UN: 'Extreme lack of food' for many in Ethiopia's Tigray

The United Nations World Food Program says more than a third of the people in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region “are suffering an extreme lack of food.”

NAIROBI, Kenya -- More than a third of the people in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region “are suffering an extreme lack of food,” the United Nations World Food Program said in a new assessment of a region under a months-long government blockade.

“Families are exhausting all means to feed themselves, with three-quarters of the population using extreme coping strategies to survive,” the WFP said in its report released Friday, noting increases in begging and relying on just one meal a day. It called for all parties in Ethiopia’s war to agree to a humanitarian cease-fire and “formally agreed transport corridors” for aid after 15 months of war.

The U.N. said no aid convoy has entered the Tigray region of some 6 million people since mid-December. Separately, the U.N. humanitarian agency said less than 10% of the needed supplies, including medicines and fuel, have entered Tigray since mid-July. All international NGOs operating in Tigray have depleted their fuel, “with their staff delivering the little remaining humanitarian supplies and services on foot, where possible,” the agency said in its Friday update.

Ethiopia’s government has been wary of allowing aid to fall into the hands of the Tigray forces who once dominated the national government and have been battling the current government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed since November 2020. The government in part has blamed problems with aid delivery on insecurity it says is caused by Tigray forces, including new fighting in the neighboring Afar region near the only approved road corridor for aid.