Questions

"French Red Cross worker abducted in Darfur"
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/10/22/sudan.darfur.abduction/index.html

After 3 armed men, whose identities remain unknown, abducted a French Red Cross worker this Thursday in Darfur, I've started to wonder about the value of human life. This story does make me sad and wish for the kidnapped's safe return but I have to wonder, when so many are dying in a regions like Darfur on a daily basis, is it okay to have a news story about one single person just because he or she is of a foreign ethnicity? Was a story written about this single person because he or she is a Red Cross aid worker, or because he or she is French, an outsider to a nation accustomed to brutality and barbarism? How do we rank an individual's worth, by what standards? Why do we start to ignore the death of some and not of others, and at what point do we become accustomed to hearing about the tragedies certain group of people? How do we reverse the effects of that acclimation? How can we create an appropriate response to such unfortunately common tragedies? These and so many other necessary questions are often left unaddressed, but in order to effect proper change, these are topics that need to be confronted.