With food, fuel and funding at an all-time low, the UN WFP warns that millions in Tigray will starve (Vatican News)
Posted: 16 Jan 2022, 14:01
WFP: Tigray aid operations ‘about to grind to a halt’
With food, fuel and funding at an all-time low, the United Nations World Food Programme warns that millions in Ethiopia’s war-torn Tigray region will starve.
The United Nations has sounded an alarm that its life-saving food assistance operations in northern Ethiopia are “about to grind to a halt”. The escalation of conflict across the northern Tigray region means that no WFP convoy has reached the regional capital Mekelle since mid-December, WFP, the UN’s World Food Programme said on Friday.
More worrying still, stocks of nutritionally fortified food to treat malnourished women and children have now been exhausted and the last of WFP’s cereals, pulses, and oil will be distributed next week in Tigray, where millions are estimated to be in need of food assistance.
“Because of fighting, food distributions are at an all-time low,” WFP spokesperson, Tomson Phiri told reporters in Geneva. “WFP aid workers on the ground tell me that warehouses are completely empty…. In my experience that’s a very dire sign, it almost never happens”, he added.
Looming humanitarian disaster
Another WFP official warned, “We’re on the edge of a humanitarian disaster.”
“We’re now having to choose who goes hungry to prevent another from starving,” said Michael Dunford, WFP’s Regional Director for Eastern Africa, calling for immediate guarantees from all parties to the conflict for safe and secure humanitarian corridors, via all routes, across northern Ethiopia.
Continue reading https://www.vaticannews.va/en/world/new ... lting.html
With food, fuel and funding at an all-time low, the United Nations World Food Programme warns that millions in Ethiopia’s war-torn Tigray region will starve.
The United Nations has sounded an alarm that its life-saving food assistance operations in northern Ethiopia are “about to grind to a halt”. The escalation of conflict across the northern Tigray region means that no WFP convoy has reached the regional capital Mekelle since mid-December, WFP, the UN’s World Food Programme said on Friday.
More worrying still, stocks of nutritionally fortified food to treat malnourished women and children have now been exhausted and the last of WFP’s cereals, pulses, and oil will be distributed next week in Tigray, where millions are estimated to be in need of food assistance.
“Because of fighting, food distributions are at an all-time low,” WFP spokesperson, Tomson Phiri told reporters in Geneva. “WFP aid workers on the ground tell me that warehouses are completely empty…. In my experience that’s a very dire sign, it almost never happens”, he added.
Looming humanitarian disaster
Another WFP official warned, “We’re on the edge of a humanitarian disaster.”
“We’re now having to choose who goes hungry to prevent another from starving,” said Michael Dunford, WFP’s Regional Director for Eastern Africa, calling for immediate guarantees from all parties to the conflict for safe and secure humanitarian corridors, via all routes, across northern Ethiopia.
Continue reading https://www.vaticannews.va/en/world/new ... lting.html
