The federal government of Ethiopia, the Tigray Interim Administration and other development partners are set to launch Tigray rehabilitation project next week.
State Minister of the Ministry of Finance, Eyob Tekalign (PhD), briefed MPs that the project which has been prepared in collaboration with development partners with the aim of rehabilitating the Tigray region has been finalized and will be made public next week.
Apart from that, the government has been engaged with various partners with the intention of reconstructing and rebuilding Tigray by mobilizing resources from various domestic and international sources of fund. However, Eyob declined to give details.
A report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) issued on Thursday, June 10, 2021, indicated that from the USD 853 million total amount required for humanitarian support in Tigray during the period of May to December 2021, there was a USD 502 million gap.
The Office stated that more than 3.3 million people of the targeted 5.2 million were reached with food, under the 2021 response plan since late March, reaching an additional 567,000 people.
Furthermore, it mentioned the denial of access, looting and confiscation of humanitarian assets and supplies by the parties to the conflict, as a major concern in the region.
Moreover, it indicated that it is dealing with the incidents of temporary arrests and intimidation of humanitarian workers at military checkpoints.
Therefore, the Office urged for a swift solution regarding access to humanitarian assistance distribution and said “If the situation is not addressed immediately, food insecurity and acute malnutrition is already at a catastrophic level in hard-to-reach areas, and will deteriorate towards a substantial famine.”
According to its preliminary field reports from Axum and Adwa (Central Zone), there are visible signs of starvation among IDPs, where women and children look extremely weak, emaciated and are falling asleep for extended periods of time.
The US Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, on Thursday pushed for the UNSC to meet publicly regarding Ethiopia’s conflict-torn Tigray region, where hundreds of thousands of people are suffering from famine. Sources indicated that some 350,000 people in Tigray province are acutely threatened by starvation, with millions more at risk.
