a neutral, impartial, and independent force for good is the best defence an aid worker can have.

“Humanitarian commando” is an oxymoron. Aid worker deaths and kidnappings will continue to rise if the lines between humanitarian and combatant remain blurred.

Valentine's Poems and a Poundland Lenin

It’s been another day of useless and stupid political discourse in the UK. Today, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell comes under fire for calling Winston Churchill a “villain” for his decision to send in soldiers to break up striking miners in Tonypandy, South Wales, as home secretary in 1910 – 1911. In response, Sir Nicholas Soames, Tory MP and grandson of Churchill, referred to McDonnell as a “third rate, Poundland Lenin” who was only making the statement in order to gain publicity. If that were the case, it certainly worked. Theresa May and Boris Johnson rushed to the defence of Churchill, with Johnson declaring on Twitter “"Winston Churchill saved this country and the whole of Europe from a barbaric fascist and racist tyranny and our debt to him is incalculable… JM should be utterly ashamed of his remarks and withdraw them forthwith.". The argument has become so heated that Tory MP Robert Halfon even requested an “emergency debate” on Churchill in Parliament.

McDonnell’s quote came in response to a question posed in a Q&A with Politico: “Winston Churchill, hero or villain?”. Given the simplicity of the question, McDonnell was almost forced to answer unequivocally; in Tonypandy, Churchill was the villain.  He did later clarify that Churchill was a “hero” in the war.

Now I would like to suggest, and bear with me here, that both responses might be correct. Is it not possible that the “greatest Briton who ever lived” is also the man who enthusiastically supported British concentration camps in South Africa during the Boer War? Is it not possible that the man who led Britain at a time when the Empire was on the brink of collapse did his utmost to defend the UK, even at the expense of the colonies?

There is no such thing as a hero or villain. There are only public figures who make decisions that benefit some, often at the expense of others. Good people do bad things, bad people occasionally do good things, and those of us who fall squarely in the “average” category will keep doing both. The world is not black and white. And we should not treat it as such.

Reducing Winston Churchill to a “hero” or a “villain” deprives us of the ability to rationally evaluate the decisions that he made as a leader. When we talk about someone as influential as Churchill we should be able to do so objectively, or we risk historical revisionism. Take Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, a peace icon and Burmese national hero who later stooped to the depths of inhumanity in her tacit support for ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya in Rakhine. Her past triumphs should not justify her current crimes. Nor should Churchill’s status as a British hero make him immune to criticism.

This debate serves as a distraction to the looming debacle of Brexit currently hanging over the UK. But in case you were worried that the Churchill scandal was preventing Parliament from making serious progress in Brexit negotiations don’t worry, Tory MP Andrea Leadsom and SNP MP Pete Wishart found time to spar on the issue through some Valentine’s poems…

What has happened to debate? In the Twitter age, it appears to be easier to launch a personal attack against someone with an opposing view than to consider their argument and respond with a reasonable critique. When the Brexit negotiations in the UK parliament look more like point-scoring exercises than meaningful discussions on how best to secure a deal, we have to start to question where it all went wrong. If we lose the ability as a society to debate the legacies of our most important public figures, or the content of the policies that will shape our country for decades to come, then we lose the ability to meaningfully come together to find solutions to our biggest issues.

You may or may not agree with John McDonnell. You might think I’m wrong to criticise those who responded angrily to his comments. You might also be pro-deal, be happy to leave the EU without a deal, want a second referendum or have no idea what it is that you want from the Brexit madness anymore. That’s good. That’s normal. Let’s take a breather and ask why we’re so upset. Let’s talk about it.

The Sudanese Spring? - Demonstrations and Dissent in Khartoum

2019 is likely to be a difficult year for Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir. As protests against his economic reforms continue to spread, including into loyalist areas of the country, the upheaval represents one of the greatest challenges to his 30-year rule of the country. The protests were triggered by a cut to wheat subsidies that saw the price of bread double overnight at the end of last year, but this was only the latest in a trend of economic decisions that have led to rampant inflation throughout the year.

The peaceful protests that emerged in response to this latest economic stressor were met with Bashir’s preferred tool for dealing with political unrest: excessive violence. Riot police, tear gas, and live ammunition have been employed across the country since the outbreak of protests on December 19^th last year. As a result, Human Rights Watch claims that 40 protestors have been killed (The official death toll, according to Sudanese officials, is 24, as of the 13^th January). According to official reports, a further 816 people have been arrested, university professors, students, doctors, and lawyers among them.

