There are events that tend to be missing from international news coverage or hushed up. Developments that, even presented in the news flow, do not attract the interest of many, perhaps because the names they refer to are unknown or geographically distant.

OUR war in Ukraine was (and still is) the biggest international news item in the past 15 months. Its main characters Putin And Zelenskyappeared in news feeds for months with a frequency of… cannonballs.

But still, war in Ukraine this may have been – and rightfully so – the top news of the past year internationally due to the forces involved, their geographic location, their power and the role they play (military, commercial, energy, diplomatic) on the international stage, but it is not was the deadliest war of 2022.

“The deadliest war in the world last year was not in Ukraine,” The Economist wrote last April, looking back at the past year. “The bloodiest war in the world last year was not in Ukraine, but in EthiopiaSaid Comfort Ero, head of the Crisis Group think tank, pursuing the related topic.

OUR war in Tigray, northern Ethiopiaclose to the border of the country Eritrea And Sudan, broke out in the fall of 2020 and was a civil war. “The second most populous state in Africa, Ethiopiais again being tested by a civil conflict, ”wrote K in November of that year.

Two years later, in November 2022, the warring parties reached a fragile ceasefire agreement. However, it is estimated that the war in question left behind hundreds of thousands of dead, most of them civilians (possibly over 600,000 or even 800,000, according to a statement by the head of European diplomacy). Joseph Borel last December) and millions of displaced people. “The forgotten war in Ethiopia, which has killed an estimated 600,000 civilians, is the deadliest of the 21st century,” Spanish newspaper El Pais wrote last January.

But what are the other deadly conflicts of the 21st century?^You century? Among them are conflicts familiar to the general Western public (cf. Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine), but at the same time others – more or less – forgotten (Yemen, Congo, Darfur, Nigeria, Yes, Sudan, Central African Republic).

The war with the most deaths since The Second World War still, even today, Second Congo War (1998 – 2003) with more than 5 million (according to some estimates) dead. However, the average Western reader most likely does not even remember that such a conflict took place 20 years ago.

“In 2013, when I traveled as a journalist to the Central African Republic during the civil war,” writes Indian journalist Anjan Sundaram in an article for Foreign Policy magazine, “I discovered mass killings unknown even within 5 km of the place where they occurred . have been committed.” “As it turned out,” Sundaram continues, “after killing hundreds of civilians suspected of helping the rebels in the west of the country, the soldiers destroyed the radio antennas to prevent the news from spreading. People, fearing reprisals, did not dare to talk about the murders. For several months these massacres remained unreported…”

The interest of major Western media in what is happening in different “remote” corners of the world varies depending on the period. Even when it appears, it is usually limited in time and subject matter. Many Western correspondents rush to the same place at the same time to send similar news from there before they all leave as they came.

A recent example: the civil war case in Sudan which suddenly burst into the center of international news before disappearing again.

But even the non-Western media of the so-called Global South often do not adequately cover or internationalize what is happening in their wider environment.

In any case, the fact remains that the deadliest war in the world last year was not the war in Ukraine.