Today, between 4.5 million and 5.2 million people of Tigray’s total population of 5.7 million are in need of immediate humanitarian assistance. Famine is probably occurring already, and without doubt in the coming months Tigrayans will be starving on a scale rarely witnessed in the modern world. Except that, because the Ethiopian government prefers to keep Tigray in darkness, few outsiders will be there to witness it. We may later get to count the graves of the children who perished.
The unpublished results of rapid nutrition assessments in six locations accessible to the regional authorities, with UNICEF’s technical support, show that Global Acute Malnutrition rates among children under five years of age of 23.8-34.3 percent. This takes us into the range where we must speak about phase 5 of the Integrated food security Phase Classification (IPC)—‘famine.’
Most of the Tigray region is not accessible to survey teams, due to government restrictions and fighting. Conditions elsewhere are almost certainly worse. The situation is deteriorating week-by-week as food stocks run out. Longer term prospects are even more dire: the planting season has arrived and most farmers are unable to plough their fields and plant and tend this year’s crops. Recent reports speak of Eritrean soldiers arriving in villages where farmers have been able to prepare their land, destroying the seedlings and telling villagers, you will not plant, you will not harvest, and if you try you will be punished.
It is hard to think of a more systematic use of starvation as a weapon of war since the Nazi Hungerplan of eighty years ago.
Before the outbreak of war on 3/4 November 2020, Tigray was relatively food secure. Once the epicentre of Ethiopia’s infamous famine of 1984/85, thirty years of internal peace and development meant that today’s generation of Tigrayans were, for the first time in history, living without the threat of hunger due to drought or locusts. Agriculture was still a marginal enterprise with low yields on stony soils, but a combination of rehabilitating watersheds and building small dams for irrigated horticulture and orchards, and subsidized fertilizers—enhanced by micro-credit services—enabled modest harvests. Local incomes were supplemented by seasonal labouring opportunities on commercial farms in fertile western Tigray, and employment in new industries such as textiles and marble cutting, artisanal mining of gold and cobalt, and tourism to the region’s historic churches. Further, a ‘productive safety net programme’ designed and funded by the government and international donors kicked in whenever food insecurity threatened.
As detailed in the World Peace Foundation report Starving Tigray, which draws upon scores of open-source reports along with eyewitness testimonies up, the coalition of Ethiopian National Defence Forces, Eritrean Defence Forces and Amhara militia have destroyed, removed or rendered useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population. They have burned food stores, looted food, and killed domestic animals from cows to baby chickens. They have slaughtered plough oxen, smashed ploughs, cut down fruit trees. They have ripped up the water pipes and pumps in towns and villages and ripped out domestic plumbing. They have looted and vandalized the great majority of the region’s clinics and hospitals. They have closed banks and frozen the 450,000 accounts in the region’s micro-finance institution, essentially confiscating the savings of the peasantry. They have pillaged and burned factories, ransacked hotels, looted shops and stores, and even broken open the little boxes used by shoeshine boys to steal the brushes and polish. By expropriating and ethnically cleansing the fertile lowlands where sesame is grown for export, they have eliminated Tigrayans’ single largest source of seasonal migrant work, a crucial source of income.
Evidence for widespread rape and shocking sexual violence—torture, sexual slavery and mutilation—has emerged. Rape is a crime. Rape perpetrated as part of a widespread and systematic attack against a civilian population is a crime against humanity. That threshold is met in Tigray, with participation of uniformed state forces in rape and sexual violence.
Rape in these circumstances is also a starvation crime. A survivor of rape may be unable to care for herself and her children, because of physical injuries, trauma, and life-long stigma. A woman who is gang raped in her own home may never want to return to what was once a place of safety, but is now indelibly associated with pain, terror and attack on her familial and social identity. Fear of rape means that women and girls do not venture out to go to the market, go to fetch water or firewood, go to their farms or gardens, or seek assistance. With many men killed, in hiding, or joining the armed resistance, women are often the sole adult carers for their children—breadwinners in a land with no bread.
Not only has the Ethio-Eritrean coalition massively reduced the food available to Tigrayans, but they have systematically reduced the region to a state of destitution. Should this destruction, dispossession and expulsion be permitted to stand, the future is a geographically truncated Tigray, deprived of every source of income save subsistence farming, utterly dependent on welfare handouts. The scorched earth campaign means that the numbers in need will not reduce even if the conflict ends. Ethiopia and Eritrea have posed a horrible dilemma to the humanitarian community. Should donors pay the bill for the human consequences of this destruction or be complicit in what is emerging as a systematic hunger plan?
The humanitarian effort is reaching fewer people and providing them with less assistance than in any comparable circumstances in the world today. Most of what is given is food. There is some health care, but almost no agricultural aid. Much of that aid is stolen by the coalition forces—some of it wholesale, some of it when soldiers raid a village where there has been a distribution and take it at gunpoint.
