On the geography and distance of caring

Right now in early 2026, the news feels overwhelming in its own way. U.S. policy shifts, tensions around borders and sovereignty, hardships close to home that carry both immediate urgency and deep historical roots. These stories feel immediate and urgent, and they dominate what I’m seeing and hearing.

But there’s something else that’s been quietly bothering me for a while. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was until recently, when someone I know shared their story with me, the hardships they survived before coming to Canada. And suddenly it clicked.

There are ongoing humanitarian crises happening right now that I’m just not hearing about. Not in the same way. Not with the same volume or urgency.

I started wondering: where has my attention been going? Have I been paying attention fairly to human suffering around the world? Or have I let myself be guided only by what’s readily available to me, by what’s easy to engage with?

I’m surrounded by people with connections to different conflicts. Some are recent arrivals. Some have family members still living through violence or hardship. I hear about certain struggles constantly. The Ukraine-Russia conflict. The Middle East conflict. These are everywhere in my news feeds, in conversations, in my social media.

But other conflicts, ones I know are happening because people have told me their stories, are rarely mentioned. Places like Haiti, Sudan, Somalia, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, among others. I know these places are experiencing terrible violence because I’ve heard first-hand accounts. But I don’t get to see them the way I get to see other conflicts.

And that made me realize something uncomfortable: I haven’t been looking. I’ve been caring about what shows up in front of me, not seeking out the fuller picture. I haven’t been distributing my attention fairly.

I’m not an academic or a researcher. I’m just someone who got curious and went looking. I found two reputable organizations that track conflicts and violence globally: the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project and the Global Peace Index. I looked at their data from 2023 and 2024.

What struck me wasn’t memorizing specific percentages or exact death tolls. It was the pattern.

There are dozens of active conflicts happening right now. The number is higher than at any point since the Second World War. In 2023 alone, 168 countries experienced at least one violent conflict event. Hundreds of thousands of people died from political violence in the 12 months leading up to late 2025.

Some of the deadliest situations include Sudan, where tens of thousands have died since 2023 and more than 30 per cent of the entire population has been displaced. The Democratic Republic of Congo continues to face devastating violence. Yemen remains one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. In Mexico, gang violence has killed hundreds of thousands over nearly two decades. Haiti has seen thousands killed in political violence as gang control spirals.

These aren’t small events. These are catastrophic breakdowns involving mass displacement, famine conditions, and attacks on civilians. And yet somehow, I’m hearing about some of these constantly and others barely at all. The pattern seemed so stark when I looked at it. Places like Burkina Faso faced its worst humanitarian crisis in history with nearly two million people cut off from aid, and I had no idea.

Here’s what I keep coming back to: I consider myself reasonably caring. I talk to people. Injustice and suffering matter to me. And yet I think I’ve been shaped by what’s readily available to me, by what feels culturally or geographically closer, by what’s easier to engage with.

I now realize I hadn’t been curious enough to look beyond that. I hadn’t asked myself whether my attention had been distributed fairly across human suffering.

And the scale of what I’ve been missing is sobering. One in six people globally lives in an area experiencing active conflict, but most of them don’t live in places I’m regularly hearing about. I can’t help but think about how strongly I’ve felt about certain conflicts over others. How much certainty I’ve had in conversations. How much of that came from seeing only part of the picture and from accepting what was available to me without looking further.

This has left me with a lot to think about. About where my attention goes and why. Whether the intensity of my feelings about certain conflicts is proportional to the actual suffering happening, or proportional to how much I’m hearing about them. Whether I am being curious enough.

I’m still thinking about this. About where my heart goes and why. About what it would mean to care more fairly, not perfectly, but more consciously than I have been.

Carina Blumgrund writes from Winnipeg.