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- 100 trucks are required daily for providing food, non-food items, and fuel daily.
- TPLF is blamed for waging war in the Afar region, which is the route used to bring aid into Tigray.
- World Bank availed R4.8 billion to Ethiopia to increase community resilience to the shocks of the conflict.
Three weeks after the mini-truce in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, an underwhelming 4% of required food aid has reached targeted areas.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), said less than a hundred trucks had entered the region in almost a month.
He said in a tweet:
Food aid is delivered into Tigray, mostly by road through the Afar region and for the situation to normalise, humanitarian aid givers say 100 trucks must enter the region with food, non-food items, and fuel every day.
READ | 75% of Tigray population facing severe hunger as war rages in Ethiopia
Eritrean and Ethiopian forces are blamed for sealing "off seven million people from the world" in a war that started in November 2020. They are fighting against the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), a left-wing ethnic nationalist paramilitary group.
Both warring factions are blamed for gross human rights violations. The Ethiopian National Disaster Risk Management Commission (NDRMC) in a statement said TPLF's invasion of the Afar State, where the fighting has moved since the mini-truce in Tigray, had resulted in 1.3 million citizens in need of immediate food aid.
NDRMC added that the new war frontier was affecting food aid delivery in crisis spots.
NDRMC public relations head Debebe Zewde said in a statement:
The fighting in Afar could compromise the mini-truce and the possibility of peace talks.
Meanwhile, to address challenges related to the conflict - such as the destruction of private and public assets, gender-based violence, sexual abuse, and hunger - the World Bank has approved an R4.8-billion International Development Association (IDA) grant for the Response-Recovery-Resilience for Conflict-Affected Communities in Ethiopia Project.
"The project will support efforts to address the immediate needs of communities, rehabilitate/recover infrastructure destroyed by conflict, and increase community resilience to the impacts of conflict in a sustainable manner," said the World Bank.
The project will be aimed at the Afar, Amhara, Benishangul-Gumuz, Oromia, and Tigray regions, which have been highly impacted by the ongoing conflict.
The World Bank's International Development Association (IDA), was established in 1960, to help the world's poorest countries through the provision of grants for projects and programs that boost economic growth, reduce poverty, and improve poor people's lives.
The News24 Africa Desk is supported by the Hanns Seidel Foundation. The stories produced through the Africa Desk and the opinions and statements that may be contained herein do not reflect those of the Hanns Seidel Foundation.
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