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KABUL (Reuters) – Aid agencies delivered food, blankets and cash to hundreds of displaced families in Kabul on Wednesday as humanitarian assistance begins to trickle into Afghanistan following warnings the country faces potentially catastrophic famine this winter.
The distribution of aid to 324 families represents a tiny fraction of the needs in Afghanistan, which faces a severe drought as well as a near collapse of its economy following the withdrawal of Western support.
Chilly weather on Monday underlined the urgency in getting assistance to thousands of displaced people in the capital, many having fled from the provinces and sleeping in tents or improvised accommodation around the city.
As people lined up inside the UN compound for handouts of food and basic household items, larger crowds gathered outside, many desperate for help.
“We got this assistance, but we cannot spend the winter with it,” said Bibi Pashtoon. “Winter is difficult, and we have nothing except God, and we need more help.”
But the challenge of providing the aid is massive. As well as farmers and rural people displaced by drought, poverty has extended into the cities where widespread unemployment has forced many to try to sell their household goods to raise money.
“Around 50,000 Afghan people from different provinces of the country have been displaced because of recent conflicts and are in Kabul. Our assistance continues to needy people every week,” said UNHCR spokesperson Babar Baloch.
Even before the Taliban’s victory over the Western-backed government in Kabul two months ago, more than 18 million Afghans, or about half the population, needed humanitarian aid, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Other UN estimates suggest that as much as 97% of the country’s population could be plunged into poverty by next year in a worst-case scenario.
The Group of 20 major economies pledged this week to provide humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan and the United States has promised separately to help relieve the immediate hardship facing millions of Afghans as the cold season begins.
However donor nations have been reluctant to give any funds directly to the new Taliban government, meaning the aid is likely to be channeled through international agencies.
Wednesday’s distribution was overseen by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration, the World Food Program and the Danish aid agency DACAAR.
(Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Nick Macfie)
By quotes updates with context
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia is expelling seven senior U.N. officials, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Thursday, two days after the U.N. aid chief warned hundreds of thousands of people in the northern region of Tigray were likely experiencing famine due to a government blockade of aid.
The move comes amid increasing international criticism over conditions in Tigray, and as all parties to fighting in northern Ethiopia face the possibility of sanctions from the United States government.
Many nations fear the spreading conflict in Ethiopia – Africa’s second most populous nation and a regional diplomatic heavyweight – might further destabilize an already fragile region.
The seven people being expelled include the country heads of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The seven have 72 hours to leave, the ministry said in a statement, accusing them of “meddling” in internal affairs.
A statement from U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he was “shocked” by the expulsions and added, “We are now engaging with the Government of Ethiopia in the expectation that the concerned UN staff will be allowed to continue their important work.”
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Conflict erupted between federal forces and those aligned with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the political party that controls the region, in November.
Tigrayan forces retook most of the region at the end of June, and then pushed into the neighboring regions of Afar and Amhara, forcing hundreds of thousands of people there to flee their homes.
On Tuesday, United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths – the head of OCHA – said a nearly three-month long “de-facto blockade” of Tigray’s borders has restricted aid deliveries of what is required.
“This is man-made, this can be remedied by the act of government,” Griffiths said, noting nearly a quarter of children in Tigray are malnourished.
Five of the seven people being expelled work for OCHA; a sixth works for UNICEF and the seventh works for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which is conducting a joint investigation with Ethiopia’s state-appointed human rights commission into reports of mass killings of civilians, gang rapes and other abuses in Tigray.
Ethiopian authorities have previously accused aid workers of favoring and even arming Tigrayan forces, although they have provided no evidence to support their accusations.
In August, Ethiopia suspended the operations for the Dutch branch of medical charity of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and the Norwegian Refugee Council, accusing them of arming “rebel groups”.
So far, 23 aid workers have been killed in Tigray.
(Reporting by Dawit Endeshaw and Ayenat Mersie; Additional reporting by Giulia Paravicini; Editing by Katharine Houreld, Alison Williams, Emelia Sithole-Matarise, William Maclean)
By Michelle Nichols
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths said on Tuesday he assumes famine has taken hold in Ethiopia’s Tigray where a nearly three-month long “de-facto blockade” has restricted aid deliveries to 10% of what is needed in the war-torn region.
Griffiths told Reuters during an interview that his request was simple: “Get those trucks moving.”
“This is man-made, this can be remedied by the act of government,” he said.
War broke out 10 months ago between Ethiopia’s federal troops and forces loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which controls Tigray. Thousands have died and more than two million people have been forced to flee their homes.
“We predicted that there were 400,000 people in famine-like conditions, at risk of famine, and the supposition was that if no aid got to them adequately they would slip into famine,” said Griffiths, referring to a U.N. assessment in June.
