With so many at risk from famine, the declaration of a humanitarian truce is a small sign of progress
However faint the hope may be, any glimmer of peace – or even a brief respite – is welcome in the face of a brutal war that has claimed so many civilian lives, seen atrocities by all parties, and displaced 2 million people from their homes. “Nowhere on Earth”, even in Ukraine, are people more at risk than in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, the head of the World Health Organization said this month. Yet as Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, himself from Tigray, noted, the conflict is happening “out of sight and out of mind”.
Up to half a million are estimated to have died from war and famine since the conflict broke out in late 2020. More than 90% of the region’s population is in urgent need of assistance, the United Nations warns. Remaining food stocks from the last harvest – only half the usual yield – will soon be exhausted. What the UN calls a de facto government blockade has halted road deliveries and left the population dependent on scarcer and much more expensive air shipments; the UN recently said it had reached only 7,000 of the 870,000 people it was trying to help weekly.
