Patrick Freyne and the empathy crisis
Sir, – Thank you for allowing, or sending, whichever is appropriate, Patrick Freyne to visit Chad and report on the plight of Sudanese refugees (
Returning home from Chad, I feel there's a glitch in western empathy
, Opinion & Analysis, April 24th). I am not surprised to read that Patrick cannot stop thinking of the Sudanese people that he met. Most of us who travel regularly to different developing countries are the same. We cannot stop thinking of those whom we have met and their human stories sometimes describing the unthinkable things that human beings can do to each other. This is what drives us humanitarian and development workers, despite the empathy crisis which Patrick describes so well. – Yours, etc,
PAUL O'BRIEN
Chief Executive Officer
Plan International Ireland
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Dublin 8
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The Journal
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