(Nairobi) The decisions of the United States and then the UN’s World Food Program (WFP) to suspend food aid to Ethiopia because of diversions “punishes millions of people”, the spokesman of the United Nations criticized on Saturday. Ethiopian government.
More than 15% of the country’s population depends on food aid.
On Thursday, USAID, the US government’s international aid agency, announced the suspension of its food aid, denouncing a “widespread and coordinated diversion operation” of this aid.
The following day, the WFP announced that it was “temporarily ceasing food aid”, also citing “diversion of food”, while asserting that “nutritional assistance to children, pregnant and breastfeeding women, school meal programs and activities reinforcement of farmers and breeders” in the face of external shocks would continue without interruption.
This suspension of food aid “punishes millions of people”, reacted during a press conference the government spokesman, Legesse Tulu, considering that this decision was “political”. “Making only the government responsible [des détournements] is unacceptable,” he continued.
The Ethiopian authorities, in a joint press release with USAID, had nevertheless assured Thursday evening that a joint investigation was underway “so that the perpetrators of these hijackings are accountable”.
The American agency had already decided in May, at the same time as the WFP, to suspend food aid to the Ethiopian region of Tigray, which had just emerged from two years of conflict in November, due to the diversion of part of this aid, “sold on the local market”.
About 20 million people, or 16% of the 120 million Ethiopians, depend on food aid, the UN humanitarian agency (Ocha) estimated at the end of May, due to conflicts and a historic drought in the region. Horn of Africa which caused the displacement of 4.6 million people across the country.
Ethiopia also hosts on its soil nearly a million refugees, mainly from South Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea. Since mid-April, nearly 30,000 people fleeing the conflict in Sudan have also found refuge in eastern Ethiopia.