The United Nations and aid groups are warning that 350,000 people in Ethiopia's war-torn Tigray region are suffering from famine. Millions more are in urgent need of food and assistance, UN agencies also say, but aid deliveries are difficult and dangerous.
The estimate was presented at a meeting of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, comprising 18 UN and non-UN organisations that is chaired by UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock.
April 6, 2021 last updated 8:40 ET A Tigrayan refugee woman sits in front of her shelter at Hamdeyat Transition Center, near the Sudan-Ethiopia border, eastern Sudan, March 14, 2021 (AP photo by Nariman El-Mofty).
Tigray Is Being Deliberately Starved to Death
Millions of people in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region are facing starvation. Until now, it’s been a crisis without pictures. Those wrenching images of emaciated children and mothers with dull-eyed gazes, so sadly familiar from famine zones, have yet to emerge. But that’s because journalists aren’t permitted to travel to the worst-hit areas of Tigray, where hunger is deepening by the day. When the media can finally get access, or when starving villagers abandon their homes and flee to towns, the pictures will surely remind viewers of drought victims from Ethiopia’s 1984 famine, which prompted the famous LiveAid benefit concert and a vast outpouring of charity.