“I have to assume that something like that is happening,” he said, adding that it was difficult to know exactly what the situation was on the ground in Tigray because of a de-facto aid blockade and lack of fuel, cash and trucks.
Ethiopia’s U.N. mission in New York said that “any claim on the existence of blockade is baseless.” It said aid groups “faced shortage in trucks as a result of the non-return of almost all trucks that traveled to Tigray to deliver aid.”
Truck drivers carrying aid into Tigray have been shot at at least twice and some Tigrayan drivers have been arrested in the neighboring region of Afar, although they were later released, according to U.N. reports.
Griffiths said a lot of trucks go into Tigray and don’t come back, compounding the humanitarian problems.
“First of all, they probably don’t have fuel to come out,” he said. “And secondly, they may not wish to, so the consequences for humanitarian operations – whatever the cause – is problematic.”
In Tigray the United Nations says 5.2 million people, or 90% of the population, need help.
According to the United Nations, screening of children under age 5 during the first half of September revealed that 22.7% of are malnourished and more than 70% of some 11,000 pregnant or breastfeeding women are acutely malnourished.
“As a comparison this is about the same levels of malnutrition that we saw in 2011 in Somalia at the onset of the Somali famine,” Griffiths said.
Griffiths said 100 trucks a day of aid needed to get to Tigray, but only 10% had gained access in the past three months.
“We need the Ethiopian government to do what they promised to do which is to facilitate access,” said Griffiths, who met with Ethiopia’s Deputy Prime Minister Demeke Mekonnen last week during the annual U.N. gathering of world leaders in New York.
Mekonnen assured him that access is improving, but Griffiths said “it needs to improve a great deal more.”
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; editing by Grant McCool)
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) -Rebellious forces from the Tigray region killed 120 civilians over two days in a village in Ethiopia’s Amhara region, local officials told Reuters on Wednesday.
The killings in a village 10 km (six miles) from the town of Dabat took place on Sept. 1 and 2, said Sewnet Wubalem, the local administrator in Dabat, and Chalachew Dagnew, spokesperson of the nearby city of Gondar.
A spokesperson for Tigrayan forces did not immediately respond to a request for comment on what is the first report of Tigrayan forces killing a large number of civilians since seizing territory in Amhara. Tens of thousands of people have fled their homes in the region as Tigrayan forces have advanced.
“So far we have recovered 120 bodies. They were all innocent farmers. But we think the number might be higher. There are people who are missing,” Sewnet, the local administrator, told Reuters by phone.
Chalachew, the Gondar city spokesperson, said he had visited the burial area in the village and that children, women and elderly were among the dead.
He said the killings were during the Tigrayan forces’ “short presence” in the area, and it was now under the control of the Ethiopian federal army.
Reuters was unable to independently verify the accounts.
Getachew Reda, spokesperson for the Tigrayan forces, has previously denied to Reuters that the forces have committed crimes against civilians while seizing territory in Amhara over the past month.
HUMANITARIAN CRISIS
War broke out 10 months ago between Ethiopia’s federal troops and forces loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which controls the Tigray region.
Since then, thousands have been killed and more than 2 million have fled their homes. Fighting spread in July from the Tigray region into the neighboring regions of Amhara and Afar, also in the country’s north.
Amid the conflict, relations between the ethnic Amharas and Tigrayans have deteriorated sharply.
During the war, regional forces and militiamen from the Amhara region have sought to settle a decades-old land dispute between the Amhara and Tigray regions.
Amhara forces have seized control of western parts of Tigray and driven tens of thousands of Tigrayans from their homes. Though the Tigrayan forces have seized back most of the Tigray region, they have not taken back the heavily militarized and contested area of western Tigray.
The U.S. government’s humanitarian agency said last week Tigrayan forces had in recent weeks looted its warehouses in parts of Amhara.
Responding on Twitter to the agency’s statement on looting, Getachew Reda, the Tigrayan forces’ spokesperson, wrote: “While we cannot vouch for every unacceptable behavior of off-grid fighters in such matters, we have evidence that such looting is mainly orchestrated by local individuals & groups.”
The U.N. has said a de facto aid blockade on the Tigray region, where some 400,000 people are already in famine conditions, has worsened an already dire humanitarian crisis.
The Ethiopian government has repeatedly denied allegations by the U.N. and Western governments that it is deliberately impeding the delivery of lifesaving assistance. On Sunday, a U.N. convoy of trucks bearing food and other aid was permitted to enter Tigray for the first time since Aug. 20.
(Reporting by Addis Ababa newsroom, Writing by Maggie Fick; Editing by Jon Boyle and Timothy Heritage)
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Forces from Ethiopia’s Tigray region in recent weeks looted warehouses belonging to the U.S. government’s humanitarian agency in the Amhara region, USAID’s Ethiopia director said on Tuesday.
