Ethiopia: Hunger crisis deepens in Tigray as aid suspended

Hunger has killed at least 700 people in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region in recent weeks after the United States and the United Nations paused food aid, local officials and researchers say.

The UN and the US first suspended food aid to Tigray in March after the discovery of a scheme to steal donated wheat intended for needy people. They extended the pause to the rest of Ethiopia in early June, affecting 20 million people in need, or about one-sixth of the country’s population.

Tigray’s Disaster Risk Management Commission has recorded 728 hungerrelated deaths in three of the region’s seven zones since the food aid was suspended in March. The data is based on information gathered by district officials, said the commission leader, Gebrehiwot Gebregziaher.

“The situation in Tigray is very difficult. Many people are dying because of the food shortage,” Gebrehiwot said. The figure includes 350 hunger deaths in the northwest zone of Tigray, which hosts thousands of people displaced by a twoyear conflict in the region that ended in November.

In mid-March, US aid officials found enough food aid for 134,000 people for
sale in a local market in Shire, the zone’s biggest town. The recent war left 5.4 million out of 6 million people in Tigray reliant on food aid.

During the conflict, both sides looted humanitarian supplies and the government restricted aid access, leading UN investigators to accuse it of “using starvation as a method of warfare.”

A ceasefire signed in November had allowed aid deliveries to resume to the region. Aid workers have told The Associated Press, which first reported the food aid theft, that senior Ethiopian government officials were deeply involved.