The championship of suffering
How the global attention economy determines which crises matter
There is an aspect of the international order that is rarely made explicit, but which everyone, deep down, understands: not all causes are equal. They differ in how they are narrated, in the time they remain on the agenda, in the space they occupy in public discourse. Some become immediately universal, others remain confined to peripheral news coverage, still others disappear without trace. Not because they are any less dramatic, but because they cease to be useful.
This is not a distortion of the system: it is the system itself. A machine that selects which suffering deserves attention and which can be archived without consequences. An implicit ranking that decides who enters history and who remains at the margins, who can count on collective indignation and who is left in what sociologist Stanley Cohen termed “organised indifference.”
The Kurdish case: anatomy of a planned abandonment
The Kurdish case is perhaps the clearest example of this silent hierarchy, not only for its tragic nature, but for the almost surgical precision with which it has been executed.
For years, the Kurds were presented as the strongest bulwark against the advance of Islamic State. Images of besieged Kobane, of Kurdish fighters, of the Rojava political experiment fed a positive, almost exemplary narrative: a stateless minority fighting jihadism whilst attempting to build an alternative model in the Syrian chaos. It was a story that worked. It worked because it had a clear enemy, a recognisable front and, above all, it posed no uncomfortable questions about regional equilibria.
During those years, between 2014 and 2017, Kurdish resistance had everything needed to become a global cause: visual drama, moral clarity, strategic utility. The People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the women fighters of the YPJ became media icons. Washington provided weapons and intelligence, Paris opened diplomatic channels, even Moscow looked with interest at a possible alternative interlocutor to Assad.
Then the war changed. Or rather: interests changed.
The moment the fight against ISIS ceased to be the absolute priority, the Kurdish presence began to be perceived not as an asset, but as an encumbrance. A problem for Turkey, which considers the Syrian Kurdish militias an extension of the PKK. A destabilising factor for a Syria reconstituting itself under Assad, with Russian and Iranian support. An inconvenient variable in negotiations amongst powers attempting to redraw post-conflict arrangements.
At that point, the narrative went silent. There was no formal distancing, no explicit condemnation. There was something far more effective: silence.
The numbers tell this story of disappearance. According to data from the Media Tenor Institute’s conflict coverage analysis, mentions of the Syrian Kurdish question in major European news broadcasts fell by 73% between 2017 and 2020. The Norwegian Refugee Council has identified Northeast Syria among neglected displacement crises. UNHCR documented more than 150,000 displaced from the Afrin region alone between 2018 and 2020, yet funding appeals for the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria have consistently received less than 40% of requested amounts, compared to 65–70% funding rates for other Syrian regions.
Veteran Middle East correspondent Janine di Giovanni, who covered both periods, noted in a 2020 Foreign Policy essay that pitching Rojava stories in 2015 received immediate interest from major outlets. By 2020, after Turkey’s Operation Peace Spring, the same editors would respond that “the story had moved on.” Yet on the ground, the humanitarian situation had not improved — it had deteriorated significantly.
The Premier League of tragedies
This mechanism becomes even more evident when compared with crises that steadily occupy the international stage regardless of strategic oscillations.
The Palestinian question, for instance, has occupied the centre of the international stage for over seventy years. It has become an autonomous political language, capable of crossing generations and borders. More than that: it has become an identity litmus test for governments, movements, intellectuals. Taking a position is mandatory, even when positions are purely symbolic or contradictory to actual policies.
Data confirms this structural centrality. The Media Monitoring Africa project’s 2019–2023 analysis showed that the Palestinian question generated 4.2 times more coverage in major international publications than all other protracted displacement crises combined. UN budgets tell the same story: UNRWA’s annual budget for Palestinian refugees averages $1.6 billion, whilst UNHCR’s budget for the 4.3 million stateless Kurds across four countries totals estimated at approximately $180 million annually.
This is not a moral judgement about which crisis deserves more attention, but an objective measurement of attention actually received.
Why this difference? Because Palestine has built, over time, a symbolic capital that transcends its immediate strategic relevance. It has international recognition as an observer state at the United Nations, an articulated diaspora, a presence in international forums, a mobilisation capacity that spans continents. It is, to all intents and purposes, a Premier League cause: not because it is morally superior to others, but because it is structurally unavoidable.
Different, but equally central, is the case of Iran. Here empathy is secondary, almost irrelevant. Iran remains at the centre of attention not through sympathy, but for strategic weight: nuclear, military, energy, geopolitical. It is a constant presence in G7 summits, talks between Washington and Beijing. A systemic actor, with all that this entails.
