Eritrean troops fighting Ethiopian forces in a war against the Tigray region’s volatile leaders “will definitely leave soon,” Ethiopia’s UN ambassador said Tuesday in a move that would be welcomed by many including the UN, whose humanitarian chief accused the Eritreans of using hunger . as “a weapon of war.”
The war in Tigray was the subject of an informal closed-door meeting of the UN Security Council in which Chief of Staff Mark Lowcock warned that more than 350,000 people were starving, with deaths from starvation already reported and Ethiopia’s UN envoy Taye Atske Selassie Amde questioning famine-related data but said there is “food insecurity” in Tigray and expressed gratitude for donor assistance.
Lowcock strongly defended the data published last week which showed that 350,000 people are facing starvation and over 2 million are just one step away. It was released by The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, known as IPC, which is a global partnership with 15 UN agencies and international humanitarian organizations, and uses five categories of food security, ranging from people who have enough to eat to those who face ” Famine -Humanitarian disaster. “
In its review to the Security Council, received by the Associated Press, Lowcock called the IPC “the world’s most sophisticated, authoritative, comprehensive, professionally accurate assessment” and said that if it was wrong, “it’s because it’s too optimistic.
“The Tigray administration has reported deaths due to starvation,” he said. “The situation will get worse in the coming months, not only in Tigray but also in (neighbors) Afar and Amhara.”
Lowcock said the more than 350,000 people in “disaster” conditions are a greater number than the world has seen anywhere in the world since 250,000 Somalis lost their lives to famine in 2011.
The largely Tigray agricultural region of about 5.5 million people already had a food security problem in the midst of a grasshopper outbreak when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on November 4 announced fighting between his forces and the defiant regional governments. Tigray leaders dominated Ethiopia for almost three decades but abstained after Abiy introduced reforms that earned him the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize.
No one knows how many thousands of civilians or combatants have been killed. More than 50,000 have fled to neighboring Sudan. Although Abiy declared victory at the end of November, Ethiopia’s military and allied warriors remain active, including troops from the Eritrean neighborhood, a bitter enemy of the now volatile officials who once led Tigray.
In addition to Eritrean soldiers using hunger as a “weapon of war,” Lowcock told the Security Council that “rape is systematically used to terrorize women and girls. … Displaced people are rounded up, beaten and threatened. Aid workers have been killed, interrogated, beaten, blocked from take help for the starving and suffering and told them not to come back. ”
He warned that without an end to the war and a political solution in Tigray, the protection of civilians and the departure of Eritrean soldiers responsible for “significant violations” of international humanitarian law, no one should be surprised to see a 1984. “
During the catastrophic famine of 1984-85, about 2 million Africans died of starvation or famine-related diseases, about half of them in Ethiopia.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said at the end of March that the Eritreans had agreed to leave.
Asked when they would leave, Amde in Ethiopia told reporters after the Council meeting that “there is a commitment from my government, and the Eritreans are also very clear, that it is a matter of resolving some technical and procedural issues. Our expectation is that they will leave. definitely soon. ”
Britain’s UN ambassador Barbara Woodward said, “there can be no further delay.”
“Farmers have not been able to plant next year’s crops because of the violence,” she told reporters. “The window for them to do so is about to close. And as the violence continues, it condemns not only the people of Tigray to desperate hunger this year but also next year. ”
Woodward emphasized that the lives of millions of people are in balance. “The solution is clear: a ceasefire, humanitarian access and political dialogue,” she said.
Woodward said the United Kingdom has announced a further £ 16.7 million ($ 23.4 million) in support of Ethiopia, bringing the total to £ 47.7 million ($ 66.8 million) since the conflict began eight months ago. Ambassador Amde pointed out contributions from the United Kingdom and China.
Lowcock said the United States “is the only donor that has gone up in any meaningful way so far.” He stressed that funding was needed now “to prevent the famine from getting worse.”
The three African members of the Security Council – Tunisia, Niger, Kenya, united with Saint Vincent and the Grenadines – issued a statement late Tuesday expressing “concern for the humanitarian needs of 17.1 million Ethiopians, including people in the Tigray region”, and called for to step-up support.
The 14-point statement never mentions famine and warns the Council that all measures it takes “must recognize and respond to the reality that Ethiopia is completing preparations for an election that is barely a week away.”
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