– It’s murder in silence. People just die, Hayelom Kebede at a hospital in Tigray’s capital Mekele told AFP.
The hunger alarm went off several months ago. Nevertheless, very little of the aid has reached the war-torn Tigray region in northern Ethiopia.
As early as June, the UN warned that 400,000 people were starving. Since then, the situation has only worsened. How many are now starving is very difficult to estimate. The reports coming out of Tigray are few.
Man-made
More than 600 trucks with emergency aid and supplies have entered the region in recent months. It covers only a tenth of the estimated need, according to the UN. Aid agencies believe that 100 trucks have to enter Tigray every single day.
According to the UN, the famine is due to the fact that the peace prize winner Abiy Ahmed’s government has deliberately blocked emergency aid to Tigray after the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) regained power in the region this summer.
– This is man-made and can be remedied through a government decision, said UN emergency relief chief Martin Griffiths to the news agency Reuters 28. september.
The next day, Griffiths said the crisis was a “stain on our conscience”.
Condemnations
The Ethiopian government denies blocking food aid, and the allegations were not well received in Addis Ababa. A few days after the emergency chief’s force ointment, Abiy shocked the international community by expelling seven key UN staff members. Among them was the emergency aid coordinator and head of the UN Children’s Fund in Ethiopia.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres and the United States were quick to condemn. Guterres believes Ethiopia has no authority to overthrow the UN summit and has informed Abiy.
Norway has asked Abiy to immediately reverse the decision.
– It brings the country into an unattractive club of undemocratic and oppressive countries, says Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Søreide (H) about the deportations.
For months, the UN has been warning of famine in the Tigray region, calling it the world’s worst famine crisis in a decade. Photo: Ben Curtis / AP
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Accusations against the UN
Ethiopia accuses the UN staff of providing support to the TPLF with, among other things, humanitarian aid and communication equipment. The UN denies the allegations and believes Tigray is facing the worst famine the world has seen in ten years.
The war in Tigray began in the middle of the harvest in November last year. Crops that were to reach all year round were destroyed. The government sent troops into Tigray and deposed the regional government, the TPLF. According to Nobel laureate Abiy Ahmed, it was a response to a TPLF attack on the government army.
The government blames the TPLF for starving people in Tigray and accuses them of seizing trucks with emergency aid. The UN confirms that several hundred trucks are stuck in Tigray.
– Tortured to death
90 percent of the population in Tigray – 5.2 million people, are believed to need help. According to the UN, food stocks ran out in August. More than one in five children under the age of five is malnourished. Almost 80 percent of breastfeeding or pregnant women suffer from acute malnutrition.
“When people are starving to death, it’s worst to see people being tortured to death,” said Hayelom Kebede at Ayder Hospital, Tigray’s largest hospital.
– They do not die immediately. It takes time, and their bodies just get weaker and weaker. It is more cruel than being killed by bullets, he told AFP in late September.
Children in intensive care
At the hospital where he is head of research, at least 50 children receive intensive treatment for malnutrition. But Hayelom says there is little the doctors can do for them.
– We used to feed them, but now we are out of medicine and food, so we can not help them, he says.
In its latest report, the UN describes the high level of malnutrition among children as alarming.
In more than 20 districts, there are reports of people starving to death, the news agency wrote AP recently.
«Emergency blockade»
When the TPLF surprisingly recaptured most of Tigray this summer, government forces withdrew. Abiy’s office declared a humanitarian ceasefire. But the aid has still been delayed, which according to the UN is due to the government introducing an emergency aid blockade.
The Ethiopian government, for its part, claims that UN staff are disseminating misinformation and using emergency aid as a political tool. They reject that the expulsions of the UN summits will affect the relief work.
Massacres and rapes
“The Ethiopian government is blocking access from land and from the air, which along with electricity, telephone, banking and fuel are crucial to bringing emergency aid forward, and these are indications of a siege,” a State Department spokesman told AFP in September.
Since the war broke out in northern Ethiopia, thousands of people have been killed. There have also been reports of massacres, gang rapes, attacks on health centers and accusations of ethnic cleansing.
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