|
Starvation Haunts Ethiopia's Tigray 01/17 09:28
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- From "emaciated" refugees to crops burned on the
brink of harvest, starvation threatens the survivors of more than two months of
fighting in Ethiopia's Tigray region.
The first humanitarian workers to arrive after pleading with the Ethiopian
government for access describe weakened children dying from diarrhea after
drinking from rivers. Shops were looted or depleted weeks ago. A local official
told a Jan. 1 crisis meeting of government and aid workers that hungry people
had asked for "a single biscuit."
More than 4.5 million people, nearly the region's entire population, need
emergency food, participants say. At their next meeting on Jan. 8, a Tigray
administrator warned that without aid, "hundreds of thousands might starve to
death" and some already had, according to minutes obtained by The Associated
Press.
"There is an extreme urgent need --- I don't know what more words in English
to use --- to rapidly scale up the humanitarian response because the population
is dying every day as we speak," Mari Carmen Vinoles, head of the emergency
unit for Doctors Without Borders, told the AP.
But pockets of fighting, resistance from some officials and sheer
destruction stand in the way of a massive food delivery effort. To send
15-kilogram (33-pound) rations to 4.5 million people would require more than
2,000 trucks, the meeting's minutes said, while some local responders are
reduced to getting around on foot.
The specter of hunger is sensitive in Ethiopia, which transformed into one
of the world's fastest-growing economies in the decades since images of
starvation there in the 1980s led to a global outcry. Drought, conflict and
government denial contributed to the famine, which swept through Tigray and
killed 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
on Nov. 4 announced fighting between his forces and those of the defiant
regional government. Tigray leaders dominated Ethiopia for almost three decades
but were sidelined after Abiy introduced reforms that won him the Nobel Peace
Prize in 2019.
Thousands of people have been killed in the conflict. More than 50,000 have
fled into Sudan, where one doctor has said newer arrivals show signs of
starvation. Others shelter in rugged terrain. A woman who recently left Tigray
described sleeping in caves with people who brought cattle, goats and the grain
they had managed to harvest.
"It is a daily reality to hear people dying with the fighting consequences,
lack of food," a letter by the Catholic bishop of Adigrat said this month.
Hospitals and other health centers, crucial in treating malnutrition, have
been destroyed. In markets, food is "not available or extremely limited," the
United Nations says.
Though Ethiopia's prime minister declared victory in late November, its
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 venturing out. Others flee. Tigray's new
officials say more than 2 million people have been displaced, a number the U.S.
government's Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance calls "staggering." The U.N.
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 on Tigray colleagues warning of starvation.
In the northern Shire area near Eritrea, which has seen some of the worst
fighting, up to 10% of the children whose arms were measured met the diagnostic
criteria for severe acute malnutrition, with scores of children affected, a
U.N. source said. Sharing the concern of many humanitarian workers about
jeopardizing access, the source spoke on condition of anonymity.
Near Shire town are camps housing nearly 100,000 refugees who have fled over
the years from Eritrea. Some who have walked into town "are emaciated, begging
for aid that is not available," U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo
Grandi said Thursday.
Food has been a target. Analyzing satellite imagery of the Shire area, a
U.K.-based research group found two warehouse-style structures in the U.N.
World Food Program compound at one refugee camp had been "very specifically
destroyed." The DX Open Network could not tell by whom. It reported a new
attack Saturday.
It's challenging to verify events in Tigray as communications links remain
poor and almost no journalists are allowed.
In the towns of Adigrat, Adwa and Axum, "the level of civilian casualties is
extremely high in the places we have been able to access," the Doctors Without
Borders emergency official Vinoles said. She cited the fighting and lack of
health care.
Hunger is "very concerning," she said, and even water is scarce: Just two of
21 wells still work in Adigrat, a city of more than 140,000, forcing many
people to drink from the river. With sanitation suffering, disease follows.
"You go 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the city and it's a complete disaster,"
with no food, Vinoles said.
Humanitarian workers struggle to gauge the extent of need.
"Not being able to travel off main highways, it always poses the question of
what's happening with people still off-limits," said Panos Navrozidis, Action
Against Hunger's director in Ethiopia.
Before the conflict, Ethiopia's national disaster management body classified
some Tigray woredas, or administrative areas, as priority one hotspots for food
insecurity. If some already had high malnutrition numbers, "two-and-a-half
months into the crisis, it's a safe assumption that thousands of children and
mothers are in immediate need," Navrozidis said.
The Famine Early Warning Systems Network, funded and managed by the U.S.,
says parts of central and eastern Tigray are likely in Emergency Phase 4, a
step below famine.
The next few months are critical, John Shumlansky, the Catholic Relief
Services representative in Ethiopia, said. His group so far has given up to
70,000 people in Tigray a three-month food supply, he said.
Asked whether combatants use hunger as a weapon, one concern among aid
workers, Shumlansky dismissed it by Ethiopian defense forces and police. With
others, he didn't know.
"I don't think they have food either, though," he said.
|
|