UNO: Half of pregnant women in Tigray region are malnourished

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A mother washes her child at a makeshift camp for displaced people in Tigray

Photo: Eduardo Soteras / AFP

The Tigray conflict in Ethiopia began almost two years ago.

Almost half of the population in the region now suffers from food shortages.

Half of pregnant or breastfeeding women are malnourished, as are a third of children under the age of five, leading to malnutrition and maternal mortality.

This emerges from a report by the World Food Program (WFP).

Although aid shipments resumed after the central government declared a unilateral ceasefire in March, malnutrition rates "have skyrocketed," the UN organization said in an analysis.

She assumes that the situation will worsen in the near future.

"Hunger has worsened, malnutrition rates have soared, and the situation will continue to worsen as people's plight is expected to worsen by October this year's harvest," the report said.

13 million people need help

In Tigray and the neighboring regions of Afar and Amhara, also affected by the war, an estimated 13 million people are in need of food aid today.

That is 44 percent more than in the previous January WFP report.

The United Nations said only 1.7 million liters of fuel had reached the Tigray region since April, equivalent to less than 20 percent of the region's monthly humanitarian needs if all supplies had arrived.

Solution not in sight for the time being

Hopes of early peace talks between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which controls Tigray, are dwindling.

Both sides accuse each other of not wanting to come to the negotiating table.

The Ethiopian government said earlier this month it wanted talks “without preconditions”.

Meanwhile, the TPLF on the other side is demanding that supplies to the civilian population be restored first.

Fighting in the region has displaced millions of people and killed thousands of civilians.

The director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who hails from Tigray, suggested this week that the lack of attention to the need is also due to racism: "Maybe the reason is the color of the people's skin."

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