Armed Conflicts in the World: A Disheartening Panorama
Armed Conflicts in the World: Currently, the world is shaken by numerous armed conflicts. According to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), 59 conflicts involving states were recorded in 2023, the highest number since 1946. Additionally, there were nine conflicts classified as wars, with over 1,000 deaths per year, most of which occurred in Africa, including the conflicts in Sudan and the wars in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine. Overall, approximately 154,000 victims of organized violence were recorded in 2023, a decrease from the previous year, but still one of the highest numbers since 1989. Non-state conflicts, often between gangs and cartels, caused 20,900 deaths, primarily concentrated in Latin America.
Reflecting on Our Humanity
You might be wondering what all this is for. You've received yet another WhatsApp message from this reporter who, in the evening, bothers you with his articles, while you've had your own workday, filled with emotions and stress. Maybe things aren't going as they should, or you've just had one of those days. This article stems from a thought: perhaps humanity is the disease, and the pandemic is the cure. Why shouldn't I think so? I've never read a history book that speaks of peace, or one where there haven't been conflicts. War is part of our genetic code, as is the incessant need to help others, whether near or far. We're so caught up in our systemic dynamics that we've forgotten that our lives have an expiration date. As vast as the universe is, so is its birth; our lives, or rather, our existence, is comparable to a blink of an eye. Consider it half an hour: in just half an hour, all of our existence, our entire soul, our consciousness, our entire spirit exists and then falls into oblivion.
I wonder how we humans, so evolved and intelligent, can't remember that the problem isn't aid. The problem isn't the lack of funds, but rather the aid itself. Hundreds, thousands of aids have arrived in Africa, yet often, behind those boxes of medicines, there were boxes of guns. Let's take a random country: Sierra Leone. Indeed, how much do we love to harm? We must not forget that we are not just lucky but privileged. Should we help them at home? I say we should leave their home. Yes, for the West to continue to squander, grow, and fatten like a pig for the slaughter, other countries must endure our hunger. We proceed, destroy, make fake charitable campaigns to feel better, and in the meantime, many children die, really many children. But what can we do? Oh right, we can participate in public tenders, funded by the same EU that then, through phantom companies, does land grabbing and ravages landscapes. We make tenders for our projects, the money arrives that we have to justify to tell how awful the world is, and in the meantime, you have collected money and sent it to that volunteer doctor who has decided to say goodbye to his family to save the life of a nobody, of a person who is part of the great board of the dead and the living.
You send that money, he books his flight, taking that flight whose waste, as happens with Ethiopian Airlines, ends up in the Dandora landfill, so that other zombies can collect misery. So, you sent that money, the doctor goes there, endures, resists, and sometimes gets injured, sometimes killed. He does his best and saves a life, and another one, then returns to Italy, tired, exhausted. And that child he saved is dead, didn't make it. He's dead. Yes, then I wonder how beautiful and horrible it must be to be a mother. The woman is indeed the most beautiful thing there is. She generates life: Mother Earth, Mother Nature, call her what you want. She is there, aware of being born in the wrong part of the world, while she watches that son who didn't make it. Then I ask myself: are we not just shitty creatures, we humans? Yes, we are awful! But what can we do?
Our goal is to make followers so we can tell the world how good and altruistic we were to document the billionth child a bit black, a bit yellow, in short, a bit different from us. Because the Westerner likes to be the narrator, to be the explorer. I wonder how many have read Ryszard Kapuscinski. How many activists fight and die, and no one mentions them, except in some text of some major newspaper that no one reads, because now the world is audiovisual and therefore wants a certain amount of content, made in a certain way, because the algorithm said so. Here we are, humans, we have become slaves to our own genius: an algorithm. An algorithm says what is okay and what is not, tells us what goes viral and what doesn't, and if a child with flies gets many likes, who cares, he's African, he's black, so we like it, as if we were still stuck in colonial companies, when the white man discovered the Indies, cocoa, and chili. We like the exotic, but when we talk about people dying, oh no, always wars? Always problems? If with all the money we've sent there, we had helped them, by now the world would be saved. That's what you read in the posts. Well, a banal but so obvious answer that it should make you think, don't you think? I apologize, reader, I apologize for disturbing you. I just wanted to tell you that this is one of the many children who die of malnutrition in Congo, and I cry and suffer because the world is awful.
Now that you have read the rant of this dumb reporter, you might say that not only was it a shitty day, but you also read a sermon from an idiot. Everyone has their job, mine is to suffer the torment of a world that doesn't listen, that is too busy watching videos of carbonara online, pizzas, and other things, instead of stopping and saying: maybe, maybe it's time to put an end to it.
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