Food must not be a weapon

In the early 1980s, as a terrible famine claimed between 400,000 and 1 million lives in Ethiopia, the international community responded to what was widely misunderstood and misreported as a natural disaster. Famines are never just a matter of drought. Human Rights Watch later noted that Ethiopia’s repeated crises “were in large part created by government policies, especially counterinsurgency strategies”. Tigray was “the very nadir of the famine”, as a destructive army offensive was accompanied by the deliberate blocking of aid.

Now famine has reached Tigray again – and once more, it is because an Ethiopian government is at war with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. The UN’s top humanitarian official, Mark Lowcock, has warned that food is being used as a weapon. He accused forces from neighbouring Eritrea – supporting the Ethiopian prime minister, Abiy Ahmed – of “trying to deal with the Tigrayan population by starving them”. Witnesses have described soldiers deliberately torching crops and grain stores, and slaughtering cattle needed for ploughing. Mr Lowcock said they had also deliberately blocked aid shipments.

This is already the worst famine since the one in Somalia a decade ago that killed more than 250,000 people. It could become much worse. Mr Lowcock has warned that a disaster on the scale of 1983-85 is feasible. Then, as now, the starvation is the work of humans, and humans have the power to stop it.