THE ever-mounting toll of dead and injured in Turkey and Syria jerked attention away this week from the grinding destruction in Ukraine. Governments and NGOs, fortunately, are geared up for dealing with sudden emergencies such as this, and uneasy relations with the governments of both countries have, by and large, not stood in the way of international rescue efforts after Monday’s earthquakes. There is no disguising the political calculation that governments make over aid of this kind, however — not in international relations, but at home, as they ask: Given our limited funds, how much would our electorate like us to give to people in another country? There is, of course, no time to ask whenever an emergency occurs; so each government makes a broad estimate of national generosity. In 2020, the present Prime Minister, then Chancellor, reckoned that the UK wished to be 30 per cent less generous, and £4.5 billion was cut from the UK’s aid budget. There were protests, but the endurance of the present Government and the promotion of the man responsible suggest a widespread acquiescence. The episode showed that the present Government has no appetite for giving a moral lead in this matter. Overseas aid is a harder sell than domestic investment; so why bother?

The media have a firmer grasp of the electorate’s emotions. Images of a newborn infant, orphaned in the first minutes of life, or of a father holding the hand of his dead daughter, trapped under rubble, triggered public sympathy around the world, and confirmed governments in their decisions to divert aid money to Turkey. The word “divert” is key here, however: there is no suggestion in the UK that the aid budget overall should be increased to cover the sudden need for funds which the earthquake has caused. For that to happen, a more sustained moral pressure is required, and here the Church should conspire with principled sectors of society to force unphotogenic or inaccessible parts of the world on to people’s attention.

The visit of the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Moderator of the Church of Scotland’s General Assembly to South Sudan last week was primarily to persuade the different factions to stop the cycle of violence which was ingrained during the brutal war with the north and visited on each other since independence in 2011. But the trip also had the very basic effect of bringing South Sudan temporarily to the fore in the Western news cycle. An estimated seven million South Sudanese face food insecurity and starvation, and desperation is a factor in fuelling the continuing conflict over scarce resources. The country is unsafe, but not in the dramatic way that parts of Turkey and Syria have proved to be. Thus, there is no move, for example, by the UK Government to reverse the 59-per-cent cut in aid to South Sudan made in 2021.

Desperation and need ought not to be a competitive sport. It is right and humane that heart- and purse-strings were tugged by the earthquake this week, but not at the expense of other vulnerable people around the world. Such incidents cause the heart to enlarge, and governments should recognise this and adjust their budgets accordingly.