A leading United Nations official on Friday urged the international community to immediately scale up its support for children and families to avert a worsening humanitarian emergency across Ethiopia. Some 21.4 million people in the country are in need of humanitarian assistance this year, including 12 million children.
“Ethiopia is facing multiple crises and needs are outpacing our response. The El Niño-driven drought, which has hit northern, central, and southern Ethiopia, is having a ravaging impact on millions of children,” said Ted Chaiban, Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), in a statement released Friday.
“For 2024, it is projected that almost 1 million children will suffer from acute malnutrition and around 350,000 pregnant and lactating women will be malnourished,” he said during a five-day visit to Ethiopia.
Across the country, some 15.8 million people are in need of food aid. It is estimated that more than 940,000 children under five will require treatment for severe acute malnutrition (SAM) this year, while 2.4 million children under five and 1.3 million malnourished pregnant and lactating mothers will require treatment for moderate acute malnutrition (MAM).
Chaiban visited one of the hardest-hit drought areas in the northern region of Tigray, where malnutrition rates have surpassed the emergency threshold.
“This is a region where families’ coping mechanisms have been exhausted,” said Chaiban.
“I met one mother, called Lemlem, and she told me that just when she thought things were getting better, the drought hit. She had a look of real despair in her eyes.”
To further complicate the situation, there is a public health emergency taking place across the nation with outbreaks of cholera, measles, dengue fever and malaria.
“These are killer diseases for children and are easily preventable,” said the UN official. “In addition, the country is dealing with the impact of conflict which is also exacerbating the situation for vulnerable communities.”
UNICEF said the UN children's agency and other humanitarian organizations were working tirelessly to respond to the humanitarian crises, providing nutritional support, as well as access to safe water, routine immunization, education and child protection services.
But much more needed to be done.
“If we act now, we can save the lives of millions of children. But we need resources so that we can increase our humanitarian response. We also hope for a peaceful way forward to address the unresolved disputes, so we can reach all children in need, no matter where they are,” Chaiban said.
Ethiopia continues to face huge humanitarian challenges, with conflict, displacement, drought, floods, and disease outbreaks as the main drivers of need. These challenges are creating a complex and volatile situation affecting more than 20 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in 2024.
Some 4.4 million internally displaced people (IDPs), severely affected by conflict, hostilities and climate shocks, are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. As of September 2023, the regions of Somali (30 percent), Oromia (30 percent) and Tigray (27 percent) accounted for the highest number of IDPs nationwide.
Large numbers of IDPs continue to return to the Amhara, Tigray, and Afar regions, as well as the Southern Ethiopia region. As of September 2023, an estimated 2.5 million IDPs had returned to their places of origin across Ethiopia, 97 percent of whom were initially displaced by the conflict.
Most affected by hunger are vulnerable communities in northern Ethiopia that have yet to recover from the 2020-2022 war, particularly in areas of Tigray, Amhara, and Afar, where the recent harvest was severely disrupted, leaving households with no or limited food stocks.
In the northern regions, an estimated 4 million people in Tigray, Afar, and Amhara are affected by devastating drought. Malnutrition rates in parts of these regions have already surpassed globally recognized crisis levels.
Earlier this year, transitional authorities in Ethiopia's war-torn Tigray region warned of imminent famine due to drought and the lingering effects of the devastating two-year war in the north of the country, as rainfall in northern Ethiopia continues to be inadequate.
In Tigray, hundreds of people are reported to have starved to death in recent months following the suspension of food aid across the country. The World Food Program (WFP) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) halted food aid to Ethiopia in June 2023 after finding that supplies were not reaching those in need.
But critics say the suspension of food aid for more than six months endangered vulnerable populations and worsened the situation for people in Tigray and other regions of the country amid high levels of food insecurity following years of conflict and climatic shocks.
Food distribution resumed across Ethiopia in December 2023. However, according to media reports, only a small fraction of the millions of people in war-torn Tigray who were eligible for food aid from humanitarian agencies actually received it.
Meanwhile, in Ethiopia's Amhara region, clashes continue between government forces and the regional Fano militia, which fought on the government side during the conflict in Tigray. Fighting between the federal government and the armed group was sparked in April 2023, when the government asked the militia to join the country's police or military following the Tigray peace agreement.
Civilians in Amhara have yet to recover from two years of conflict in northern Ethiopia, which has affected their lives and livelihoods. Hostilities are likely to exacerbate the plight of civilians, especially given the limited humanitarian response that has stalled due to insecurity.
Ongoing hostilities in western Oromia continue to displace thousands of civilians and impact humanitarian operations. Tensions and violence in the Oromia region have resulted in an alarming number of casualties and a deeply disturbing overall situation.
The UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, on Tuesday announced the allocation of US$17 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) for Ethiopia to scale up the humanitarian response in the northeast African country.
Earlier this week, the United Nations, the Government of Ethiopia and the humanitarian community in the country jointly appealed for US$3.24 billion to provide humanitarian assistance to some 15.5 million targeted and most vulnerable Ethiopians. UNICEF is appealing for US$535 million to ensure that children get the help they desperately need.
Aid operations in the country are dangerously and chronically underfunded. The UN 2023 Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) for Ethiopia called for US$4 billion. As of January this year, the 2023 HRP was only 34 percent funded.
Further information
Full text: El Niño-driven drought, floods, disease outbreaks and internal conflicts threatening the lives of children in Ethiopia, UNICEF, press release, released March 1, 2024
https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/el-ni%C3%B1o-driven-drought-floods-disease-outbreaks-and-internal-conflicts-threatening