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Hunger and malnutrition are a real danger for the nearly 100,000 refugees taking refuge in the Tigray camps, the UN says while calling for access.
The United Nations has sounded the alarm about the severe effect of food shortages on the nearly 100,000 Eritrean refugees taking refuge in camps in Ethiopia’s troubled Tigray region.
Wednesday marks a month since Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced a military operation against forces loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which ruled Eritrea’s neighboring northern region of six million. . Communications and transportation links with Tigray have since been cut, and the UN and humanitarian agencies have called for access to deliver much-needed food, medicine and other supplies.
“Concerns increase by the hour,” spokesman for the UN refugee agency Babar Baloch told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday.
“The camps will have run out of food, making hunger and malnutrition a real danger, a warning that we have been issuing since the conflict began almost a month ago. We are also alarmed by the unconfirmed reports of attacks, kidnappings and forced recruitment in refugee camps, “added Baloch.
Abiy, last year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, has rejected the idea of talking to TPLF leaders, who are on the run but say they continue to fight even after the government declared victory in the deadly conflict over the weekend.
The Ethiopian government has said it will create and manage a “humanitarian corridor” for the delivery of aid, but the UN wants neutral and unhindered access.
The UN has said that some two million people in Tigray now need assistance, double the number before the fighting, and about a million people are displaced, including more than 45,000 Ethiopians who have fled to Sudan as refugees.
On Sunday, a rare report by the International Committee of the Red Cross from inside the city of Mekelle said that hospitals and health facilities in the capital Tigray are struggling to care for people injured in the conflict due to that medical supplies are dangerously depleted.
‘Big problem’
The 96,000 Eritrean refugees living in camps in Ethiopia near the border of their homeland are in a particularly precarious situation. 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.
An Eritrean living in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa told Al Jazeera last week 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 the Tigray region to move to the cities to try to find work.
Meanwhile, reports have emerged that some Eritrean refugees have been attacked or abducted.
If confirmed, such treatment of refugees in the border camps “would be a major violation of international standards,” warned Filippo Grandi, head of the UN refugee agency.
Eritrea has remained almost silent as Tigray leaders accuse it of joining the conflict at the request of Ethiopia, which the Abiy government has denied.
“For almost two decades, Ethiopia has been a hospitable country for Eritrean refugees, but now we fear they are caught up in the conflict,” said Baloch.
“Our extreme concern is that we find out about the attacks, the fighting near the camps, we learn about the kidnappings and forced transfers, so it is very important for us to have that access to go see what happened there.”
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