This new wave of protests is unique in that it encompasses people who have previously either supported the President or remained silent during periods of civil unrest. Even prominent party members have spoken out against their leader. According to some, Bashir’s position has never been weaker, and that means that the loyalty of the security forces that have quashed previous rebellions can no longer be guaranteed. As the International Crisis Group notes, “The police and other security agencies, including the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS), have at times responded brutally but the army has shown greater restraint than before and, noting this, the opposition has urged generals to remove Bashir.” Rumblings in the military elite may signal a sign of growing discontent within the very groups Bashir requires to protect him.

Bashir’s grip has steadily loosened since the secession of South Sudan in 2011, which saw a dramatic 75% decrease in Sudan’s oil revenues. This, coupled with economic sanctions from many Western states (due largely to Sudan’s status in Washington as a “state sponsor of terrorism”), severely limited Bashir’s capacity to fund development projects in the country and maintain his security apparatus. As the wheat subsidies cuts demonstrate, it was the state’s social programmes that suffered. Critics maintain that economic mismanagement and the cost of fighting ethnic minority rebellions have left other government sectors severely underfunded for decades. For the many dedicated government staff who sincerely want to support Sudan’s civil society, Bashir clientelism is a constant obstacle to development. Increasingly, these former allies of Bashir are now speaking out and calling for desperately-needed reform.

Bashir may have felt that he did not need to consider the needs of an increasingly poor and disenfranchised population as long as he kept his security forces strong and loyal. He is no stranger to silencing critics through force. 200 protestors were killed in September 2013 after protests over a cut in fuel subsidies (authorities put the death toll at 84). The actions of the Sudanese Armed Forces and their Janjaweed militia allies in Darfur in 2003 – 2008 have led the ICC to issue a warrant for Bashir’s arrest on five counts of crimes against humanity, two counts of war crimes, and three counts of genocide. Whilst some fighting continues across Darfur, any regional groups that could have posed a direct threat to Bashir’s government have been splintered by the protracted violence inflicted upon the region. Despite the ICC warrant, Bashir has visited at least 33 countries with impunity, and continues to conduct state business on the global stage. It seems violence has served him extremely well in the past.

But violence alone cannot preserve a leader that has failed in too many other aspects. Half of Sudan’s population now live below the poverty line. With protestors calling for “freedom, peace and justice” in the same breath as they call for “the fall of the regime”, it becomes clear that this is a storm that Bashir may not weather. Sudan has great potential to be a prosperous nation, and the people show a renewed willingness to demand better of their leaders.

Due to his capacity to navigate a seemingly endless barrage of national emergencies, Bashir is often seen as a political survivor. But now it appears that the Sudanese public are no longer content with simply survival. They want to live.

You can keep up-to-date on the latest developments in Sudan via @YousraElbagir on Twitter.

The UK's Homelessness Epidemic

A couple of weekends ago I went out in London for some pre-Christmas drinks with some friends from university. It was a rainy evening, but the streets were full of people heading home from Christmas shopping or out to office parties and to catch up with friends. It was hectic. On my way to the pub I crossed from Euston train station to Warren Street underground, a walk of no more than five minutes down just one road. Dodging the mums dragging their bags of presents home and the groups of students laughing and joking as they headed further into town, I passed a total of eleven homeless people sat in doorways attempting to protect themselves from the spitting rain. I, along with everyone else, kept walking past.

Britain is in the middle of a homelessness epidemic. Homelessness charity Shelter estimates the number of those with no permanent residence at 320,000, an increase from 307,000 in 2017 and 294,000 in 2016. Of those 320,000 the charity Crisis estimates that over 24,000 will be sleeping rough, on the streets or public transport, over this Christmas period. According to the same study, the number of rough sleepers in Britain has risen by 98% since 2010, and the number in tents and buses has increased by 103%.

The dramatic rise in rough sleeping is having an impact at local level. In Brighton and Hove, which has the second largest homeless population in England, city councillors are finding themselves heavily divided on the best way to tackle the issue. After the council was asked to apologise for forcing several homeless people out of their tents early this year, the debate over how best to respond to the rising number of rough sleepers has intensified, with Conservative councillor Robert Nemeth claiming that now is the time for “tough love not warm words”. Allowing tents on the street and not doing more to tackle street drinking, he claims, is a “national embarrassment” that is harming both the affected individuals and Brighton’s tourism industry. Green councillor Alex Phillips countered that the city’s decision to spend £10 million on improving infrastructure would have been better spent on housing.

