Millions ‘marching towards starvation’ in Ethiopia
ONLY A small fraction of millions of needy people in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region are receiving food aid, according to an aid memo seen by The Associated Press (AP), more than one month after aid agencies resumed deliveries of grain following a lengthy pause over massive theft.
Just 14 per cent of 3.2 million people targeted for food aid by humanitarian agencies in the region this month had received it by January 21, according to the memo by the Tigray Food Cluster, a group of aid agencies co-chaired by the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) and Ethiopian officials.
The memo urges humanitarian groups to “immediately scale up” their operations, warning that “failure to take swift action now will result in severe food insecurity and malnutrition during the lean season, with possible loss of the most vulnerable children and women in the region”.
The UN and the US paused food aid to Tigray in March last year after discovering a “large-scale” scheme to steal humanitarian grain. The suspension was rolled out to the rest of Ethiopia in June.
US officials believe the theft may be the biggest diversion of grain ever. Humanitarian donors have blamed Ethiopian government officials and the country’s military for the fraud. Ethiopia’s government dismissed that suggestion as harmful “propaganda”.
The UN and the US lifted the pause in December after introducing reforms to curb theft, but Tigray authorities say food is not reaching those who need it.
Two aid workers told the AP that the new system – which includes fitting GPS trackers to food trucks and ration cards with QR codes – has been hampered by technical issues, causing delays. Aid agencies are also struggling with a lack of funds.
A third aid worker said the food aid pause and the slow resumption meant some people in Tigray have not received food aid for over a year. “They went through multiple rounds of registration and verification, but no actual distributions yet,” the aid worker said.
Tigray, home to 5.5 million people, was the centre of a devastating two-year civil war that killed hundreds of thousands and spilled into the neighbouring regions. A UN panel accused Ethiopia’s government of using “starvation as a method of warfare” by restricting food aid to Tigray during the conflict, which ended in November 2022 with a peace deal.
Around 20.1 million people across Ethiopia need humanitarian food due to drought, conflict and a tanking economy. The aid pause pushed up hunger levels even further.
The US-funded Famine Early Warning System has warned that crisis levels of hunger or worse “are expected in northern, southern and southeastern Ethiopia throughout at least early 2024”. A former head of the WFP has described these levels of hunger as “marching towards starvation”.