(Nairobi) Weakened by several days without eating, she had gone to a hospital in Tigray, an Ethiopian region in a famine situation for more than two years. Bedridden, she begged for a few mouthfuls of water, which she had difficulty swallowing because of her atrophied muscles.
Four days later, the 45-year-old mother died, leaving five orphans. But “we do not have the means to take care of her children”, laments her nephew, Desta Hailu (the name has been changed), who told the agony of her aunt to AFP by telephone.
Seven months after the agreement that ended two years of devastating conflict, Tigray is crying out for hunger. And the situation is likely to get worse after decisions in May by the UN’s World Food Program (WFP) and the US government’s aid agency (USAID) to suspend food aid to Tigray due to diversions.
During his interview with AFP, Desta Hailu, a university professor in the town of Adigrat, located a few kilometers from the Eritrean border, said he had not eaten for two days. His last meal consisted of a slice of bread with tea.
With his wife, they deprive themselves in order to be able to feed their children. But it’s never enough. “My son constantly complains of hunger, he wants to eat his little sister’s portion,” says the forty-year-old.
“Desperate”
A region of six million people in northern Ethiopia, Tigray has been in search of food for more than two years.
During the war that raged between November 2020 and November 2022, UN experts accused the Ethiopian federal government of subjecting the region to a “de facto” blockade.
Authorities have denied the allegations, accusing rebel authorities in Tigray of requisitioning food aid for their war effort.
With the Ethiopian government still refusing journalists access to Tigray, AFP is unable to independently verify the information on the ground.
After the peace agreement signed in November, basic services – electricity, banks, telecommunications – have gradually returned. Hunger remains.
“The number of people going to food distribution centers has increased,” said Nigisti Solomon, a volunteer worker at a center funded by the Tigray Action Committee, a Tigrayan diaspora pressure group based in the United States.
Displaced people are begging in the street, others are queuing in front of food distribution centers, she said by telephone.
WFP and USAID froze aid nationally in June after discovering it was being diverted to local markets. Neither of the two organizations has identified those responsible for these hijackings.
Desta Hailu and Nigisti Solomon claim to have already seen aid sold, for example blankets, the merchants justifying themselves by saying that they need money to buy food, medicine or soap.
“People are desperate, they want to survive […] and fill their stomachs,” says Desta Hailu.
The WFP declined AFP’s interview requests. Spokespersons for the Ethiopian government and USAID did not respond to requests.
” Death sentence ”
“A month ago there was a patient in his 40s with an intestinal obstruction. We operated it […] and he developed sepsis due to malnutrition and he died,” said a surgeon from Adigrat, Gaym Gebreselassie.
“We see clear evidence of hunger. […] We cannot operate with confidence in these conditions,” he continued.
“We see infants who are significantly underweight, who cannot breathe well […] Underweight children do not develop properly,” he points out.
Gaym Gebreselassie, his wife and two children aged six and two, are also dependent on food aid, the result of several months of unpaid wages. Due to malnutrition, his two sons contracted infections, he says.
For the surgeon, the suspension of food aid “is a death sentence”.
Before the war broke out in November 2020, he led a comfortable life, he says. Then Eritrean troops, who supported the Ethiopian federal army, occupied and looted his house.
In the months that followed, his aunt and his mother’s cousin, both in their forties, died of malnutrition.
Today, Desta Hailu’s days revolve around the desperate search for food so that her children eat at least once a day. “If this situation continues, I fear losing my children to hunger, that they will die before my eyes”.