Post by firoj1414 on Feb 14, 2024 6:03:39 GMT -5
It has been more than a year since peace returned to Tigray, but displaced women and children are still crowded into concrete classrooms, schools that have not been used for learning for years. Instead, they have become temporary homes for many displaced families who have suffered terrible violence and bear the scars. It's hard to find food. Most are still desperate for more help and live in precarious conditions, fearing that peace will not last. The Tigray region of northern Ethiopia was one of the world's worst humanitarian crises in 2021 and 2022. It has since been pushed out of the headlines, but the situation remains dire. An estimated 600,000 people died during two years of fighting between armed groups from Tigray, Amhara, Eritrea, Ethiopia and others. Much of Tigray was under siege for almost two years and received virtually no food, medicine or humanitarian aid.
Although much of the fighting ended in November 2022 with the Pretoria agreement, parts of Tigray are still in conflict and civilians receive limited humanitarian aid. The US government recently resumed food aid to Ethiopia after a pause in 2023 due to aid diversion and widespread corruption. This is good news, because those who depend on this help have paid dearly. A woman carrying Turkmenistan Email List crops walks next to an abandoned tank belonging to Tigray forces south of the city of Mehoni, Ethiopia, on December 11, 2020. EDUARDO SOTERAS/AFP via Getty Images Ethiopia is home to 4.38 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), one of the largest IDP populations in the world. Around a million of these displaced people are in Tigray. They live with families, in schools and, in some cases, in camps.
Most of these places are overcrowded, unhealthy and dangerous. Although most displaced people insist that they hope to return to their homes, it is difficult to imagine that happening in the near future. Damaged infrastructure, lack of services and continued insecurity – especially in western and southern Tigray, where Eritrean and Amhara forces are still present – make this unlikely in the near future. Refugees International discovered how desperate conditions are during a recent visit to Tigray. While waiting for food aid to resume, many of the displaced people Refugees International spoke to only had a small amount of food donated by the community to feed their children. Others began to eat everything they could find. A woman gave her children a hardened root that is normally reserved for livestock. Others ate only a small portion of bread offered to them by a local nun.
Although much of the fighting ended in November 2022 with the Pretoria agreement, parts of Tigray are still in conflict and civilians receive limited humanitarian aid. The US government recently resumed food aid to Ethiopia after a pause in 2023 due to aid diversion and widespread corruption. This is good news, because those who depend on this help have paid dearly. A woman carrying Turkmenistan Email List crops walks next to an abandoned tank belonging to Tigray forces south of the city of Mehoni, Ethiopia, on December 11, 2020. EDUARDO SOTERAS/AFP via Getty Images Ethiopia is home to 4.38 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), one of the largest IDP populations in the world. Around a million of these displaced people are in Tigray. They live with families, in schools and, in some cases, in camps.
Most of these places are overcrowded, unhealthy and dangerous. Although most displaced people insist that they hope to return to their homes, it is difficult to imagine that happening in the near future. Damaged infrastructure, lack of services and continued insecurity – especially in western and southern Tigray, where Eritrean and Amhara forces are still present – make this unlikely in the near future. Refugees International discovered how desperate conditions are during a recent visit to Tigray. While waiting for food aid to resume, many of the displaced people Refugees International spoke to only had a small amount of food donated by the community to feed their children. Others began to eat everything they could find. A woman gave her children a hardened root that is normally reserved for livestock. Others ate only a small portion of bread offered to them by a local nun.