Foreword
This year marks a milestone: for the 10th time, CARE is publishing its Crisis Report on the 10 humanitarian crises that received the least media attention in the previous year. The 2025 media analysis paints a sobering picture: around 43 million people are affected by crises that remain largely invisible to the global public.
Conflicts, hunger, and extreme weather events destroy lives in countries such as the Central African Republic, Zambia, and Honduras. Yet other crises dominate global media coverage. Of the five million online articles on humanitarian emergencies that were analyzed, nearly half focus on the conflict in Gaza alone.
When crises remain invisible, funding often fails to materialize. In 2025, global budgets for humanitarian aid and development cooperation were cut, resulting in less food, less medical care, and less hope for people in crisis regions.
With this 10th edition, we also look back and ask: what has changed over the past decade in how forgotten crises are perceived, and what lies ahead? Behind every statistic are human beings. This report is a call to the global community to change priorities and ensure these voices are heard.
Retrospective 2016-2025: 10 years of the CARE Crisis Report
For 10 years, the CARE Crisis Report has tracked not only the world’s most urgent humanitarian crises, but also how we talk about them. Even its titles tell a story. The first report was titled “Suffering in Silence,” placing
the focus on the overlooked suffering of people in humanitarian crises. This was followed by “Breaking the Silence,” a title that already conveyed momentum, strength, and the demand for greater visibility.
Today, the report is simply called the CARE Crisis Report. This shift places the analytical dimension at the center: data, facts, and a clearly documented insight that was true from the very beginning and remains true today. Things we do not hear or read about often appear not to exist.
What has changed for the better?
In our society, awareness of the power of language has grown. We engage in debates about social equality, question discriminatory patterns, and increasingly confront structural inequalities, culture, colonial mindsets, and global responsibility. Movements such as Fridays for Future, #MeToo, and the strengthening of Black Lives Matter have shown over the past 10 years that social attitudes can change — that perspectives can broaden and new awareness can emerge.
CARE calls for exactly this kind of shift in how humanitarian crises are viewed. Media coverage often still begins only when the scale of a catastrophe is large enough to generate high reach.
From a journalistic perspective, this is understandable — but it does little justice to those affected. While public attention moves on quickly, the hardships faced by those at risk remains.
At the same time, the media landscape itself has evolved. Constructive journalism, which focuses on solutions rather than solely on negative reporting, is gaining importance. Through social media, the voices of those affected are increasingly heard directly, authentically, and no longer filtered through intermediaries. Modern technologies also make it possible to gain insights into crisis regions and establish direct contact even when journalists cannot be on the ground.
This creates greater proximity and interaction on equal footing. Women in particular — who often take on greater responsibility in crises and disasters, stabilize families, and organize communities — are becoming more visible in their leadership roles.
Now it is crucial to continue strengthening this development. Being seen is a matter of dignity and a prerequisite for people in humanitarian crises to receive the support they need. Where there is no attention, funding for change is often lacking as well.
With the 10th edition of the CARE Crisis Report, we therefore aim once again to help generate attention. Let us look closely, so that people in humanitarian crises are not forgotten, and new perspectives can emerge.