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From “emaciated” refugees to burned crops on the brink of harvest, famine threatens survivors of more than two months of fighting in Ethiopia’s Tigray region.
The first aid workers to arrive after requesting access to the Ethiopian government describe weakened children who die of diarrhea after drinking from rivers. The stores were looted or sold out weeks ago. A local official told a crisis meeting of the government and humanitarian workers on January 1 that hungry people had asked for “just one cookie.”
More than 4.5 million people, almost the entire population of the region, need emergency food, say the participants. At their next meeting, on Jan. 8, a Tigray administrator warned that without help, “hundreds of thousands could starve” and some had already done so, according to minutes obtained by The Associated Press.
“There is an extreme and urgent need – I don’t know what else to use in English – to rapidly scale up the humanitarian response because the population is dying every day as we speak,” Mari Carmen Vinoles, head of the Médecins Sans Frontières emergency unit, he told the AP.
But the outbreaks of fighting, resistance from some officials, and total destruction stand in the way of a massive food delivery effort. Sending 15-kilogram (33-pound) rations to 4.5 million people would require more than 2,000 trucks, according to the minutes of the meeting, while some local first responders are reduced to walking.
The specter of hunger is sensitive in Ethiopia, which morphed into one of the world’s fastest growing economies in the decades since images of hunger there in the 1980s sparked a global outcry. Drought, conflict, and government denial contributed to the famine, which swept through Tigray and killed a million people.
The largely agricultural Tigray region of about 5 million people already had a food security problem amid a lobster outbreak when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced clashes between his forces and those of the defiant on 4 November. regional government. Tigray’s leaders ruled Ethiopia for nearly three decades, but were marginalized after Abiy introduced reforms that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.
Thousands of people have died in the conflict. More than 50,000 have fled to Sudan, where a doctor has said the new arrivals show signs of starvation. Others take refuge in rough terrain. A woman recently leaving Tigray described sleeping in caves with people bringing cattle, goats, and the grain they had managed to harvest.
“It is a daily reality to hear people die with the consequences of fighting, lack of food,” read a letter from the Catholic Bishop of Adigrat this month.
Hospitals and other health centers, essential for treating malnutrition, have been destroyed. In markets, food “is not available or extremely limited,” says the United Nations.
Although Ethiopia’s prime minister declared victory in late November, his military fighters and allies remain active amid the presence of troops from neighboring Eritrea, a staunch enemy of the now-fugitive officials who once led the region.
Fear prevents many people from venturing out. Others flee. New Tigray officials say more than 2 million people have been displaced, a number the US government’s Humanitarian Assistance Office calls “staggering.” The UN says the number of people reached with aid is “extremely low.”
A senior Ethiopian government official, Redwan Hussein, did not respond to a request for comment about Tigray’s colleagues who warned of hunger.
In the northern Shire area near Eritrea, which has seen some of the worst fighting, up to 10% of children whose arms were measured met diagnostic criteria for severe acute malnutrition, with dozens of children affected, he said. a UN source. Sharing the concern of many humanitarian workers about jeopardizing access, the source spoke on condition of anonymity.
Near the city of Shire there are camps that house almost 100,000 refugees who have fled Eritrea over the years. Some of those who have entered the city “are emaciated, asking for help that is not available,” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said Thursday.
Food has been a goal. By analyzing satellite images of the Shire area, a UK-based research group discovered that two warehouse-like structures at the United Nations World Food Program compound in a refugee camp had been “very specifically destroyed”. The DX Open Network could not say who. He reported a new attack on Saturday.
Verifying events in Tigray is challenging as communication links remain poor and journalists are hardly allowed.
In the towns of Adigrat, Adwa and Axum, “the level of civilian casualties is extremely high in the places that we have been able to access,” said Vinoles, an emergency official for Doctors Without Borders. He cited the fights and the lack of medical attention.
Hunger is “very worrying,” he said, and even water is scarce: Only two of the 21 wells are still working in Adigrat, a city of more than 140,000 people, forcing many people to drink from the river.
“You go 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the city and it’s a total disaster,” without food, Vinoles said.
Humanitarian workers struggle to measure the extent of the need.
“Not being able to travel off the main roads always raises the question of what is happening to people who are still off limits,” said Panos Navrozidis, director of Action Against Hunger Ethiopia.
Before the conflict, Ethiopia’s national disaster management body classified some woredas or administrative areas of Tigray as priority food insecurity points. If some already had high rates of malnutrition, “two and a half months after the crisis, it is a safe assumption that thousands of children and mothers are in immediate need,” Navrozidis said.
The US-funded and administered Famine Early Warning Systems Network says parts of central and eastern Tigray are likely to be in Emergency Phase 4, one step below famine.
The next few months are critical, said John Shumlansky, representative for Catholic Relief Services in Ethiopia. His group has so far given 70,000 people in Tigray a three-month supply of food, he said.
When Shumlansky was asked whether fighters use hunger as a weapon, one of the concerns of Ethiopian humanitarian workers, defense forces and police dismissed it. With others, I did not know.
“However, I don’t think they have food either,” he said.
