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UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said aid is not reaching as many people as it should, as “very little is allowed” as the humanitarian situation is at high risk of deterioration.
An Ethiopian woman, who fled the ongoing fighting in the Tigray region, is seen at dawn inside the Hamdayet village on the Sudan-Ethiopia border, in the eastern state of Kassala, Sudan, on December 16, 2020. (AFP).
All members of the UN Security Council called for more help during a closed-door meeting to discuss the humanitarian situation in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, according to diplomats.
“They all said there should be more humanitarian access,” a diplomat said on condition of anonymity on Wednesday, although no official statement was released after the discussions.
A declaration was never intended to be approved, according to the same diplomat, although another said the idea was dropped because African council members had said they would refuse to vote for one, considering it unproductive.
READ MORE: UN: ‘disturbing’ rape allegations in Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict
Requires international intervention
Meetings on the situation in Tigray have been few and far between since the Ethiopian military operation began in November, and African countries in particular prefer to treat the conflict as an internal matter.
But Western powers have argued that the influx of refugees into neighboring Sudan was a humanitarian crisis that required international intervention.
The Security Council was also unable to produce a statement after other closed-door meetings on November 24 and December 14.
The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, announced in mid-December two agreements with the Ethiopian authorities that should have allowed access to the country.
But opportunities to deliver aid remain fragile, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Wednesday.
“Very little is allowed,” he said.
“What we need is to be able to enter without restrictions without having to, I suppose, negotiate for each truck, for each box.”
“We work in cooperation with the government, and it is their country … we have to go through them, and it should be,” Dujarric said.
“But there is a dire humanitarian need in Tigray, and right now we cannot reach the people we need to reach.”
UN aid chief Mark Lowcock said the Abiy government controls 60 to 80 percent of the territory in Tigray, but does not have complete command of the ethnic Amhara and Eritrean forces that also operate in the region. .
Dozens of witnesses say Eritrean troops are in Tigray to support Ethiopian forces, although both countries deny this.
The United Nations has received reports that the police are operating at a fraction of their previous capacity and Lowcock said he could say with confidence that if protection and aid were not increased rapidly, the humanitarian situation would deteriorate.
He said there were troubling allegations of sexual and gender-based violence.
High-level UN figures visited Ethiopia this week, including High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi and UN Under-Secretary-General Gilles Michaud, while a visit from World Food Program chief David Beasley is expected in the next days, according to diplomats, to try to gain access to refugee camps.
Akshaya Kumar of the NGO Human Rights Watch said: “The Security Council should hold a public session followed by a firm resolution calling for an end to the obstruction of aid and the immediate investigation of war crimes” in Ethiopia.
READ MORE: Risk of mass famine in Tigray, Ethiopia, warn aid workers
Source: AFP