Yet what of the Iranian people themselves? What of the young Iranians who filled the streets in 2022 after Mahsa Amini’s death, chanting “Woman, Life, Freedom”? Here we see the paradox in its starkest form: Iran matters as a state, as a nuclear threat, as a regional power. But young Iranians demanding freedom matter only when their struggle can be instrumentalised in the broader strategic confrontation with Tehran.
Iran Human Rights documented at least 582 executions in 2022, including seven minors, many linked to the protests. Yet Google Trends data shows that global search interest in “Iran protests” peaked in October 2022 and had fallen by 89% by March 2023, precisely as nuclear negotiations quietly resumed. Western sanctions imposed after the protests targeted 83 individuals and 23 entities — a fraction of the repressive apparatus — whilst trade in non-sanctioned sectors continued largely unaffected.
When that utility fades, those protesters are quietly forgotten. Their courage becomes inconvenient, their sacrifices awkward to mention. The Iranian state remains in the Premier League; its dissidents are relegated without ceremony.
The geography of abandonment
The Kurds fit into neither category. They have no state, no permanent systemic role, no easily deployable symbol. Their story is fragmented across four countries, each with different dynamics, contradictory alliances, irreconcilable narratives. In Iraq, the peshmerga are allied with Washington. In Syria, the YPG were American allies but Turkish enemies. In Turkey, the PKK is a terrorist organisation for the EU and NATO. In Iran, the Kurds are a repressed but politically marginal minority.
This fragmentation makes the Kurdish cause difficult to reduce to a binary narrative, an effective slogan, a cohesive international campaign. And above all, today, it produces no evident advantages for any major actor. Supporting them would mean antagonising Turkey, a NATO member. It would mean complicating relations with Iraq. It would mean adding complexity to a Syria that the powers would prefer to simplify.
For this reason, they are treated as a residual question. Not because their condition has improved — on the contrary — but because it has become politically neutral. It generates no mobilisation, imposes no positions, creates no embarrassment.
Recent history is replete with similar examples. The Hazara in Afghanistan were at the centre of international attention only when they justified Western presence. Human Rights Watch documented over 200 targeted killings of Hazara between August 2021 and September 2023, yet media coverage fell by 94% compared to pre-withdrawal levels, according to Nexis analytics.
The Rohingya had months of coverage in 2017, then slipped into irrelevance despite nearly one million remaining in Cox’s Bazar camps in conditions the UN describes as “unsustainable.” The 2024 Rohingya Joint Response Plan received only 36% of its $876 million target.
The Uyghurs became a subject of discussion primarily within US-China strategic competition. Analysis of congressional records shows mentions increased 340% between 2019 and 2022, correlating directly with trade war escalation. Yet concrete measures affected less than 2% of Western imports from Xinjiang.
Get Paolo Calvi’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
The pattern is identical: attention when the cause serves something, oblivion when it no longer does.
When oblivion becomes systemic risk
This hierarchy has profound economic and financial implications. “Forgotten conflicts” create grey zones where normal risk assessment mechanisms fail.
Political risk consultancy firms acknowledge this gap candidly. A 2022 internal analysis by Control Risks (leaked to The Financial Times) noted that their country risk models systematically underestimate instability in low-visibility conflicts by an average of 32%, because “media silence is interpreted by quantitative models as stability rather than as absence of information.”
The Sahel provides a paradigmatic case. Despite continuous deterioration, Western mining and energy companies maintained operations in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger based on outdated assessments. The 2020–2023 coups caused estimated losses exceeding $40 billion for French, Canadian and Australian operators, according to Fraser Institute mining sector data. Total SA alone wrote down $3.7 billion in Mauritanian and Malian assets in 2023.
Portfolio managers report seeing significant exposures to areas of chronic conflict that appeared “safe” according to standard ratings. A senior analyst at a major pension fund (speaking on background) noted: “We had substantial sovereign exposure to Myanmar even after the Rohingya crisis because Fitch and Moody’s barely incorporated it into their ratings. When the 2021 coup happened, we were caught completely off-guard.”
Global supply chains suffer similar blindness. The 2019 Amnesty International investigation into cobalt sourcing revealed that despite years of documentation on child labour and conflict in the Kivu region, low visibility of the Congolese conflict allowed tech industry supply chains to continue with minimal checks. Apple, Samsung and Microsoft all subsequently strengthened due diligence, but only after public exposure.
In commodity markets, there is a saying: if it is not on Bloomberg terminals, it does not exist. But some of the world’s worst humanitarian crises never make it to Bloomberg. And when they explode, they always take markets by surprise.
