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Impatience is mounting as humanitarian officials say they still have no access to Ethiopia’s besieged Tigray region more than a week after the Ethiopian government and the United Nations signed an agreement to allow the entry of food and other help desperately needed.
“Regaining access to refugees and other people in need is urgent and critical for UNHCR and humanitarian organizations,” Filippo Grandi, director of the UN refugee agency, tweeted on Tuesday amid growing fears that about 100,000 refugees from Eritrea are caught up in the conflict.
In a separate statement, the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, Jan Egeland, said his organization is “deeply concerned to discover that humanitarian access to the region is still significantly restricted. … These people can no longer be kept waiting. Aid must not be paralyzed. We have been ready to deliver food, emergency shelter, and other essential supplies for weeks, and we were hoping this agreement would clear the way. “
The UN announced the agreement with the Ethiopian government last Wednesday, saying it was signed on November 29. The agreement allows access only to areas under the control of the Ethiopian government, but even those areas are apparently not yet open.
Clashes in the region erupted on November 4 between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray region government after months of mounting tensions. Since then, trucks loaded with aid have waited on the borders of Tigray, a region of 6 million people, even as warnings have grown increasingly dire about a lack of food, fuel, clean water, cash and other. needs.
“Full access for humanitarian actors must be guaranteed,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell tweeted on Tuesday.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office said Monday that it was working with the UN and others to extend humanitarian assistance “with a well-coordinated framework led by the federal government.”
The UN, however, has emphasized the importance of a humanitarian approach that is neutral and unfettered.
Even after Abiy declared victory on November 28 in what he called a “law enforcement operation” against a Tigray government it now considers illegitimate, fighting has continued in parts of the region, further complicating plus access to help.
Thousands of people are believed to have been killed in the power struggle between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which dominated the Ethiopian government and army for more than a quarter of a century, and the Abiy government, which sidelined the TPLF shortly after seizing power in 2018 and introduced dramatic political reforms that earned it the Nobel Peace Prize.
Now Abiy rejects the idea of dialogue with the TPLF. Both sides are heavily armed, raising fears of another protracted conflict in the strategic Horn of Africa nation, which is the second most populous country on the continent.
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