As every month, the UN Humanitarian Coordination Bureau Ocha published a Monday update on the Ethiopian region of Tigray. It appears from this bulletin that the work of humanitarian organizations remains difficult despite the unilateral ceasefire decided by the federal authorities on June 28, 2021.
No telephone network, frequent power outages in the few cities where it has been restored, roads cut, bridges destroyed, no banking services. Support workers at Tigray, Ocha said, “have a shortage of necessary supplies, including fuel and cash.”
The UN agency explains that it is now trying to secure an access road through the neighboring region of Afar. But this weekend, fighting broke out in this desert province, which has very few roads.
Three aid workers were killed in June
Many Tigrayans are therefore still poor. If four million people are now “accessible”, says Ocha, 850,000 in sectors “partially accessible” and 480,000 in sectors “difficult to access”.
A total of 136 “incidents” were listed in June, the UN agency added. Bocages, threats, theft of equipment, food, medicine or vehicles then used in combat, for example, but also arbitrary arrests and three murders of aid workers only for the last month.
Finally, according to a map published by Ocha, it seems that the inaccessible areas today are the southern corridor of Tigray, as well as the entire west, where the front line has begun to be strengthened militarily in recent days by the federal authorities.
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