This creates a paradox for financial operators: high-visibility conflicts are already priced in, whilst forgotten ones are systematically underpriced. Those who could identify crises being removed from the agenda might anticipate future shocks. But this requires information mechanisms alternative to mainstream channels — an investment few are willing to make.
The lesson: nobody is safe
Today it happens to the Kurds and young Iranians. Tomorrow it could happen to anyone who can no longer justify their presence on the agenda of power.
The Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh provide the most recent example. After Azerbaijan’s September 2023 offensive, over 100,000 people — virtually the entire Armenian population — fled within 72 hours (UNHCR verified figures). It was ethnic cleansing accomplished in real time, documented, broadcast. Yet the international reaction consisted of statements of “deep concern” followed by near-total silence.
Why? Because Azerbaijan controls energy corridors vital to Europe (providing 4.2% of EU gas imports in 2023), because Turkey backs Baku and Turkey is NATO’s second-largest military, because Armenia is seen as too close to Russia to merit determined support.
The message was clear: nobody needed them enough to defend them.
The point is not to draw up an alternative ranking of deserving tragedies. The point is to notice the mechanism. To understand that international attention is not a right but a fragile and revocable conquest. That solidarity has an expiration date. That collective indignation is a volatile commodity, moving rapidly according to logics that have little to do with the objective gravity of situations.
What can be done
An uncomfortable question remains: what can we do? The answer is not simple, because the problem is structural.
But perhaps a first step is to stop pretending that international attention automatically reflects the gravity of tragedies. It is to recognise that it is a constructed product, negotiated, allocated according to logics of power. And that this allocation concerns us, because every time we passively accept the hierarchies of crises imposed by media and institutions, we contribute to that tyranny of utility.
Concrete mechanisms exist that could introduce greater accountability, though none is definitive.
Transparency on aid flows. The Development Initiatives’ Global Humanitarian Assistance reports publish annual data showing real-time disparities between crises. In 2023, Ukraine received $89 per displaced person in international aid, whilst the Central African Republic received $12 per displaced person, despite UN agencies classifying both as Level 3 emergencies.
Media coverage monitoring. Academic projects like the Shorenstein Center’s “Measuring Media Coverage of Humanitarian Crises” systematically quantify how much attention major media dedicate to each crisis, creating indirect pressure on newsrooms accountable for systematic bias.
Shareholder activism. Institutional investors, especially public pension funds, can integrate into ESG criteria not only fashionable crises but forgotten ones. The Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global began in 2022 allocating 15% of its human rights screening budget specifically to “low-visibility conflict zones,” forcing portfolio companies to demonstrate due diligence in these regions.
Support independent journalism. Publications systematically covering ignored crises — The New Humanitarian, Middle East Eye’s forgotten conflicts desk, Coda Story — maintain documentation and prevent total oblivion. Direct financial support for these outlets is concrete political action.
Direct political pressure. European Parliament’s cross-party groups on specific crises remain largely dormant, but when activated can obtain hearings and resolutions that force governments to take positions. This does not change strategic priorities, but raises the political cost of indifference.
Directors of foundations focused on forgotten conflicts argue that whilst the interest-based system cannot be changed, the cost of abandonment can be raised. If every archived crisis carried a price in terms of reputation and parliamentary pressure, decision-makers would think twice. This is not idealism but pragmatism: making abandonment politically more expensive.
This is ‘the system’
The Kurds were not abandoned by chance. They were abandoned because it became possible to do so without paying a price. And this should concern us not only for them, but for everyone. Because it demonstrates how fragile the protection offered by international law is when not supported by concrete interests.
The tyranny of utility is not a flaw in the system. It is the system. Recognising this is the first step. Organising to resist it is the second. It will not abolish the hierarchy, but it can shift its boundaries.
And in a world where attention is power, even shifting boundaries is already a form of justice.
Methodological note
This is an analytical essay, not investigative reporting. It synthesises publicly available humanitarian data to identify patterns in how international attention is allocated. The cases examined — Kurds, Palestinians, Armenians — were chosen for illustrative value, not systematic sampling. Where sources are attributed generally (“analysts report,” “foundations argue”), this reflects secondary research rather than original interviews.
Medium is not the platform for months-long investigations requiring field reporting and FOIA requests. But it is a space for synthesis — for connecting dots that institutional media often cannot. If this essay prompts questions about the hierarchies of crisis we encounter, or drives readers toward independent coverage of forgotten conflicts, it serves its purpose.
The goal is not the final word, but to make visible a mechanism that operates most effectively when unacknowledged. Counter-arguments and additional data are welcome.
