Issue No. 183

Food aid suspension in Ethiopia: Punishing the victims?
 

Since the Pretoria agreement in November 2022, thousands of people have starved to death in Tigray– and hunger is only worsening. According to the Tigray Regional Health Bureau, between March and April 2023, there was a 28% increase in children under 5 dying of acute malnutrition. In Samre town 60km southwest of Mekelle, many families have received no food aid since April. The local administrator there revealed 10 children had already died in June, saying, “Our children are falling like leaves. We have nothing to offer them.”
 
Thousands of newly displaced Tigrayans from Eritrean and Amhara-occupied western Tigray continue to arrive at overcrowded, under-resourced internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in Tigray needing immediate food assistance. And western Tigray has yet to see any humanitarian aid at all. Today, many months after the ceasefire, this humanitarian catastrophe is only intensifying, largely due to the suspension of international food aid to Tigray since 3 May, and Ethiopia overall since 9 June. With 15% of the country and 5.6 million Tigrayans dependent on food aid, this decision is having enormous repercussions.
 
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and USAID, by far the largest food aid donor to Ethiopia, have both suspended support because of the widespread theft of food aid in Ethiopia. Reportedly taking place for several years, the issue apparently intensified during the Tigray War, to an extraordinary degree. Details are still murky, but following the WFP and USAID aid suspensions, an investigation ordered by the Tigray Regional Interim Administration claimed Eritrean involvement in the diversions. General Fiseha Kidanu, in charge of the investigation, said Eritrean forces had diverted nearly 3,000 metric tonnes of wheat intended for civilians. But Eritrean forces appear to be just one culprit among many.
 
Ethiopian federal and regional officials have also been implicated in a wider scheme that saw them siphon relief aid to soldiers, and vast quantities of wheat to traders and flour mills to export. Officials from the Ethiopian military, 8 regional government officials, and senior WFP and USAID officials, are all believed to have been involved. Previous attempts to halt such corrupt practices appear to have gotten nowhere. The National Commissioner for Disaster Risk Management Mitiku Kassa was arrested last year for alleged corruption, yet the stealing continued.
 
For years prior to the war, the fear of food aid theft had been taken seriously in Tigray. Food distribution happened at the village level. Village by village, people with their donkeys collected bags of grain. They would have likely preferred to rent a small truck, but trucks were deliberately disallowed near municipal distribution centres, to prevent mass resale by aid distributors. It now appears likely that trucks were diverted directly from the main warehouses as, according to farmers, there were no thefts at the village level.
 
Tigray is not the only affected region. One aid worker said, “This is devastating- not just for Tigray… even before the freeze, aid was sporadic and insufficient.” In April, IDPs in the Afar region protested after reports of government officials’ involvement in stealing aid.
 
There is reportedly a growing consensus amongst civilians in Tigray, and wider Ethiopia, that the victims of such devastating fraud should not also become the victims of halted aid. While greater scrutiny is very clearly essential, the suspension of aid punishes both victims and perpetrators.
 
Food aid theft and the subsequent suspension of international food aid have drawn condemnation both inside and outside Ethiopia. US Senator Jim Risch, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called the theft of US food aid “deplorable.” He criticised the “lack of oversight and guardrails of US humanitarian assistance.” In Tigray, tens of thousands of displaced persons protested against the suspension of food aid in May.
 
In light of the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Tigray, it is essential to ease restrictions on aid to the region– or many more will certainly die. Direct cash aid could be one viable alternative to supporting the vast numbers of IDPs in Tigray; this would offer fewer opportunities for theft and would not interfere with local agricultural production. Going forward, there must also be full transparency regarding the still-to-be-unearthed schemes that were used to steal so much food aid. Transparent prosecution of those responsible would send a clear message about officials’ unwillingness to accept such corruption.
 
After everything Tigrayans have suffered over the past two and a half years, this latest affront rankles particularly badly. A comprehensive solution is needed immediately before yet more innocent people die.