Opinion: How targeting Tigray farmers has contributed to brink of famine

Why are people in Tigray starving 15 months after the signing of an agreement that was supposed to relieve them from suffering? If international assistance doesn’t come now, we could be seeing a repeat of the infamous Ethiopian famine of the 1980s. The conflict in the northern region of Ethiopia over the last three years has been dire, marked by the loss of hundreds of thousands of civilian lives. It has included the systematic targeting of farmers and the destruction of crops, leading to one of the worst humanitarian and human rights catastrophes in recent decades. Despite the signing of a cease-fire agreement in early November 2022, the crisis in Tigray persists. When the agreement was signed, there was hope that it would bring an end to the conflict, along with increased access to humanitarian aid. While limited humanitarian assistance and services were restored following the agreement, food assistance was quickly suspended by the U.N. and USAID due to reports of aid theft and diversion. In a statement issued earlier this month, the regional government of Tigray warned the international community and the Ethiopian federal government of an unfolding famine, which could rival the “infamous 1984-5” one that claimed over 1 million lives. The statement underlined the “dark cloud of starvation and death” hanging over Tigray. Across regions including Tigray, Afar, and Amhara, some 4 million people in Ethiopia urgently need food and nutrition assistance — and among the 1.4 million people the United Nations has assessed as needing emergency food assistance in Tigray today are farmers whose livelihoods were decimated by a “scorched earth policy” and looting during the 2020-2022 war. Systematic targeting of farmers Farmers in Tigray have lost nearly everything due to the destruction wrought by the warring parties, from farming tools to seed, from livestock to their homes. Their farms and homes were systematically targeted, and battles in ready-to-harvest fields, intentional torching of crops, and a prolonged blockade further exacerbated the crisis. The de facto blockade of the Tigray region by the Ethiopian government, lasting over two years until November 2022, particularly hindered access to essential inputs such as fertilizers and seeds. Despite agreements to improve the situation, farmers are still struggling to revitalize agricultural production. With little support to replenish lost resources, they are vulnerable to climate shocks, and particularly the rain failure that is causing severe drought in the region. In addition, for over three years, people in the liberated parts of Tigray have been sharing their food stock with the over a million internally displaced persons, or IDPs, from the parts of Tigray that remain under occupation. People we interviewed now say their stocks are finally depleted. The impact of the drought in many parts of Tigray is devastating, with people currently starving to death. Yet many of today’s hungry farmers were already on the verge of starvation since the start of the war and only a small change in weather events would have caused a famine that many argue could rival the 1984-1985 famine. One of the worst hit areas is the Abergele district, a site of one of the biggest battlefields of the war that forced the Ethiopian army to leave Tigray in June 2021. Its center, Yechila, was devastated during the battle and subsequent indiscriminate bombing by the Ethiopian army. Buildings and land that were likely used for farming were systematically destroyed by parties to the conflict. An official of the district that we interviewed who chose to remain anonymous told us that “the enemy soldiers entered almost every house, searched, took what they can and burned what was left. Because we remained under siege for a very long time eating whatever that was left [after the looting and destruction], people found it impossible to revive agricultural production last summer.” An aid worker based in Mekelle that we talked to similarly noted that “the hunger today is an outcome of the accumulated challenges that people here have been going through over the past three years.” According to a report by the regional government and partners that we reviewed, the productivity of farming during the last harvest season was 37% of the region’s usual production. In many of the drought-hit districts, productivity is estimated to have been as low as 2%. Wolday, a farmer from the Bizet district of central Tigray, told us: “We are challenged by everything. There was no fertilizer [during the last farming season], but even the little supply of fertilizer in the market was too expensive. There was no access to seed as before and we used the low-quality seed that we had. On top of that the rains failed us.” The crisis in Tigray extends beyond crop failure Besides the farmers, no significant reconstruction effort has been put into Tigray’s damaged factories and other workplaces which means the tens of thousands of factory workers remain unemployed and thus unpaid for over three years. Similarly, civil servants in the region have not been properly paid for a long time. In December, teachers in different parts of Tigray staged a protest calling for back payments for 17 months that they went unpaid during the war. Unable to pay its workers, the regional administration had to appeal for support from the federal government an official we talked to says remains unanswered. But at the heart of the current crisis are the over 1 million IDPs and countless survivors of rape and sexual violence. Twenty-one-year-old Rahwa, using a pseudonym for privacy, along with her mother, was forced to flee from Western Tigray, an area that remains under Amhara occupation, more than three years ago. As they fled toward central Tigray, she said a group of armed Amhara men raped her in front of her mother. After an arduous journey, she and her mother arrived at a displacement camp where they remain. In an interview, she told us: “I got pregnant from the rape. I gave birth in the displacement camp where we still live without any support. We have not received any assistance since August 2023. We have nothing to eat. We live … begging. As it has become impossible to raise my child this way, I am looking for someone or the government to take her.” Shortly after the signing of the peace agreement, the World Food Programme and USAID suspended food assistance, citing organized theft and diversion of aid. While the authorities in Tigray confirmed the resumption of food distribution operations at the end of last year, they claim the scale remains severely limited and falls short of addressing the acute needs in the region. The latest UNOCHA situation report on Ethiopia recommends that donors “frontload funding to scale up the response this January,” warning that funds received from March-April 2024 will be “too late for many as suffering & destitution will have deepened.” It is imperative that the international community promptly delivers lifesaving mass aid and support for long-term recovery right now, before a repeat of the tragedy of the 1984-1985 famine.