It is fair to remember the deaths of 1939-1945. But also keep the anger of the current wars | Simon Tisdall

VIctims of Nazi atrocities will be stored during ceremonies next week marking the end of the Second World War in Europe. Survivors and parents gathered at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp near Hanover last Sunday to commemorate the 72,000 estimated people who were murdered there. Among the people killed was a young Jewish girl of German origin, Anne Frank, whose famous newspaper remembers these terrible moments.

The deaths of 1939-1945 should never be forgotten. But we must also be aware of counting the dead of 2025. To find out that in the years to come, we will remember, record and honor the victims of the recurring atrocities of today. Each day brings a news of more appalling acts by governments and armed groups in wars and conflict areas around the world. A difference is now, unlike Nazi atrocities, many of these crimes are very public knowledge, even if they occur.

Faced with such horrors, silence is unacceptable. Silence is a bond. Staying silent is suggesting that nothing has been learned from the past.

So where is the indignation of today? Protest cries are often not listened to. Take, for example, recent events in Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world. Imagine, if you can, what is to be a defenseless Yemeni child or an ethiopian migrant disconcerted bombed without high warning by the most sophisticated weapons the most sophisticated and, shamefully, the RAF has.

In a terrifying air strike in Saada last week, 68 civilians, mainly Africans, were killed in a detention center. The United States suggests that it was used by Houthi fighters supported by Iran to attack the expeditions of Israel and the Red Sea – but has produced no evidence. Human rights surveillance estimates Several hundred people died in Yemen since Donald Trump softened the bombing rules intended to limit civilian victims. “The deliberate attacks on civilians and civil infrastructure are war crimes,” he warned.

Atrocities are an almost daily event in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where the rebels are unleashed. Yes, like Yemen, it is a distant land that most people in the United Kingdom do little. But take it from me. I visited Goma and the eastern DRC. Children are a lot like children everywhere else. And at the height of recent fights, Unicef ​​spokesperson James Elder said a Congolese The child was raped every half hour. Nearly 10,000 cases of rape and sexual violence were reported in January and February this year, said Elder. “Girls and women endure the most unimaginable horrors, and they no longer get the basic medical care they need.”

In Haiti, thousands of people have been killed or moved to anarchic violence on gangs that the soldiers of the United Nations can only stop. In Myanmar, despite the Mars earthquake, the military junta leads and torture with impunity. The genocidal civil war of Sudan, entering its third year, is not “forgotten”; He is especially ignored. And then there is Hungry, besieged Gazawhere the number of deaths with civil predominance caused by the War of Israel is more than 52,000. Who was going to erect a memorial to their murdered daughters? Who will publish their intimate newspapers?

Why is this carnage tolerated, even standardized? One reason proposed is the complexity and the number of conflicts – the most since 1945. The total doubled In the past five years. More than 300 million people Need humanitarian aid and protection. However, the United Nations system, frequently paralyzed by the main power rivalries, fails. His authority is despised, his envoys have gone away, his peacekeepers attacked in Lebanon and elsewhere. He is critical under the resources.

Key agencies are short of funds, endangering millions of lives, the UN emergency chief, Tom Fletcher, warned Last week. The future of peacekeeping operations, the subject of a crucial summit in Berlin this month, is also in doubt. The United States, which contributes 27% of the peacekeeping budget of $ 5.6 billion, is $ 1.2 billion in arrears. Now Trump offers To end funding quite.

The draconian discounts of national aid and development budgets abroad, in particular by the United States and Great Britain, further reduce the ability to combat internal and interstate violence. Conflict resolution is a forgotten art; Trump's Ukraine witness. The inability of international courts to effectively sanction states, or to hold and punish charged war criminals such as Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu, encourages the impunity of the aggressor.

However, another factor is also at work. People in richer and more stable countries seem to be overwhelmed by the extent and breakthrough of the global rupture. For the anecdote, many say that it was confronted by relentless tsunamis to upset the news they “go out”. It's not that they don't care. Is that they feel helpless. Natural disasters always cause generous answers. The call of the earthquake of the Emergency Committee of Disasters in the United Kingdom Releases 16 million pounds sterling in his first week.

But “wars forever”, and complicated ethnic and religious conflicts, let's say, in Afghanistan, Syria or Somalia are more difficult to engage. The report in 2025 of the Foundation of Charitable Organizations revealed that fewer people than ever In the United Kingdom, give charitable works (in the country and abroad). Although a large £ 15.4 billion was given in 2024, the classification of the United Kingdom in Global of CAF donation index Fallé to 22. Other wealthy countries could also do better. Some of those who gave the most, such as Kenya, were one of those who have the least.

War and conflicts are products, not causes, current global disorder, which is mainly of political origin. The propagation of instability results, in part at least, from political fragmentation, from the continuous rejection of globalization and a book of agreed international rules. An increasing wave of authoritarian right populism, ultra -nationalism, economics Me -d'Abord, xenophobic prejudices and fear of difference – as well as loss of faith, confidence and an energetic moral – contribute to this feeling of exhausted connection.

The atrocities are not perfectly historical. They do not only arrive at other people in distant places. They are a metaphor of the evils of the modern world. Politically, militarily and morally atrocious behavior spreads like a virus and is closer and closer to us.