UN humanitarian chief calls Ethiopia crisis a ‘stain on our conscience’ as people starve to death under government blockade
Ababa, 25, comforts her baby Wegahta, 6 months, who was identified as severely acutely malnourished, in Gijet in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia
THE humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia is a “stain on our conscience” as people starve to death under a de facto blockade by the government, United Nations chief Martin Griffiths has said.
In an interview with the Associated Press, the UN’s emergency relief co-ordinator described the deprivation in the war-torn northern Tigray region, where the malnutrition rate is now over 22 per cent, comparing it to the Somali famine of 2011, which killed more than a quarter of a million people.
He said he hoped that the 1980s Ethiopian famine, in which a million people perished, would not be repeated.
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