It’s been just over a year since the devastating war in Ethiopia’s Tigray came to an official end and experts have now warned that the region — as much as some other parts of the Horn of Africa country — finds itself in the grip of another humanitarian crisis: famine.
The reasons for Ethiopia’s worsening hunger crisis are varied — from drought, conflict to graft — and some of them could have been avoided. As many Ethiopians go to bed hungry due to the setbacks in the food aid distribution, according to the latest predictions and calculations by experts specializing in hunger, another major famine in Ethiopia could soon become a reality. According to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), some 20 million people in the Horn of Africa nation are in urgent need of food assistance. Especially the Tigray region faces a devastating famine, with thousands in desperate need of aid. The aftermath of war and drought leaves residents, especially the elderly, struggling for survival.
A former head of the WFP, who spoke under condition of anonymity, told the media that the Ethiopia is “marching towards starvation” once again. In the Tigray region itself, over 90% of its population was at risk of starvation and death. Tigrayan authorities have warned of an “unfolding famine” that could match the disaster of 1984-85, which claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. In 2022, a UN panel published a report accusing Ethiopia’s government of using “starvation as a method of warfare”, as one of the human rights violations committed during the Tigray conflict, Addis Ababa tried to shrug these reports off as “inaccurate”. And it was only after years of deadly clashes that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government is quietly acknowledging that people in the regions of Tigray and also Amhara are now facing a new enemy: hunger.