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Humanitarian agencies have reiterated urgent calls for immediate access to Ethiopia’s Tigray region, warning of an “increasingly critical” situation more than a week after the United Nations announced an agreement with the Ethiopian government to allow food and supplies. other help desperately needed.
After months of mounting tensions, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered a ground and air offensive in the northern region on 4 November in response to alleged attacks by Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) forces on military camps feds there.
Since then, trucks loaded with aid have waited on the borders of Tigray, a region of six million people, even as warnings have grown increasingly dire about a lack of food, fuel, clean water, cash and other. needs.
Abiy declared victory in Tigray on November 28 after the army seized the regional capital, Mekelle. On Monday, however, he said that efforts to restore order were continuing, amid continued fighting and lawlessness that hampered relief efforts.
“Regaining access to refugees and other people in need is urgent and critical,” Filippo Grandi, head of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), tweeted on Tuesday.
Yesterday’s statement of @ PMEthiopia says that protection and assistance will be provided to those affected by military action in #Tigray including Eritrean refugees.
Regaining access to refugees and other people in need is urgent and essential for UNHCR and humanitarian organizations.
– Filippo Grandi (@FilippoGrandi) December 8, 2020
In Geneva, UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch told reporters that it was “very difficult” to establish what is happening inside Tigray, where communications have been closed and access restricted since the fighting started.
Some 96,000 Eritrean refugees, many of whom have fled the authoritarian government of neighboring Eritrea, lived in four camps in Tigray. Eritreans often leave to escape compulsory and indefinite military service and repression, or in search of better opportunities in what has long been one of the most isolated countries in the world.
UNHCR has had no humanitarian access to the camps since the start of the unrest and it is believed that stocks delivered in advance have now been depleted.
Speaking to Al Jazeera last week, Baloch said there are “worrying reports of attacks, kidnappings and also recruitment in and around these refugee camps.” On Tuesday, he said there were reports that some of those Eritrean refugees may now be on the move within Tigray.
“Our hope is that once we have much needed access to the region, we can assess people and see what has happened,” he said. “This is an issue that worries us a lot.”
An Eritrean living in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa told Al Jazeera last month that the fields were in “big trouble.”
Even before the conflict, people complained about poor services and lack of food or electricity, prompting many refugees in Tigray to move to the cities to try to find work.
Abiy and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki signed a peace pact that ended two decades of hostilities in 2018, leading to the Ethiopian prime minister winning the Nobel Peace Prize last year. The TPLF has accused enemy Isaias forces of joining the conflict on the side of Ethiopian federal troops and has fired rockets across the border into Asmara. Both Ethiopia and Eritrea deny Eritrea’s involvement in the fighting.
On Tuesday, the Reuters news agency quoted a US government source and five regional diplomats as saying Washington believed Eritrean soldiers had crossed into Ethiopia and joined the war.
‘Full access’
Separately on Tuesday, the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, Jan Egeland, said his organization is “deeply concerned to discover that humanitarian access to the region remains severely restricted.”
He added: “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.
Abiy’s office said on Monday 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.
“Full access for humanitarian actors must be guaranteed,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell also tweeted on Tuesday.
The fighting is estimated to have killed thousands of people and sent at least 49,000 refugees to flee to neighboring Sudan.
The number of daily arrivals to Sudan typically ranges from 400 to 700.
“There is concern for refugees who want to go and flee and seek safety in Sudan and may have been prevented. Arriving refugees report that there are a growing number of checkpoints, ”said Baloch. “Many of them have been hoping that if peace is established, they will be able to return home.”
The TPLF dominated Ethiopia’s government and military for nearly three decades until it was sidelined after Abiy took office in 2018.
The prime minister has rejected the idea of dialogue with the TPLF. Both sides are heavily armed, raising fears of a protracted conflict that would destabilize the second most populous country in Africa and the broader Horn of Africa region.
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