But here lies the problem. Local councils are having to make decisions based on their limited budgets, and in Brighton, which depends on tourism for a large part of its industry and income, it makes sense that better infrastructure will win out in the allocation of funding. Despite the national government’s asserted aims to eliminate rough sleeping by 2027, local councils across the country are arguing that they are not being provided with the funding required to tackle the issue effectively.  Local government is at the pointed end of a spear that has been systematically failing those at risk of falling into homelessness for years.

Individual causes of homelessness (the breakdown of relationships, drug and alcohol misuse, domestic violence – which was listed as a cause in a staggering 6,850 cases of homelessness in 2017/17) are exacerbating factors for large numbers of rough sleepers across the UK, but the rising number of individuals finding themselves without a place to stay in recent years points to underlying systematic factors increasingly making people vulnerable to losing their home. The most frequently reported cause of homelessness is failure to find new accommodation at the end of a short hold lease, followed by increasingly unaffordable rent prices. The housing crisis in the UK continues to worsen, with the average rent price in London now costing 49% of the average monthly salary, and the national average cost of a house standing at 7.8 times the average annual salary for a full-time worker. Home ownership is increasingly unattainable, and renting is increasingly unsustainable as the shortage of suitable property continues to drive up prices. Stagnating wages and the instability of renting also means that 8 million people in the UK are just one pay check away from being unable to pay for their home. The ever-increasing cost of living is reducing consumer spending as more and more money is diverted to private landlords and banks in order to pay for housing.

As living costs spiral upward, austerity measures have systematically broken down the safety nets for those at risk of slipping into poverty. The United Nations’ special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, recently accused the UK government of inflicting “great misery” on its citizens through its austerity policies. He cited a report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation that found that around “14 million people, a fifth of the population, live in poverty and 1.5 million are destitute”. Poverty on this scale, in the world’s fifth-largest economy, is a political choice, claimed the report. Such statements have seemingly passed under the radar thanks to the overwhelming focus on Brexit, which itself has purportedly cost the average UK household £900, according the Bank of England.

It is unfortunate that the political debacle of Brexit has diverted attention away from Conservative claims that “austerity is over”, because an examination of the limited implementation of these policies would have revealed far more about what we could be doing better to support the millions of people at risk of falling into poverty and homelessness. The Brexit monster has derailed Theresa May’s pledges to tackle society’s injustices, but it remains true that years of austerity-focused policies after the 2008 recession have left us a nation more divided and unequal than we were a decade ago, with more than one-fifth of the population living below the poverty line as wealth inequality continues to grow.

In his report on the UK’s austerity measures, Philip Alston claims that “British compassion for those who are suffering has been replaced by a punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous approach apparently designed to instil discipline where it is least useful...” (p3). As the use of food banks soars, the number deaths of homeless people increases by 24%, and the level of rough sleepers doubles in five years, the richest 1,000 Britons have increased their wealth by £274 billion since 2013. In 2018, the wealth of the richest 1,000 people in the UK is £724 billion which is greater than the poorest 40% of households combined (£567 billion). These figures dwarf the £10 million that Brighton and Hove councillors put towards infrastructure for the city rather than housing for the homeless population. According to a government report from 2012, homelessness in the UK costs the taxpayer around £1 billion. A compassionate approach could solve this crisis. In fact, early interventions that prevent homelessness from occurring could also save the public purse up to £370 million.

The rising number of homeless people are just the most obvious sign of a system of austerity that has been damaging the middle and working classes in this country for years. When those people are imagined as drug addicts and failures, that demonstrates a society lacking in compassion. When tents and sleeping bags on the side of the street are “a national embarrassment”, we’ve lost our humanity somewhere along the way.

We need to push our government to do better by the people it is supposed to serve. And in the meantime, we could all do a little more to show compassion for those that society has failed. We can all try our best to not just walk past.

If you want to find out what you can do to support someone struggling with homelessness this winter, you can visit the Shelter or Crisis websites.

Tear Gas and Tough Talk - The US Border Crisis Escalates

Tear gas, classified as a chemical weapon by the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, has been banned from use in warfare. It’s effects, which include a “burning, watery sensation in the eyes, difficulty breathing, chest pain, excessive saliva… skin irritation” and, after prolonged exposure, vomiting and diarrhoea, can in some cases also lead to death. Yesterday, it was used to disperse 500 migrants at the US-Mexico border after some attempted to breach the fence between Tijuana and San Diego.

