Never again, again: why genocide awareness still fails

By Staff Writers Hamnah Akhtar, Amy Han & Erika Liu

Bodies lie unburied in the streets. Families flee burning buildings, deprived of all their belongings save the clothes on their backs. Over the past few years,  the nation of Sudan has been taken over by political catastrophe, rendering it “one of the worst humanitarian crises of the 21st century,” according to the UN News. Rampant human rights abuses, ethnic massacres, and starvation in the region have led to the development of Africa’s most severe refugee crisis today, with estimates of 4 million Sudanese displaced globally. Somalia, a neighboring nation, is under similarly dire circumstances. As a “failed state,” or nation incapable of fulfilling its citizens’ most fundamental needs, the country has been plagued by an immense power vacuum, precipitating widespread factional infighting as well as ethnic genocide of the Isaaq people — a major Somali clan. 

Yet, despite the scope and regional impact of these conflicts, they have elicited almost no conversation on a global scale. The Somali crisis is not formally recognized internationally, and  no criminal trials have been conducted for the perpetrators involved. Neither has the Sudanese conflict garnered mass attention, even as its violence spills across borders and threatens regional stability. According to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, in 2024, only 6% of Americans stated that they understood the Sudanese crisis well, as opposed to an approximate 30% for more mainstream issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Russo-Ukrainian conflict. On Western media sites, the Somali genocide rarely appears at all. Collectively, it seems, nations have turned their heads, leaving no one to speak on behalf of the victims impacted.

The final stage of genocide is indifference. It is indifference, after all, that is what truly enables perpetrators to inflict atrocities upon vulnerable people. Yet, globally, genocide awareness, especially amongst more publicly underrepresented events, continues to wither. Of the eight atrocities formally recognized by the US government between 1989 and 2002, only two actually made headlines domestically — and only because they pertained to American interests, as in the case of Iraqi oil wars and ISIS in the Global War on Terror.

Superficial, digitally-based advocacy has played a role in reducing genocide awareness to trends based on timeliness and newsworthiness. On the Internet, atrocities garner attention based on their capacity to become sensationalized: if a disaster lacks relevancy or a clear narrative, algorithmic emphasis, and thus public support, it fades. Media interest in the Ukrainian conflict fell drastically after the conflict had aged only two years. Following the Gaza war, beginning early October of 2023, coverage of Ukraine on CNN — the primary cable news network reporting on the Ukrainian conflict — fell to less than 1%. Public attention followed a similar trend tracing the Sudanese and Somali conflicts, which have both proceeded for decades, the latter being one of the longest-running conflicts in the world. Media outlets and viewers alike simply do not have the will or attention span to keep up with long-developing conflicts.

However, global priorities are not fueled solely by newsworthiness. “I hate to say it,” history teacher Bill Jeffers said, regarding the lack of coverage on conflicts in Africa, “but it comes down to race and racism … When we look at … who has representation, who has political power, who doesn’t have political power, those things factor into [genocide awareness] as well.” A study conducted in 2007 on global news patterns shows that incidents in Europe are far more likely to receive immediate coverage, whereas similar or even more severe events in African countries go unreported unless the scale of impact is significantly larger. The study, published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, stated that the statistics are only worse for disasters within the Pacific, where it takes 91 Pacific Islander deaths to elicit the same journalistic attention as one European death. 

Perpetuating the idea that some lives are worth more than others devalues nonwhite genocides — an idea which has historically facilitated dangerous inaction. In a 2004 editorial, The Washington Post promoted false, sensationalist statements on Sudan’s Darfur genocide, including sweeping statements accusing the nation’s government of being “delighted with the war’s slaughter” and leveraging starvation as a weapon against its own people. The statements were blatantly untrue — between 1992 and 1997, Darfur feeding stations increased twentyfold, with every facility being authorized by the government. Such blatant misconception, especially from a publication as reputable as The Washington Post, demonstrates journalists’ shallow interest in conflicts overseas, a key factor in global ignorance surrounding international calamities. A similar pattern occurred in Western coverage of the Rwandan genocide. The crisis ended up developing into one of the most “efficient and complete” genocides of the 20th century, according to the University of Hawaii, killing over 80% of the country’s Tutsi minority population. But before the extermination progressed into its final stages, the American media reports focused solely on the town of Kigali, failing to accurately represent the issue as it developed on a national scale.  To this day, the Rwandan genocide is commonly referred to by its moniker, “the Preventable Genocide” — a stab at the Western media bias that allowed such a conflict to fester, and, to this day, allows underrepresented conflicts to continue to deteriorate. When people overlook any type of genocide, they open the door for further transgressions, making it crucial to hold perpetrators accountable, no matter where they may reside. But accountability alone is not enough. The truth is, Western media has a long history of deciding which tragedies are worth our tears and which ones barely deserve a headline. When coverage is selective, so is outrage. And when outrage is selective, justice becomes a privilege, not a right. 

At MSJ, students have the opportunity and resources to engage with global news and participate in real advocacy. Clubs like Model UN and Amnesty International offer accessible opportunities for high schoolers to take part in genocide discussions. “Never Again” is not a phrase confined to history classes; it is a real promise we are supposed to keep. But promises mean nothing without action. As students, we might not be able to change foreign policy, but we can change how our community talks about injustice. We can choose to be informed. We can choose to speak. And we can choose to care.