NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – From “emaciated” refugees to crops being burned on the brink of harvest, starvation threatens survivors of more than two months of struggle in Ethiopia’s Tigray region.
The first humanitarian workers to arrive after pleading with the Ethiopian government for access describe weakened children who died of diarrhea after drinking from the rivers. Shops were looted or exhausted weeks ago. A local official told a crisis meeting of government and aid workers on Jan. 1 that hungry people had asked for “a single biscuit.”
According to participants, more than 4.5 million people, almost the entire population of the region, need emergency food. At their next meeting on Jan. 8, a Tigray administrator warned that unaided “hundreds of thousands could starve,” and some already had, according to The Associated Press minutes.
“There is an extremely urgent need – I don’t know what else words in English to use – to scale up the humanitarian response quickly, as the population is dying every day right now,” Mari Carmen Vinoles, Head of Emergency Unit for Doctors Without Borders, the AP said.
But fighting, backlash from some officials, and sheer destruction stand in the way of a massive food delivery effort. Sending 15kg rations to 4.5 million people would require more than 2,000 trucks, the meeting’s minutes said, while some local emergency workers only move on foot.
The specter of hunger is sensitive in Ethiopia, which has turned into one of the world’s fastest-growing economies in the decades since the images of hunger there sparked global outrage in the 1980s. Drought, conflict and government denial contributed to the famine, which swept through Tigray, killing an estimated 1 million people.
The largely agricultural Tigray region of about 5 million people already had a food security problem amid a locust outbreak when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced clashes between his forces and those of the challenging regional government on Nov. 4. Tigray leaders dominated Ethiopia for nearly three decades but were sidelined after Abiy enacted reforms that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.
Thousands of people died during the conflict. More than 50,000 people have fled to Sudan, where a doctor said newcomers are showing signs from hunger. Others hide in rugged terrain. A woman who recently left Tigray described sleeping in caves with people who brought cattle, goats, and the grain they could have harvested.
“It is a daily reality to hear people die from the consequences of the battle, lack of food,” wrote the Catholic Bishop of Adigrat this month.
Hospitals and other health centers critical to the treatment of malnutrition have been destroyed. In markets, food is “not or extremely limited,” say the United Nations.
Although the Prime Minister of Ethiopia has declared victory In late November, the military and Allied fighters remain active amid the presence of troops from neighboring Eritrea, a bitter enemy of the now fugitive officials who once led the region.
Fear keeps many people from going out. Others flee. Tigray’s new officials say more than 2 million people have been displaced, a number that the US administration’s Humanitarian Aid 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 colleagues warning of starvation.
In the northern Shire area near Eritrea, where some of the worst fighting took place, up to 10% of children whose arms were measured met the diagnostic criteria for severe acute malnutrition, affecting dozens of children, according to a UN source . The source shares the concerns of many humanitarian workers about compromising access and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Near the city of Shire, there are camps of nearly 100,000 refugees who have fled Eritrea over the years. Some who have walked into the city “are emaciated and begging for help that is not available,” Filippo Grandi, High Commissioner for Refugees, said Thursday.
Food has been a target. Analyzing satellite images of the Shire area, a UK-based research group found that two warehouse-style buildings on the UN World Food Program grounds in a refugee camp had been “very specifically destroyed”. The DX Open Network could not say by whom. It reported another attack Saturday.
It is challenging to verify events in Tigray as communication links remain poor and almost no journalists are allowed.
In the cities of Adigrat, Adwa and Axum, “the number of civilian casualties is extremely high in the places we have been able to reach,” said MSF emergency officer Vinoles. She cited the struggle and the lack of health care.
Hunger is “very worrying,” she said, and even water is scarce: only two of the 21 wells are still operating in Adigrat, a city of more than 140,000 inhabitants, forcing many people to drink from the river. With the suffering of sanitation, illness ensues.
“You’re going 10 kilometers (6 miles) from town and it’s a complete disaster,” said Vinoles.
Humanitarian aid workers have difficulty estimating the magnitude of the need.
“Because we can’t travel off the main roads, it always asks what happens 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 food insecure hotspots. If some already had high malnutrition rates, “two and a half months after the crisis, it is a safe assumption that thousands of children and mothers are in immediate need,” said Navrozidis.
The Famine Early Warning Systems Network, funded and operated by the US, says parts of central and eastern Tigray are likely to be in emergency phase 4, a step below the famine.
The coming months will be critical, said John Shumlansky, the representative of the 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 if fighters use hunger as a weapon, a concern among aid workers, Shumlansky dismissed it by Ethiopian armed forces and police. He didn’t know about others.
“I don’t think they have any food either,” he said.