This is not the first time that the US government has used tear gas against civilians. Indeed, somewhat illogically, whilst the use of tear gas in a conflict zone is tantamount to a war crime, it is perfectly legal and standard operating procedure for police forces around the world to use it for the purposes of crowd dispersal and control. It was used in 2014 during the Ferguson protests and the use of chemical agents such as tear gas and pepper spray against peaceful protesters has become so normalised that the UC Berkeley Science Review hosts a handy guide to the difference between the two and how to treat the effects of an attack.

The use by American law enforcement of a chemical weapon to combat civilian demonstrations by US citizens is nothing new, and therefore it should be unsurprising that such force would be extended to the “stone cold criminal” migrants just south of the border. Trump’s inflammatory language following the gas attack and the administration’s previous policy of separating families at the border leave no doubt as to the position of the US government on the migrant caravan, and it seems as though this latest escalation may be only the start of an even tougher response to those seeking refuge in the United States.

Which begs the question, exactly what is this a response to?

Trump has previously described the migrant caravan as “an invasion” that has required the deployment of troops to the southern border. But an invasion is usually identified as an aggressive act undertaken by an organised armed group, which the migrant caravan is not. If it were, and the migrant families at the border could be defined as an enemy combat force, then the use of tear gas against them could potentially be treated as a war crime.

The migrant caravan consists of around 7,000 migrants who have made their way from Central America to the US/Mexico border at Tijuana after fleeing conflicts in their home states. Although additional numbers of migrants continue to make their way towards the US, the notion that this constitutes a major increase in those seeking asylum from Central America is incorrect. As the journalistic fact-checking site Politifact notes: “the recent numbers of people apprehended at the southwest border also aren’t as high as they were in the early 2000s. Border Patrol apprehensions during that time often surpassed 1 million. Total southwest border apprehensions in fiscal year 2018 were below 400,000.”

This is a manufactured crisis. Trump ran on a platform that outright labelled Mexican migrants as criminals, rapists, and animals. His push for a border wall is also designed to stoke anti-immigrant fear in a rapidly fracturing America, and my fear is that the rhetoric, and the response it generates towards immigrants, is going to get worse before it gets better. The day after the tear-gassing, the Associated Press referred to the migrant march towards the border as a “show of force”, again portraying the scenes at the “war-like” border as some sort of battle between US troops and a dangerous invading enemy.

Men, women, and children have been stopped at the border after walking thousands of miles to flee violence and unrest in their homelands. Allowing unrestricted access to the United States may not be a possibility, and that is not what I, or anyone else, is suggesting. But turning them into scapegoats – making them at turns into enemy combatants, criminals, or animals – is a dangerous and deeply worrying development. Now stranded in Tijuana, the migrant families are finding that the Mexican authorities and local residents, themselves being portrayed as rapists and security threats by their increasingly aggressive northern neighbour, are also turning against them.

This is dehumanisation unfolding in real time. This is the most powerful country on earth gearing up to go on the offensive against some of its weakest and most vulnerable people. The anti-immigrant rhetoric that has been festering in the US and Europe over the last few years is now poisoning everything, including, with this latest tear-gas attack, the migrants themselves.

Compassion Fatigue - Fighting Hopelessness in an Interconnected World

In the modern age of 24 hour news cycles and social media, we are constantly bombarded with images of human suffering on an unimaginable scale, argues a recent Guardian Long Read article by Elisa Gabbert. With global peace and security deteriorating and immediate access to the horrors of violence and disasters through social media, we have never been more aware of the trauma of others. With this new exposure to suffering, argues Gabbert, there is a very real risk of becoming numb to the headlines. When there is that much trauma, what can one person do to help? What’s the point in doing anything, if the one person you might help will only be replaced by a million more in an even worse situation?

This sense of helplessness and desire to turn away is clinically referred to as “compassion fatigue”. As Gabbert references, the psychologist Charles Figley defines compassion fatigue as “a state of exhaustion and dysfunction... as a result of prolonged exposure to compassion stress”. The effects of compassion fatigue are particularly detrimental to first responders and carers, individuals who are exposed to trauma every day as part of their job, but with more direct exposure to conflict, disaster, and suffering than ever before, there’s a risk of compassion fatigue manifesting itself in the general public as well.

Throughout the Guardian article, Gabbert wrestles with the consequences of this feeling of apathy that comes from prolonged exposure to compassion stress. It’s hard to watch the news, when, as journalist Susan Moeller puts it, the media careens “from one trauma to another, in a breathless tour of poverty, disease and death”. You can only watch so many such stories before it becomes too emotionally taxing. How many times have you heard someone say that they don’t like to watch the news because it’s “too depressing”?