War broke out in the mountainous region last November between Ethiopian troops and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which controls the region. The conflict has killed thousands and caused a humanitarian crisis.
After retaking control of most of Tigray in late June and early July, Tigrayan forces pushed into the neighboring Afar and Amhara regions, displacing several hundred thousand more people from their homes.
“We do have proof that several of our warehouses have been looted and completely emptied in the areas, particularly in Amhara, where TPLF soldiers have gone into,” the director Sean Jones told state broadcaster EBC in a televised interview.
“I do believe that the TPLF has been very opportunistic,” he added.
Representatives for the TPLF and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Up to 900,000 people in Tigray are already in famine conditions, while five million others are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance, USAID estimates.
For the first time in nine months of war, aid workers will run out of food this week to deliver to millions of people who are going hungry, the head of USAID said last week, blaming the government for restricting access.
The Tigrayan forces and the federal government have repeatedly traded accusations of hampering the flow of aid.
(Reporting by Nairobi newsroom; Writing by Duncan Miriri; Editing by Maggie Fick and Grant McCool)
By Maggie Fick
NAIROBI (Reuters) -For the first time in nine months of war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, aid workers will run out of food this week to deliver to millions of people who are going hungry, the head of the U.S. government’s humanitarian agency said, blaming the government for restricting access.
“USAID and its partners as well as other humanitarian organizations have depleted their stores of food items warehoused in Tigray,” Samantha Power, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), said in a statement late on Thursday.
“People in Tigray are starving with up to 900,000 in famine conditions and more than five million in desperate need of humanitarian assistance,” Power said. “This shortage is not because food is unavailable, but because the Ethiopian Government is obstructing humanitarian aid and personnel, including land convoys and air access.”
War broke out in November between Ethiopian troops and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which controls the region. The conflict has killed thousands and sparked a humanitarian crisis in one of the world’s poorest regions.
Billene Seyoum, spokesperson for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, did not respond to a request for comment. At a news conference on Friday, she did not refer to Power’s statement but dismissed allegations that the Ethiopian government is “purposely blocking humanitarian assistance”, saying the government is concerned about security.
“It is important to really address this continuing rhetoric because that is not the case,” Billene said. “Security is first and foremost a priority that cannot be compromised, it is a volatile area so in that regards there is going to be continuous checks and processes.”
On Thursday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an immediate ceasefire and unrestricted aid access in Tigray. The U.N. warned last month that more than 100,000 children in Tigray could die of hunger.
Power’s statement said that 100 trucks carrying food and life-saving supplies need to be arriving each day in Tigray to meet the humanitarian needs there. As of a few days ago, only about 320 trucks had arrived, less than 7% of what is required, it said.
The Ethiopian government declared a unilateral ceasefire in June after Tigrayan forces re-captured the regional capital Mekelle and retook most of the region. The Tigrayan forces dismissed this as a “joke” and issued preconditions for truce talks.
(Reporting by Maggie Fick; Additional reporting by Ayenat Mersie and Giulia Paravicini; Editing by John Stonestreet and Frances Kerry)
By Maytaal Angel
LONDON (Reuters) – Some 41 million people worldwide are at at imminent risk of famine, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) warned on Tuesday, saying soaring prices for basic foods were compounding existing pressures on food security.
Another half a million are already experiencing famine-like conditions, said the WFP’s Executive Director David Beasley.
“We now have four countries where famine-like conditions are present. Meanwhile 41 million people are literally knocking on famine’s door,” he said.
The WFP, which is funded entirely by voluntary donations, said it needs to raise $6 billion immediately to reach those at risk, in 43 countries.
“We need funding and we need it now,” said Beasley.
After declining for several decades, world hunger has been on the rise since 2016, driven by conflict and climate change.
In 2019, 27 million people were on the brink of famine, according to the WFP, but since 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic has been added to the mix.
World food prices rose in May to their highest levels in a decade, U.N. figures show, with basics like cereals, oilseeds, dairy products, meat and sugar up a combined 40% versus year ago levels.
Currency depreciation in countries like Lebanon, Nigeria, Sudan, Venezuela and Zimbabwe is adding to these pressures and driving prices even higher, stoking food insecurity.
Famine-like conditions are present this year in Ethiopia, Madagascar, South Sudan and Yemen, as well as in pockets of Nigeria and Burkina Faso.
But Beasley warned against “debating numbers to death” as happened in Somalia in 2011 when 130,000 people – half the eventual toll from starvation – had already died by the time famine was declared.
The WFP, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year, says around 9 percent of the world’s population, equivalent to nearly 690 million people, go to bed hungry each night.
(Reporting by Maytaal Angel; editing by John Stonestreet)
By Giulia Paravicini and Michelle Nichols
ADDIS ABABA/NEW YORK (Reuters) -More than 350,000 people in Ethiopia’s Tigray are suffering famine conditions with millions more at risk, according to an analysis by United Nations agencies and aid groups that blamed conflict for the worst catastrophic food crisis in a decade.
