NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – From “emaciated” refugees to burnt crops on the verge of harvest, famine threatens survivors of more than two months of fighting in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.
The first aid workers to arrive after pleading with the Ethiopian government for access, describe debilitated children dying of diarrhea after drinking from rivers. The stores were looted or sold out weeks ago. A local official said at a January 1 crisis meeting with the government and aid workers that hungry people asked for “a single cookie”.
More than 4.5 million people, almost the entire population of the region, need emergency food, participants say. At its next meeting on January 8, a Tigray administrator warned that without help, “hundreds of thousands could starve to death” and some have already died, according to minutes obtained by The Associated Press.
“There is an extremely urgent need – I don’t know what more English words to use – to rapidly increase the humanitarian response because the population is dying every day as we speak,” Mari Carmen Vinoles, head of the Doctors Without Borders emergency unit, told the AP.
But pockets of struggle, resistance from some officers and sheer destruction stand in the way of a massive effort to deliver food. Sending 15 kilogram (33 pound) rations to 4.5 million people would require more than 2,000 trucks, the minutes of the meeting said, while some local respondents are reduced to getting around on foot.
The spectrum of hunger is sensitive in Ethiopia, which has become one of the fastest growing economies in the world in the decades, since images of hunger back in the 1980s led to a global outcry. Drought, conflict and government denial contributed to the famine, which swept through Tigray and killed about 1 million people.
The predominantly agricultural region of Tigray, with around 5 million people, already had a food security problem amid an outbreak of locusts when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on 4 November announced fighting between his forces and those of the defiant regional government. Tigray’s leaders dominated Ethiopia for nearly three decades, but were marginalized after Abiy introduced reforms that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.
Thousands of people were killed in the conflict. More than 50,000 fled to Sudan, where a doctor said the new arrivals showed signs from hunger. Others take shelter in rough terrain. A woman who recently left Tigray described sleeping in caves with people who brought cattle, goats and the grain they managed to harvest.
“It is a daily reality to hear people dying with the consequences of the struggle, the lack of food,” said a letter this month from the Catholic bishop of Adigrat.
Hospitals and other health centers, crucial in treating malnutrition, have been destroyed. In markets, food “is not available or is extremely limited,” says the United Nations.
Although the Prime Minister of Ethiopia has declared victory at the end of november, its military and allied fighters remain active amid the presence of troops from neighboring Eritrea, a staunch enemy of the now fugitives who led the region.
Fear prevents many people from venturing out. Others flee. Tigray’s new employees say more than 2 million people have been displaced, a figure the United States government’s Humanitarian Assistance Bureau calls “impressive”. 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 colleagues warning of famine.
In the northern area of Shire, close to Eritrea, which has seen some of the worst fighting, up to 10% of children whose arms were measured met the criteria for diagnosing severe acute malnutrition, with dozens of children affected, said a UN source. Sharing the concern of many aid workers about compromising access, the source spoke on condition of anonymity.
Near the city of Shire are camps that house almost 100,000 refugees who fled over the years from Eritrea. Some who entered the city “are emaciated, begging for help that is not available,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi on Thursday.
Food has been a target. Analyzing satellite images of the Shire area, a UK-based research group found that two depot-style structures at the UN World Food Program complex in a refugee camp were “destroyed in a very specific way”. DX Open Network did not know by whom. Reported a new attack Saturday.
It is a challenge to check the events in Tigray, as the communication links are still bad and almost no newspapers are allowed.
In the cities of Adigrat, Adwa and Axum, “the level of civilian casualties is extremely high in the places we were able to access,” said Doctors Without Borders emergency officer Vinoles. She cited fights and lack of health care.
Hunger is “very worrying,” she said, and even water is scarce: only two of the 21 wells are still functioning in Adigrat, a city of more than 140,000 inhabitants, forcing many people to drink from the river. With the suffering of sanitation, the disease follows.
“You go 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the city and it is a complete disaster,” without food, Vinoles said.
Aid workers struggle to assess the extent of needs.
“Not being able to get off the main highways always raises the question of what is happening to people who are still off limits,” said Panos Navrozidis, director of Action Against Hunger in Ethiopia.
Before the conflict, Ethiopia’s national disaster management body classified some Tigray woredas, or administrative areas, as priority points of food insecurity. If some already had high numbers of malnutrition, “two and a half months after the crisis started, it is safe to assume that thousands of children and mothers are in immediate need,” said Navrozidis.
The Famine Early Warning Systems Network, funded and administered by the United States, says that parts of central and eastern Tigray are likely to be in Emergency Phase 4, one step below hunger.
The next few months are critical, said John Shumlansky, representative of Catholic Relief Services in Ethiopia. His group has so far given 70,000 people in Tigray a three-month supply of food, he said.
Asked whether combatants use hunger as a weapon, a concern among aid workers, Shumlansky rejected it by Ethiopian defense forces and the police. With others, he didn’t know.
“But I don’t think they have any food either,” he said.