Rampant sexual violence and unprovoked, indiscriminate killings continue to make the situation in Ethiopia’s Tigray region “very horrific,” said World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
During a press conference Monday, Tedros said he doesn’t think Tigray’s scale of sexual violence exists anywhere else in the world. Over 90% of the region’s population needs food aid, with people currently dying from starvation, he added.
The price women and girls are paying for Ethiopia's war
Following reports of alarming levels of sexual assault in the conflict in Ethiopia’s northern region of Tigray, Devex visits the refugee camps in eastern Sudan to document how survivors are coping with unwanted pregnancies and widespread trauma.
Access urgently needed: Over six months into the crisis, humanitarians are still not able to safely access populations in need, said Mike Ryan, executive director at the WHO Health Emergencies Programme. The majority of health facilities are either destroyed or inaccessible to the population, and health responders have had issues getting vaccines into the region, Ryan said, adding that cholera vaccines are urgently needed to avert a “disaster.”
“This is about access, access, and access,” Ryan said. “It is impossible to deliver sustainable humanitarian aid in the context of the ongoing conflict and the ongoing atrocities.”
COVID-19 not a priority: COVID-19 does not register as a priority for the millions of people affected by the conflict because of the myriad other threats they face, according to Tedros.
“It's not even their concern,” he said. “The chance of dying from all the issues… is really high. Compared to that, COVID is nothing.”
About the author
Sara Jervingsarajerving
Sara Jerving is a Senior Reporter at Devex, where she covers global health. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, VICE News, and Bloomberg News among others. Sara holds a master's degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where she was a Lorana Sullivan fellow. She was a finalist for One World Media's Digital Media Award in 2021; a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists in 2018; and she was part of a VICE News Tonight on HBO team that received an Emmy nomination in 2018. She received the Philip Greer Memorial Award from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2014.
