A former U.N. employee alleged on Tuesday that the Ethiopian government intentionally prevented its representatives from declaring an official famine last year in the country’s northern Tigray region, which has been devastated by Ethiopia’s ongoing civil war, the media platform Devex reported.
“At the end of my time in the U.N., it was clear to me that there was famine in Tigray, and the only reason it wasn’t declared was because the Ethiopian authorities were quite effective in slowing down the whole declaration system,” Mark Lowcock said during an online event hosted by the Overseas Development Institute on June 7.
Lowcock served as U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator from May 2017 to June 2021.
The U.N. described Ethiopia’s Tigray region as at risk of an “imminent” famine in a statement issued by its food-assistance branch, the World Food Program (WFP), on June 10, 2021.
A WFP report published on January 28 estimated that roughly 40 percent of Tigray’s population of 5.5 million was “suffering an extreme lack of food.”
The organization implied at the time that fighting between the Ethiopian federal government and separatist forces in Tigray had stalled the distribution of food aid already delivered to the country by the U.N.
“WFP is doing all it can to ensure convoys with food and medicines make it through the frontlines, but no convoy has reached Tigray since mid-December,” the group noted.
“If hostilities persist, we need all the parties to the conflict to agree to a humanitarian pause and formally agreed transport corridors, so that supplies can reach the millions besieged by hunger,” WFP Regional Director for Eastern Africa Michael Dunford told reporters on January 28.
Addis Ababa, on January 28, blamed its failure to properly distribute food aid in Tigray on incessant attacks against its forces by the TPLF.
“On Friday [January 28], the government said a convoy carrying food and medicine was forced to turn back due to fighting it blamed on the TPLF,” Reuters relayed at the time.
Tigray’s food insecurity stems directly from Ethiopia’s civil war. The conflict sparked in November 2020 when forces allied to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) attacked a federally administered military base in Tigray. Ethiopia’s federal government responded to the ambush by launching an air and ground offensive against the TPLF, which is a Marxist militia group. The conflict continues today.
Addis Ababa declared an indefinitely timed humanitarian truce with the TPLF on March 24. The ceasefire ostensibly aimed to allow aid distribution in Tigray, though the U.N. said no food was distributed during the temporary halt in fighting.