The perpetrators of these starvation crimes are the Ethiopian federal forces, the Eritrean army, and Amhara forces. Clues to the Ethiopians’ motives can be deduced from the public rhetoric of political groups now setting the agenda of the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Amhara regional state concur in demonizing the Tigrayans. They claim that during the years in which the TPLF was in power, Tigrayans ‘looted’ the Ethiopian state, taking an unwarranted share of development funds, and are therefore ‘thieves’ and ‘daylight hyenas.’ Confiscating Tigrayan property was a slogan of political parties now supporting the government. In a recent panel on France 24, Neamin Zeleke, Executive Director at Ethiopian Satellite Televison and Radio (ESAT) which has been a fulcrum for inciting hatred against Tigrayans, toned down his rhetoric for an English-speaking audience but his intent to enact ‘revenge’ was clear. The campaign targeting ethnic Tigrayans for removal from employment, residence and rights across Ethiopia has the disturbing signature of eradicating them from the Ethiopian polity altogether.
The Amhara leadership claims that when provincial boundaries were redrawn in 1991-94, at the time of adopting a federal system based on ethnicities, Tigray took over historically Amhara lands, which they should now reclaim. (As with almost all such territorial disputes the history and the basis for the claims are controversial.) The U.S. State Department calls it ‘ethnic cleansing.’ That is the correct term: the boundary is being redrawn by force and Tigrayans are being forcibly removed or eliminated. Ironically, the FEWS NET maps this area as ‘food secure’: its methods are not designed to take account of the removal of the previous inhabitants and their replacement by new settlers.
The Eritrean president has long blamed the TPLF—and by extension all Tigrayans—for his country’s international ostracism and poverty and sought to eliminate it as a threat. Eritrea is a despotism, with no constitution, parliament, independent judiciary or free media. Its main institution is its vast army; its soldiers are forcibly conscripted from high school, brutalized and required serve indefinitely. The UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in Eritrea, which reported in 2016 found a shocking record of abuse by the state against its own citizens. The Special Rapporteur, Sheila Keetharuth, laments that her recommendations, including that Eritrea be referred to the International Criminal Court, were wholly ignored.
The shut-down of internet and phone communication has been effective in minimizing reporting of atrocities including starvation, thereby allowing official denials to pass without refutation. International humanitarian workers are compelled to remain silent for fear of being expelled; the situation for national staff is worse. After the TPLF was declared a ‘terrorist’ organization, communication with them is prohibited.
Culpability for the outbreak of hostilities in November is shared among the four belligerents: the Ethiopian federal government, the TPLF, Eritrea and the Amhara regional forces.
Culpability for the famine lies entirely with the Ethio-Eritrean coalition. To the extent that there were pre-existing food security difficulties, on account of poverty and a locust plague, those show only that the perpetrators of the starvation crimes were aware of the vulnerability of their intended victims. A prosecutor seeking to investigate the situation in Tigray would have good reason to consider a case for crimes against humanity and genocide against the coalition military and political leaders.
2417 on conflict and hunger was designed to ensure that grave circumstances such as these would not be permitted to develop. Paragraph 12 reads:
‘[Council] Further requests the Secretary-General to report swiftly to the Council when the risk of conflict-induced famine and wide-spread food insecurity in armed conflict contexts occurs, and expresses its intention to give its full attention to such information provided by the Secretary-General when those situations are brought to its attention.’
The resolution doesn’t specify what the UNSC should do after giving ‘its full attention’ to the crisis. But it’s clear that it shouldn’t do nothing.
On current performance, Tigray is set to join the catalogue of genocides and crimes against humanity in which the world failed to act on warnings, and responded with hand wringing only after the event. The UNSC discussed the situation in Ethiopia under ‘any other business’ on 24 November and 14 December 2020, and held a closed session on the humanitarian crisis on 3 February 2021. Emergency Relief Coordinator and head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs briefed Council, with increasing candour and alarm, over subsequent weeks, with an extremely frank and alarming report on 15 April. No formal session was held and only a pallid press statement was issued on 23 April.
The countries that pushed for action were Ireland and the U.S., supported by other European countries. The immediate reason for deadlock at the UNSC was the threat of a veto by China and/or Russia, on the grounds that the conflict was a domestic matter for Ethiopia and not therefore a legitimate agenda item. This threat was possible because the three African members of the Council (Kenya, Niger and Tunisia) were not ready to support an assertive position pushed by western natitons. The African Union, despite its elaborate norms, principles and institutions designed precisely to prevent and manage a crisis such as this, was silent—rebuffed and intimidated by its host country Ethiopia.
Six months after Ethiopia and Eritrea launched their campaign of starvation and mass atrocity, the UNSC has been a bystander. The UN Secretary General has abdicated his responsibilities. The African Union has failed. On its third anniversary, resolution 2417 provides only the draft for the apology that might one day be forthcoming.
👉 Tigrayans get less humanitarian relief compared to those facing the impact of conflicts in northern Nigeria, Afghanistan, or Central African Republic.
‘A restrictive government, combined with insecurity and active fighting, can completely hamstring the aid response for months.’
