Famine in the warring region of Tigray is spreading to other Ethiopian provinces, the UN Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs warned on Tuesday at a closed door in the Security Council. Famine is now threatening nearly 2.5 million Ethiopians, according to Mark Lowcock. Warnings rejected and condemned by the Ethiopian ambassador to the UN.
as reported from New York, Carrie Nooten
For several weeks, Mark Lowcock warns both the Security Council and the public: 350,000 people have already fallen into famine in Tigray. Two million others, in Tigray, Afar and Amhara, are now threatened in turn. “A man-made famine”, lamented the British ambassador to the UN, Barbara Woodward, before a council that failed to agree on a joint declaration.
Seven months later the offensive launched by the Prime Minister, we are far from the quick operation that Abiy Ahmed promised by sending the federal army to Tigray to subdue the rebels. A majority in the Council is concerned about the continuing struggle and the almost systematic use of rape.
Hundreds of you have written to me calling for #UNSC action on #Tigray.
Those in power can end suffering.
When I meet the Council’s colleagues today, I will strongly urge them to support your demands for a weapons permit and life-saving food aid. pic.twitter.com/WJepWJHp5w
– Ambassador Barbara Woodward (@BWoodward_UN) 15 June 2021 “Does not agree with this assessment”
The Ethiopian ambassador to the UN, Taye Atske Selassie Amde, complained at the end of the meeting that the Security Council was discussing the situation in Tigray, which is not on its agenda, and which would fall, according to Addis Ababa, a topic of domestic policy in particular. He also refutes the figures on malnutrition presented by the UN agencies. “We categorically disagree with this assessment” of the UN on famine, he told reporters, believing that the data collected by the organization and non-governmental organizations has not been “in such a way. Transparent and inclusive”.
The last closed council meeting on Tigray was on 22 April. He then adopted a first unanimous statement condemning the abuses in this region of northern Ethiopia.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Nobel Peace Prize winner 2019, in November, the federal army sent to Tigray to fight the TPLF (Front for the Liberation of the People of Tigray), then in power locally and who challenged the central government.
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