The media, activists, and campaigners have long been aware of the very real effects of dehumanisation, and it’s opposite. Telling someone that one million people are suffering as a result of the latest disaster or conflict rarely inspires action because it is impossible to comprehend that many people, let alone that many people’s suffering. But telling the story of one of those people elicits a much stronger emotional reaction and desire to respond, because suddenly the tragedy has been ‘humanised’, it’s suddenly real. However, if that very human story of personalised trauma appears on our screens alongside twenty other very human stories of personalised trauma, then for many of us, our reserves of empathy and compassion have already been used up and we’re back to square one.

Combating compassion fatigue in this interconnected world is therefore increasingly difficult. A scroll down my Twitter feed shows news reports depicting the latest violence in Yemen and Syria, project updates from Medecins Sans Frontieres detailing the struggle to support refugees in the Mediterranean, and even comedians and actors bemoaning the latest policies of the Trump administration that continue to separate families at the border. If I really want to make a difference, which one of these issues deserves my attention? And even if I picked one, what can I actually do to make any real impact? And, if somehow I managed to do something, anything, will I just have to do it all over again when the next thing comes along? It certainly is overwhelming.

Gabbert struggles with her own conclusion that stepping away from politics is one way of coping with compassion fatigue. There is comfort, she argues, in knowing that if you personally just need a break from the worries of the world, there will be other people to pick up the slack until you’re ready to carry on the fight. However, as she acknowledges, sometimes this feels more like avoidance than a real solution to the problem. Is there anything else we can do to overcome compassion fatigue?

The humanisation of a problem certainly seems to galvanise a response and gain support for humanitarian operations in the immediate aftermath of a disaster or conflict, but focusing only on the human trauma is increasingly unhelpful. Instead, we should be focusing on the whole human experience. Individuals that have lived through war or a major disaster are still individuals, with their own aspirations, skills, family histories, and stories to tell. Those stories are not limited to the trauma. We are at risk, with our current news coverage, of labelling a survivor of conflict or poverty as simply that; another wretched soul in need of assistance. This breeds the apathy and even indignation symptomatic of compassion fatigue. What makes this person more deserving of my help than anyone else?

But refugees, conflict survivors, those displaced by disasters or suffering from poverty, are not defined by their current status. They might need some help right now, but mostly they want to help themselves. And so often, they do. These are the stories we don’t hear. That malnourished, crying child on the news today, if given the right sort of support right now, will have far happier stories to tell in the future. Human stories that don’t drain our compassion, but inspire us. Last year I spent three months living and working in Sarajevo with the Post-Conflict Research Center (PCRC). Sarajevo today is a vibrant, unique city surrounded by the most incredibly beautiful natural environment, and filled with people who do amazing things every day. Just over twenty years ago, it was a burned out husk that dominated our newsreels as a place with little to no hope for the future. Whilst I was there I spent some time covering the still-developing Rohingya crisis, and the burned out homes, displaced populations, and ethnic violence echoed many of the scenes in the former Yugoslavia two decades prior. I found myself wondering what the status of the Rohingya people will be in twenty years time. What will Syria look like in 2040?

Humans are survivors, and even in the darkest times there are sparks of light. Those sparks of light can lift us out of compassion fatigue and inspire us instead. Those are the stories we should be telling. PCRC first opened my eyes to this with their Ordinary Heroes project, which focuses on ordinary people who did amazing things to save lives in the darkest days of the conflict. These people never had their faces on the news. Similarly, UNHCR’s Stories page has been set up to tell the stories of re-homed refugees who are now making an impact in their new societies in various unique and interesting ways. Again, these are the stories that don’t get featured in the headlines.

The helplessness that many people might feel watching the news stems, at least in part, from a sense that the suffering is so severe, so extreme, that there’s nothing we can do to help. It is important to remember that what we see is a snapshot of the lowest point of these people’s lives. Their stories don’t stop when the journalists and aid agencies leave. They pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and carry on. And make many new stories that involve laughter and love. We should seek these stories out, because they can lift us up and inspire us when we might be starting to feel like there’s no hope.

You don’t need to save a life to make a difference, and you should not take that weight with you. You need to give someone a chance to save their own. And if we as socially-conscious citizens can manage that then we are given the chance to see how resourceful and incredible people can be. I found inspiration in the stories I heard of survival in the darkest days of the former-Yugoslav wars, and continue to feel energised by the tales of everyday heroism in today’s conflict and disaster zones.

The world can often seem like a dark and scary place, especially when we are exposed to its darkest and scariest moments. But if we focus on the human stories, the full human stories, suddenly it feels as though things might be a little more hopeful than we first thought.