People in northern Ethiopia get less humanitarian relief compared to those facing the impact of conflicts in northern Nigeria, Afghanistan, or Central African Republic, an independent poll released today by research group Humanitarian Outcomes found.
Fewer than half the conflict-affected people in Ethiopia’s Tigray region had received help since the conflict began in November, the survey revealed. Those that did said it wasn’t enough, and 79 percent overall believed aid was not reaching the areas most in need. A quarter said government and military groups were blocking or taking aid. Compared to respondents in other conflict zones who answered the same questionnaire, Tigrayans are less sure of the reasons for uneven aid provision; the report suggests that limited telecommunications and media coverage could be a contributing factor.
The survey of 614 people in Tigray was conducted by phone from late February to early March, despite on-and-off power and mobile network connections. The sample included people across the major regions of Tigray, but few displaced people.
The survey provides new evidence to gauge the reach of humanitarian aid in a tense debate between the government and the international community over the scale and seriousness of the fall-out from Ethiopia’s five-month conflict.
The conflict began in November, when federal government forces clashed with armed insurgents supporting the regional political party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. Other Tigrayan militia, the Eritrean military, and forces from the neighbouring Amhara region are also involved.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has said the government campaign is a necessary assertion of national legitimacy, as the country is faced with an armed rebellion. His government has regained control of major towns in Tigray and installed a provisional administration.
But military clashes continue, and massacres, forced displacement, sexual violence, looting, halting of trade and communications, and disruption of daily life mean most of the estimated six million people in the region are negatively affected, and millions need some kind of help.
The UN’s humanitarian office calls the situation “extremely dire and far from improving”.
EU envoy Pekka Haavisto is visiting the country this week, the latest in a series of diplomatic efforts to contain the conflict that threatens to destabilise the whole country and the wider region.
The report notes that compared to other crisis situations monitored by the overarching project on the “Coverage, Operational Reach, and Effectiveness of Humanitarian Aid”, “Tigray has the highest numbers of people in need as a percentage of the population, the lowest numbers of organisations responding, and the lowest percentage of people in need reached by aid.”
Researcher Abby Stoddard said the report “shows that a restrictive government, combined with insecurity and active fighting, can completely hamstring the aid response for months.”
Almost all respondents said they needed help, and 43 percent said they had received at least some. The most common form of aid requested, and received, was food. Healthcare, clean water, and sanitation services were the services next most in demand. However, electricity and telecommunications topped the answers to an open-ended question on what people needed most.
Only two percent of respondents said they had received any help other than food. Some 31 percent said they “don’t know” the main obstacle to accessing aid, but 23 percent blamed government restrictions and 21 percent a lack of safety. Non-government military were to blame, according to 16 percent.
“Mobile phone surveys will always be limited by the degree of phone ownership and coverage, and in this case we had to pause it a couple of times due to power outages,” explained Stoddard. “Respondents tend to skew more urban and educated as a rule… in this case we mainly reached people who were still in their home districts.”
Limited access
According to the international aid community, government restrictions as well as insecurity and fighting have been preventing sufficient relief aid from getting through. The government has relaxed some of its restrictions on media and aid groups following sustained international lobbying. Significant volumes of food aid are being delivered to the region by the government, the UN, and NGOs.
Addis Ababa insists progress is being made to normalise the situation and deliver help, and to investigate rights abuses. However, the UN’s latest map of humanitarian access shows only small pockets of the region are fully open to relief aid provision.
Asked about which aid agencies were most active, respondents mentioned the Relief Society of Tigray (REST) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). REST, formerly affiliated to the now rebel Tigray People’s Liberation Front, is the final link in the chain for a large food aid operation serviced by NGOs, including Catholic Relief Services.
Food and ‘starvation crimes’
Even as larger volumes of aid are being sent into the region, aid agency heads interviewed anonymously as part of the survey don’t have full confidence in where it’s going: “Although humanitarian organisations are doing their best to monitor distributions, some are worried about possible discrimination and exclusion in deciding who gets aid, and about the degree of control that authorities and armed actors are exerting over processes of targeting and distribution.”
The latest update by the UN humanitarian office, OCHA, reports an “extremely concerning malnutrition situation.”
A new report by The World Peace Foundation, whose authors include Horn of Africa and famine analyst Alex de Waal, states that “Ethiopian and Eritrean belligerents in the war in Tigray have comprehensively dismantled the region’s economy and food system.”
The report continued: “Regardless of who is responsible for the outbreak of hostilities, the sole reason for the scale of the humanitarian emergency is that the coalition of Ethiopian Federal forces, Amhara regional forces, and Eritrean troops are committing starvation crimes on large scale.”
Prior to the outbreak of war in November, the Tigray region had mostly achieved food security, the report noted. But in March, the US-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) classified at least 20 percent of the population of both central and eastern Tigray, in addition to several sections of northwestern and southeastern Tigray, as experiencing emergency levels of food insecurity.
Based on those figures, the report stated, there are now 50 to 100 excess deaths every day, and if the food security situation is not stabilised, it will lead to “mass starvation and a risk of famine” in the coming months.
