De strijd in de Ethiopische provincie Tigray gaat onverminderd door, maar niemand weet wat er precies gebeurt. Twee Nederlandse hulpverleners die onlangs in het gebied aanwezig waren vertellen hun verhaal.
Category: Humanitarian Crisis
Al Jazeera: 7,000 seek Sudan asylum after fleeing western Ethiopia violence
At least 7,000 people who fled escalating ethnic violence in western Ethiopia have sought asylum in neighbouring Sudan, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) has said, amid heightened tensions between the two neighbouring countries.
Violence in the Metekel Zone of the Benishangul-Gumuz region is separate from the deadly conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, which has sent more than 61,000 Ethiopians into Sudan’s provinces of al-Qadarif and Kassala since fighting erupted in November.
Devex: EU envoy says Ethiopia in ‘denial’ over Tigray
When it comes to the conflict in northern Ethiopia, the federal government in Addis Ababa has no common understanding of events and is in “denial” over the scale of the problem, said Pekka Haavisto, European Union envoy, on Tuesday.
With negligible humanitarian access to the Tigray region since fighting broke out in November, Haavisto, Finland’s foreign minister, traveled to the region recently to assess the situation on behalf of the EU. He met with Ethiopian government ministers and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, and he visited the Um Rakuba refugee camp in Sudan.
Barron’s: EU Envoy Warns Ethiopia Tigray Crisis ‘Out Of Control’
Finland’s Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto warned Tuesday that the crisis in Ethiopia’s conflict-hit Tigray region appears “out of control”, after visiting the country on behalf of the EU.
“You have come to the situation which is militarily and human rights-wise, humanitarian-wise very out of control,” Haavisto told journalists in Brussels.
Tigray has been the theatre of fighting since early November 2020, when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced military operations against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), accusing them of attacking federal army camps.
EUobserver: EU urges Ethiopia to lift Tigray ‘blackout’
The EU has urged Ethiopia to let the international community see what it is doing in its Tigray region after four months of civil war and reports of atrocities. “Some 80 percent of Tigray’s population is unreachable … it’s a complete blackout,” EU top diplomat Josep Borrell said in Brussels Monday, following a fact-finding mission to the conflict zone by Finland. There must be “full and immediate access”, Borrell said.
DW: German-Ethiopian relations suffer over Tigray
A call from German Chancellor Angela Merkel is bound to be about something important. When she called Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in early February this year, for example, she stressed how vital it was to find a peaceful resolution to the Tigray conflict, according to her spokesman, Steffen Seibert. The German leader also said civilians caught up in the fighting must receive humanitarian assistance.
BBC: Tigray crisis – ‘Overwhelming’ humanitarian needs in Ethiopia’s region
The United States says it has decided to “de-link” its suspension of millions of dollars of aid to Ethiopia from that country’s dispute with Egypt over a massive hydroelectric dam project.
But the State Department early Friday said that does not mean all the roughly $272 million in security and development assistance will immediately start to flow, and it depends on more recent “developments” — an apparent reference to the deadly conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region.
The State Department said humanitarian assistance remains exempt from the aid suspension. It said it has informed Ethiopia’s government. A spokeswoman for Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Brown County Democrat: UN says malnutrition ‘very critical’ in Ethiopia’s Tigray
The United Nations says Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region faces a “very critical malnutrition situation” as vast rural areas where many people fled during three months of fighting remain out of reach of aid.
The U.N. humanitarian agency also said in a new report that Ethiopian defense forces continue to occupy a hospital in the town of Abi Adi, “preventing up to 500,000 people from accessing health services” in a region where the health system has largely collapsed under looting and artillery fire.
Alarm is growing over the fate of the Tigray region’s some 6 million people as fighting is reportedly as fierce as ever between Ethiopian and allied forces and those supporting the now-fugitive Tigray leaders who once dominated Ethiopia’s government.
Daily Sabah: Malnutrition ‘very critical’ in Ethiopia’s Tigray, UN says
Aid workers in the conflict-ridden region of Ethiopia are witnessing an increase in acute malnutrition as insecurity, bureaucracy and the presence of various armed actors impede humanitarian efforts
aljazeera: UN – Tigray malnutrition ‘very critical’, response woefully poor
A new United Nations report has sounded the alarm over a “very critical malnutrition situation” unfolding in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region, citing continuing insecurity, bureaucracy and the presence of “various armed actors” as major obstructions to the efforts to deliver life-saving aid to rural areas still out of reach for humanitarian workers more than 100 days into the conflict.
“Despite some progress, the humanitarian response remains drastically inadequate compared to the sheer magnitude of needs across the region,” the report by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OHCA) said on Saturday.