“There is famine now in Tigray,” U.N. aid chief Mark Lowcock said on Thursday after the release of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis, which the IPC noted has not been endorsed by the Ethiopian government.
“The number of people in famine conditions … is higher than anywhere in the world, at any moment since a quarter million Somalis lost their lives in 2011,” Lowcock said.
Most of the 5.5 million people in Tigray need food aid. Fighting broke out in the region in November between government troops and the region’s former ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). Troops from neighboring Eritrea also entered the conflict to support the Ethiopian government.
The violence has killed thousands of civilians and forced more than 2 million from their homes in the mountainous region.
The most extreme warning by the IPC – a scale used by U.N. agencies, regional bodies and aid groups to determine food insecurity – is phase 5, which starts with a catastrophe warning and rises to a declaration of famine in a region.
The IPC said more than 350,000 people in Tigray are in phase 5 catastrophe. This means households are experiencing famine conditions, but less than 20% of the population is affected and deaths and malnutrition have not reached famine thresholds.
“This severe crisis results from the cascading effects of conflict, including population displacements, movement restrictions, limited humanitarian access, loss of harvest and livelihood assets, and dysfunctional or non-existent markets,” the IPC analysis found.
For famine to be declared at least 20% of the population must be suffering extreme food shortages, with one in three children acutely malnourished and two people out of every 10,000 dying daily from starvation or from malnutrition and disease.
‘NIGHTMARE’
Famine has been declared twice in the past decade: in Somalia in 2011 and in parts of South Sudan in 2017.
“If the conflict further escalates or, for any other reason, humanitarian assistance is hampered, most areas of Tigray will be at risk of famine,” according to the IPC, which added that even if aid deliveries are stepped up, the situation is expected to worsen through September.
The Ethiopian government disputed the IPC analysis, saying food shortages are not severe and aid is being delivered.
Ethiopian Foreign Ministry spokesman Dina Mufti told a news conference on Thursday that the government was providing food aid and help to farmers in Tigray.
“They (diplomats) are comparing it with the 1984, 1985 famine in Ethiopia,” he said. “That is not going to happen.”
But U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said a humanitarian nightmare was unfolding.
“This is not the kind of disaster that can be reversed,” she told a U.S. and European Union event on Tigray on Thursday. Referring to a previous famine in Ethiopia that killed more than 1 million people, she said: “We cannot make the same mistake twice. We cannot let Ethiopia starve. We have to act now.”
World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley said that to stop hunger from killing millions of people in Tigray there needed to be a ceasefire, unimpeded aid access and more money to expand aid operations.
According to notes of a meeting of U.N. agencies on Monday, seen by Reuters, the IPC analysis could be worse as “they did not include those in Amhara-controlled areas” in western Tigray.
Mitiku Kassa, head of Ethiopia’s National Disaster Risk Management Commission, said on Wednesday: “We don’t have any food shortage.”
(Additional reporting by Dawit Endeshaw; Writing by Michelle Nichols and Katharine Houreld; Editing by Mary Milliken, Peter Cooney, Angus MacSwan and Jonathan Oatis)
By Stephanie Nebehay
GENEVA (Reuters) – Famine threatens southern Madagascar after drought and sandstorms ruined harvests, reducing people to eating locusts and leaves, the United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP) said on Friday.
The lives of children are in danger, especially those under five years old whose malnutrition rates have reached “alarming levels”, Amer Daoudi, senior director of global WFP operations, said by video link from Madagascar’s capital Antananarivo.
At least 1.35 million people are in need of food assistance in the region, but the WFP is only reaching 750,000 with “half-rations” due to financial constraints, he said.
“Famine looms in southern Madagascar as communities witness an almost total disappearance of food sources which has created a full-blown nutrition emergency,” Daoudi told a U.N. briefing in Geneva.
He said he had visited villages where “people have had to resort to desperate survival measures, such as eating locusts, raw red cactus fruits or wild leaves”.
The harvest was expected to be nearly 40% below the 5-year average, he added.
Malnutrition among children under 5 has almost doubled to 16% from 9% in the four months to March 2021 following five consecutive years of drought, exacerbated this year by sandstorms and late rains, he said.
A rate of 15% is deemed emergency level and some districts are reporting 27%, or one in four children under five, are suffering from acute malnutrition that causes wasting, he said.
“I witnessed…horrific images of starving children, malnourished, and not only the children – mothers, parents and the population in villages we visited,” Daoudi said.
“They are on the periphery of famine, these are images I haven’t seen for quite some time across the globe,” said the veteran aid worker.
WFP is seeking $75 million to cover emergency needs through September, he added.
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by William Maclean and Mark Heinrich)
