[ad_1]
Tigray refugees who fled the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray ride a bus heading to Village 8 temporary shelter near the Sudan-Ethiopia border in Hamdayet, eastern Sudan, Tuesday, December 1, 2020 .
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Why the citizens of the world should care
An ongoing conflict in Ethiopia has stranded nearly 100,000 Eritrean refugees without humanitarian assistance for a month and the United Nations warns that food supplies have been depleted, the Associated Press reports.
Without immediate help, the displaced in the region could face malnutrition and hunger. And the longer the conflict drags on, the more refugees and internally displaced persons, as well as civilians, are at risk of being harmed by attacks and other injustices.
“We as humanitarian workers have lost access and contact with refugees since the last month that this fight has continued, and now there are worrying reports of attacks, kidnappings and also recruitment in and around these refugee camps,” Babar Baloch, a global spokesman for UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, told Al Jazeera on Tuesday.
“We are asking for urgent access to these refugee camps,” he said. “There are also worrying reports that many refugees may have left the camp in search of safety and assistance, including food in other areas of the Tigray region.”
The conflict comes down to the leaders of the Tigray region rejecting the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed after the recent elections, according to NPR. Since then, Abiy has deployed troops to the region and unleashed airstrikes. By mid-November, hundreds of people had been killed in the fighting.
Because it borders Eritrea, the Tigray region is home to large numbers of Eritrean refugees. The conflict has left water infrastructure badly damaged and exposed refugees to a variety of threats, the most urgent of which is lack of food, the UN warns.
The UN has called for the opening of a safe and reliable humanitarian corridor so that it can deliver food, medicine, water and other essential supplies to those affected by the conflict.
In addition to refugees, more than 1 million Ethiopians have been displaced by the conflict and are in need of assistance. That is why the UN insists on a neutral and unfettered humanitarian corridor, so that it can reach people in need, regardless of which side of the conflict they may be associated with.
Jul 9, 2018
20-year conflict ends as leaders of Eritrea and Ethiopia embrace peace
The government recently said it would open a corridor after capturing Mekele, the capital of Tigray, reports AP.
The escalating humanitarian conflict comes as the United Nations struggles to raise sufficient funds to address the after-effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Economies have been disrupted, food production systems derailed, schools closed, and public health systems overwhelmed. The World Food Program, which recently won the Nobel Peace Prize, predicts that an additional 270 million people will need critical food aid by the end of the year.
Yet few populations are in such dire straits as the Eritrean refugees.
“With our concerns growing by the hour, we are appealing to the Ethiopian federal authorities to give us urgent access in the Tigray region to reach desperate people,” Baloch told reporters at a briefing in Geneva on Tuesday.
“The camps will have run out of food, making hunger and malnutrition a real danger,” he said.
June 30, 2020
World Food Program launches largest relief response in its history for COVID-19
[ad_2]
