Hunger the world is ignoring

Northern Ethiopia, plagued by years of civil war and protracted conflict, does not need more trouble. But that is exactly what is happening in this important region of Africa’s second most populous country.

The war-torn regions of Amhara, Afar and Tigray have remained dry for months due to a devastating drought that has devastated crops. Coupled with renewed fighting and diplomatic hurdles to humanitarian aid, new famines are emerging in areas previously plagued by devastating famines.

Journalists from The Economist recently reported from the town of Yechira in the Tigray region, where farmers with dry wells tried to sell dying cattle and the village’s grain store was empty and crumbling due to lack of rain. He described the hillsides as faded to a sickly sepia hue from lack of rain. . In an unprecedented move, a federal monitoring agency recently found that nearly 400 people have already starved to death in Amhara and Tigray regions. Aid workers say this may just be the beginning.

A new memo from the Tigray Food Cluster, a joint project between Ethiopian officials and the United Nations World Food Programme, says: “If we don’t act now, there will be severe food insecurity and malnutrition and food losses during the famine period. “There is a possibility,” the statement states. These are the most vulnerable children and women in the region. ”

The former head of the World Food Program was more blunt, warning the Associated Press that major regions of Ethiopia were “moving toward starvation.”

This new Ethiopian famine is a global humanitarian crisis that no one seems to be talking about. Part of the problem is that so much attention is being focused on other major crises, particularly the ongoing war in Gaza, but also the flood of refugees in Congo and the war in Ukraine. But perhaps the bigger problem is that the Ethiopian government is not only not doing enough to combat hunger, but actively pretending it doesn’t exist.

When senior Tigray officials recently tried to sound the alarm about the situation, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmad’s government accused the region’s leaders of “politicizing the crisis” and denied factual information about hunger. dismissed as “inaccurate”.

In recent days, government officials have finally acknowledged there is a problem, but they are trying to place the blame on the civil war that broke out earlier this decade. Abiy’s government hopes to avoid responsibility for continued human rights violations committed by its military in Amhara and neighboring regions.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Key global stakeholders, including the U.S. government and the U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as the United Nations, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and the rest of the international community, are not only pressuring the Ethiopian government to cause famine, but that it is a top priority. At the same time, their own humanitarian aid will increase dramatically.

History shows us the consequences of inaction. In 1984 and 1985, a devastating famine in the same region of Ethiopia killed an estimated 500,000 people. In the West, this disaster is best remembered as the inspiration for his famous 1985 global rock concert, Live Aid, aimed at famine relief.

The similarities between that famine and today’s crisis are chilling. Then, a similar severe drought affected the region, but the real cause was years of civil war and the corrupt and ethnocentric government in Addis Ababa.

In late January this year, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission released a shocking report stating that as many as 4 million people in the Amhara region of northern and central Gondar, Wollo, and the Afar and Tigray regions are at risk from the current famine. I warned you that crisis. The drought highlights the issue of climate change in the important Horn of Africa region, where it is clearly a contributing factor. However, continued human rights abuses by Abiy’s government and its military, particularly in the war-torn Amhara region, are pushing Ethiopia to the brink of disaster.

In particular, government military operations against popular regional militias in Amhara resulted in mass arrests and displacement of residents, including farmers essential to the food supply. Troops have looted homes and shops, even burning granaries containing desperately needed necessities.

But the gridlocked government in Addis Ababa also lacks the necessary resources to deal with the humanitarian crisis for which it is primarily responsible. At the end of 2023, Ethiopia will default on its $33 million national debt, and the government is now desperately seeking aid from the International Monetary Fund and other countries.

This growing crisis is also an opportunity for Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other policymakers to deliver on promises for a new U.S.-Africa partnership. Humanitarian food shipments from Western countries to Ethiopia have only recently resumed, with stricter protocols in place aimed at stamping out endemic corruption and theft. The United States will use all available diplomatic, developmental, and legal tools to pressure Abiy Ahmed’s government to end its campaign of violence and forced displacement against its people in the Amhara region and elsewhere. can.

The ideal vehicle to investigate and expose these human rights violations lies in the bipartisan Tom Lantos Commission on Human Rights, which was established in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2008 to investigate such situations. I urge the Committee to help draw the attention of a world that is not paying enough attention to this pressing humanitarian disaster.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of needless hunger, which entered Western consciousness only when it was too late. Today, millions of hungry Ethiopians are counting on us to learn from our past mistakes.

Mesfin Tegenu, Chairman and CEO of RxParadigm, is the Executive Chair of the American Ethiopian Public Affairs Committee.