NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – From ’emaciated’ refugees to crops burned at the edge of the harvest, famine threatens the survivors of more than two months of fighting in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.
The first humanitarian workers to arrive after pleading with the Ethiopian government for access describe debilitated children who die of diarrhea after drinking from rivers. Shops were looted or depleted weeks ago. A local official told a January 1 crisis meeting of government and aid workers that hungry people had asked for a single cookie.
Participants say more than 4.5 million people, almost the entire population of the region, need emergency food. At their next meeting on January 8, a Tigray administrator warned that “hundreds of thousands of people would starve to death” without help, and some have already, according to minutes obtained by The Associated Press.
“There is an urgent need to sharpen the humanitarian response quickly – I do not know any more words in English – because the population is dying every day as we speak,” said Mari Carmen Vinoles, head of the Médecins Sans Frontières emergency unit, said the AP.
But a great fight, resistance of some officials and destruction stand in the way of a great attempt to deliver food. Sending the 15-kilogram (33-pound) ration to 4.5 million people would require more than 2,000 trucks, the meeting’s minutes read, while some local responses did not circulate on foot.
The ghost of famine is sensitive in Ethiopia, which in decades has changed into one of the world’s fastest growing economies since images of famine there led to a worldwide outcry in the 1980s. Drought, conflict, and government denial contributed to the famine, which swept through Tigray and killed an estimated 1 million people.
The Tigray region with about 5 million people, who are largely agricultural, had a food security problem amid the locust when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on November 4 announced battles between his forces and those of the challenging regional government. Tigray leaders have dominated Ethiopia for nearly three decades, but were ousted after Abiy introduced reforms that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.
Thousands of people died in the conflict. More than 50,000 fled to Sudan, where one doctor said new arrivals were showing signs of hunger. Others hide on rough terrain. A woman who recently left Tigray described sleeping in caves with people who brought cattle, goats and the grain they could harvest.
“It’s a daily reality to hear people die as a result of the fighting, lack of food,” a letter from the Catholic bishop of Adigrat said this month.
Hospitals and other health centers, which are essential for the treatment of malnutrition, were destroyed. In markets, food is “not available or extremely limited”, says the United Nations.
Although Ethiopia’s Prime Minister declares victory at the end of November, its military and allied fighters remain active amid the presence of troops from neighboring Eritrea, a bitter enemy of the now-fleeing officials who once led the region.
Fear keeps many people from taking risks. Other flights. According to Tigray’s new officials, more than 2 million people have been displaced, a number that the US Government’s Bureau of Humanitarian Aid calls ‘staggering’. According to the UN, 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 on Tigray colleagues who had warned of famine.
In the northern Shire region near Eritrea, which experienced the worst fighting, up to 10% of children whose arms were measured met the diagnostic criteria for severe acute malnutrition, with a number of children affected. a UN source said. The source shared the concerns of many humanitarian workers about access threats, and the source spoke on condition of anonymity.
Near Shire City are camps with nearly 100,000 refugees who fled Eritrea over the years. Some who entered the city were “emaciated and begging for help that was not available,” Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said on Thursday.
Food was a target. A UK-based research group analyzed satellite images of the Shire area and found that two warehouse structures in the UN’s World Food Program Composition in one refugee camp were “very specifically destroyed.” The DX Open Network could not know by whom. It reported a new attack Saturday.
It is challenging to verify events in Tigray as communication connections remain weak and almost no journalists are allowed.
In the towns of Adigrat, Adwa and Axum, the level of civilian casualties is extremely high in the places we were able to access, Vinoles’ emergency officer said. She mentioned the fighting and the lack of health care.
Hunger is ‘very worrying’, she said, and even water is scarce: only two of the 21 wells still operate in Adigrat, a city of more than 140,000, forcing many people to drink from the river. With sanitary suffering come diseases.
“You’re going ten miles from the city and it’s a total disaster,” without food, Vinoles said.
Humanitarian workers are struggling to determine the extent of the need.
“Because they can not drive off highways, it always raises the question of what happens to people who are still off limits,” said Panos Navrozidis, director of Action Against Hunger in Ethiopia.
Prior to the conflict, Ethiopia’s national disaster management body classified some Tigray woredas, or administrative areas, as the most important place for food insecurity. If some have already had a high malnutrition rate, “two and a half months into the crisis, it is a safe assumption that thousands of children and mothers are in immediate need,” Navrozidis said.
According to the Hungarian system for early famine warning systems, which is funded and managed by the USA, parts of the central and eastern Tigray are probably in emergency phase 4, a step below famine.
The next few months are critical, said John Shumlansky, the representative of the Catholic Aid Services in Ethiopia. His group has so far given up to 70,000 people in Tigray three months of food supplies, he said.
Asked whether fighters use hunger as a weapon, one of the concerns among aid workers, Shumlansky dismissed it by Ethiopian army and police. With others he did not know.
“However, I also do not think they have food,” he said.