The region has been the theater since fourteen months of an armed conflict between federal and old local authorities. It is submitted, according to the UN, to a “facto blockade” of humanitarian aid, and lacks food and medicine.
Le Monde with AFP
“Nowhere else in the world we are witnessing a hell as in Tiger”: it is in these terms that the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) denounced the blockade of aid. humanitarian in this Ethiopian region at war.
“It is so appalling and unimaginable in our time, at the twenty-the-age century, that a government refuses to its own people, for over a year, access to food , medicines and all that is needed to survive, “said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, himself from this region, before claiming a” political and peaceful “resolution of the conflict.
Help Humanitarian blocked since mid-July
The Tiger conflict has made thousands of deaths and the region, subject to the United Nations to a “de facto blockade” of humanitarian aid, lack of food and medicine. WHO has not been authorized to route medicines and medical equipment to the Tiger since mid-July, despite its repeated requests, including the Cabinet of the Ethiopian Prime Minister and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, according to Mr. Ghebreyesus.
The latter recalled that even at the strongest of the war in Syria or Yemen, WHO has always been able to send aid to the populations that needed it.
At his side during the press conference, the WHO Emergency Operations Manager Michael Ryan, also expressed his indignation. Because of this blockade, “there are people who (…) do not have access to the basic interventions that save lives”. “From my point of view, it is an insult to humanity that to allow that such a situation continues, to allow any access,” he said.
The Tiger Region has been the theater for fourteen months of an armed conflict between the federal government and former local authorities, from the Popular Liberation Front of the Tiger (FPLT), Party, who drew Ethiopia during nearly thirty years, until the arrival of the current Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed.
Nobel Peace Prize 2019, Abiy Ahmed sent the Federal Army in November 2020 to the regional authorities, which challenged its authority for several months and that it accused of attacking military bases.
FPLT counter-offensive has allowed rebels to reconquer, at the end of June 2021, most of the region and progress in those near AMHAARA and AFAR. In December, they fell in their fief of the Tiger faced with a military government offensive.
Last week, the Ethiopian government announced amnesty and the release of several incarcerated political figures, including opposition and FPLT leaders, a measure greeted by the United Nations and the African Union.