NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – The lives of civilians in the Tigray region of Ethiopia have become “extremely alarming” as hunger rises and fighting remains an obstacle to reaching millions of people with aid, says UN in a new report.
The conflict that shook one of Africa’s most powerful and populous countries – a key ally of US security in the Horn of Africa – has killed thousands and is now in its fourth month. But little is known about the situation of most of Tigray’s 6 million people, as journalists are blocked from entering, communications are uneven and many aid workers are struggling to get permission to enter.
One challenge is that Ethiopia may lose control up to 40% of the Tigray region, the UN Security Council said at a closed-door session this week. Ethiopia and its allied fighters have pursued the now-fledged Tigray regional government, which once dominated the Ethiopian government for nearly three decades.
Now soldiers from Eritrea they are deeply involved in Ethiopia, even though Addis Ababa denies their presence. On Friday, Eritrea rejected “false and presumptive allegations” after the US Embassy posted an online statement on the need for Eritrean forces to leave.
On Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was the most recent to put direct pressure on Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, urging the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize winner, in a phone call, to allow access “immediately, complete and unhindered ”of Tigray’s help before several people died.
Abiy’s brief statement about the appeal did not mention Tigray. Neither did his statements about this week’s calls with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as European countries expressed concern about one of the newest crisis areas in the world. Neighboring Sudan and Somalia could be absorbed, experts warned.
The new UN humanitarian report released late Thursday includes a map showing most of the Tigray region marked as “inaccessible” to humanitarian workers. The security situation is said to remain “volatile and unpredictable” more than two months after the Abiy government declared victory.
The response to aid remains “drastically inadequate”, with reduced access to the vast rural population on the main roads, the report said, even though the Ethiopian government said more than 1 million people in Tigray had been contacted with assistance. Some aid workers have reported that they have to negotiate access with a number of armed actors, including Eritreans.
Civilians have suffered. “Reports of on-site care workers indicate an increase in acute malnutrition across the region,” the new report says. “Only 1 percent of Tigray’s nearly 920 nutritional treatment facilities are accessible.”
Hunger has become a major concern. “Many households are expected to have already depleted their food stocks or are expected to deplete them in the next two months,” according to a new report released Thursday by the US-funded Early Warning Systems Network.
The report said several parts of central and eastern Tigray are likely to enter emergency phase 4, one step below hunger, in the coming weeks.
Health care in the region is “alarmingly limited”, with only three of Tigray’s 11 hospitals in operation and almost 80% of health centers not functioning or accessible, the UN report said. Assistance workers said many health centers were looted, hit by artillery fire or destroyed.
Large parts of two camps that once housed thousands of refugees from nearby Eritrea have been systematically destroyed, according to satellite imagery analysis by the non-profit organization DX Open Network in the UK. Now, about 5,000 refugees who have fled to the Shire community “live in appalling conditions, many sleeping in an open field on the outskirts of the city, without water and without food,” the UN report said.
This week, UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi called on Ethiopia to allow independent investigators access to investigate alleged widespread human rights abuses, calling the general situation in Tigray “extremely serious”.