UN, Ethiopia sign deal for aid access to Tigray
Some people are now drinking untreated water, increasing the risk of Diseases, says agency; Mekele hospital staff suspends other activities to focus on treating the wounded from the conflict: ICRC
In a breakthrough, a month ater deadly conflict cut off Ethiopia’s Tigray region from the world, the United Nations (UN) on Wednesday said it and the Ethiopian government have signed a deal to allow “unimpeded” humanitarian access, at least for areas under federal government control ater the prime minister’s declaration of victory over the weekend.
This will allow the first food, medicines and other aid into the region of 6 million people that has seen rising hunger during the fighting between the federal and Tigray regional governments. Each regards the other as illegal in a power struggle that has been months in the making.
For weeks, the UN and others have pleaded for access amid reports of supplies running desperately low for millions of people.
A UN humanitarian spokesman, Saviano Abreu, said the first mission to carry out a needs assessment would begin on Wednesday.
“We are of course working to make sure assistance will be provided in the whole region and for every single person who needs it,” he said.
The UN and partners are commited to engaging with “all parties to the conflict” to ensure that aid to Tigray and the neighbouring Amhara and Afar regions is “strictly based on needs.”
Ethiopia’s government did not immediately comment.
“We literally have staff reaching out to us to say they have no food for their children,” one humanitarian worker said.
The person spoke on condition of anonymity. “We have been urging, waiting, begging for access,” another aid official, Jan Egeland with the Norwegian Refugee Council said.
“We’re ready to go tomorrow. It has been heartbreaking to be forced to wait.”
“It is critically important to get objective information as to what is going on,” the top US diplomat for Africa, Tibor Nagy, told the BBC. “The active military phase is basically over. I’m not saying the fighting is over. So at this point, the humanitarian phase is the most important one.”
Nagy added that “now the danger is this evolving into a long-term insurgency.” He also disagreed with Ethiopia’s description of the conflict as a “law enforcement operation” to arrest the Tigray leaders, saying that “it was obviously a military operation.”
Fighting continues despite Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s declaration of victory.
The UN says food has run out for the nearly 100,000 refugees from Eritrea whose camps close to the Tigray border with Eritrea have been in the line of fire as the fighting swept through. Reports that some refugees have been killed or abducted, if true, “would be major violations of international norms,” the UN refugee chief said over the weekend in an urgent appeal to Abiy.
These are “extremely vulnerable people” who fled persecution in Eritrea, Egeland said.
“It’s been extremely frustrating to lose access and communication.”
With infrastructure there and elsewhere in Tigray damaged, the UN has said some people are now drinking untreated water, increasing the risk of diseases.
In the largest hospital in the Tigray capital, Mekele, staff had to suspend other activities to focus on treating the large number of wounded from the conflict, the International Commitee for the Red Cross (ICRC) said. The ICRC, the rare organisation to travel inside the Tigray region and its borderlands, has reported coming across abandoned communities and camps of displaced people.
No one knows the true toll of the fighting. Human rights and humanitarian groups have reported several hundred people killed, including civilians, but many more are feared.
Inside Tigray, and among the majority ethnic Tigrayan refugees in Sudan, people are exhausted.
“The world hasn’t seen anything like this year. I have never seen anything like this,” said one refugee who gave his name as Danyo, standing on the edge of a river that people on Tuesday were crossing to seek safety.
“When Dr Abiy came, we saw him as a good thing,” he said. “Our hopes were fulfilled, because his talk in the beginning was as sweet as honey, but now the honey has gone sour.”
More than 1 million people in Tigray are now thought to be displaced, including over 45,000 who have fled into a remote area of neighboring Sudan.