There was a time not long ago when uprisings and wars in the Arab world topped the agenda at the U.N. General Assembly meetings in New York.

With most of those conflicts in a stalemate, the world’s focus has shifted to more daunting global challenges such as the still raging coronavirus pandemic and climate change, as well as new crises in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region and the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.

But the situation in the Middle East has deteriorated significantly in more countries and in more ways in the last two years. Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen are teetering on the brink of humanitarian catastrophe, with skyrocketing poverty and an economic implosion that threatens to throw the region into even deeper turmoil.

“The region’s been crowded out by other global crises, but there’s also a sense of Western hopelessness after so many years of crisis,” said Julien Barnes-Dacey, the director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

After more than a decade of bloodshed and turmoil sparked by Arab Spring uprisings and an Islamic State group onslaught, most of the region’s Arab countries have settled into a military stalemate or frozen conflict, accompanied by worsening economies, rising poverty rates and heavier repression.

In Yemen, an ongoing six-year-war has spawned the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, leaving the country on the brink of famine. The head of the U.N. food agency warned Wednesday that 16 million people there “are marching towards starvation.” Libya, torn apart for years by rival militias backed by foreign governments, is struggling to find unity. From its shores, more and more desperate people risk their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.

Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, once countries that made up the cultural heart of the Middle East, are all witnessing a significant economic unravelling, spurred among other things by corruption and political leaders focused on preserving their own interests rather than meeting their people’s basic needs.

The most shocking fall in the past two years has been Lebanon, a tiny, multi-religious nation on the eastern Mediterranean with the highest per capita proportion of refugees in the world. The country has been in freefall since a financial crisis began in late 2019, plunging about three quarters of the population into poverty in the past months and triggering a brain drain not seen since the 1975-90 civil war days. That has been accelerated by the massive explosion at the port of Beirut in August 2020 that killed more than 200 people and destroyed parts of the city.

While many U.N. General Assembly gatherings in the past 10 years were characterized by a flurry of diplomatic activity to find a political solution for crises in Mideast countries, none of them are expected to feature prominently, if at all, in this year’s meetings in New York.

“Western actors feel out of ideas and energy in terms of focusing high-level attention on putting the region on a better track, particularly given wider global challenges,” Barnes-Dacey said.

A combination of war weariness, donor fatigue and a long list of other world problems has forced Syria, Yemen and other Mideast conflicts into a back seat, with world leaders seemingly resigned to live with wrecked and divided nations for the foreseeable future.

Source / More: AP News

Pray: That the world will not lose sight of those in the greatest need in the Middle East.
Pray: For the nation of Lebanon, for economic recovery and provision those in poverty (Luke 14: 12-14)
Pray: For peace in Yemen and the end to famine.