United Nations — Ninety percent of the population in northern Ethiopia's Tigray region — or 5.2 million people — need urgent aid, the U.N.'s Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Nada al-Nashif told a virtual session of the U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday.
"Only limited U.N.-organized humanitarian supplies have been able to enter Tigray since July, including food and vital medical supplies," said al-Nashif.
While the U.N. has met on the Ethiopian war multiple times, divisions between world powers have stymied any action to stem the bloodshed. The war started more than a year ago, when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's sent troops into Tigray to fight the rebels after an alleged attack on his forces. It snowballed over the course of a year, with the Tigrayans and allied militias advancing toward the capital city. Recently however, Abiy's forces have reclaimed towns north of Addis Ababa from the rebels, pushing the front line back toward Tigray.
"The global paralysis on Ethiopia's armed conflict has emboldened human rights abusers to act with impunity and left communities at risk of feeling abandoned," Human Rights Watch's Laetitia Bader said in a report published jointly this week by the organization and Amnesty International.
Famine has hit over 400,000 people, and fuel is still not making it into the embattled region, so aid that has been sent isn't getting to those who need it, U.N. spokesperson Farhan Haq told CBS News at a briefing.
And as the war continues, so too do the atrocities it has brought with it.
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