Tag Archives: Hungry

Ethiopians dying, hungry and fearful in war-hit Tigray: agencies

NAIROBI (Reuters) – Ethiopians in the war-scarred north are dying from lack of healthcare services, are suffering food and water shortages, and remain “terrified,” according to aid agencies finally accessing remoter parts of Tigray region.

Just when people were harvesting crops in early November, the federal army launched an offensive against forces of the former local ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), whom it accused of insurrection.

Thousands died and more than 300,000 fled their homes during battles and air-strikes, creating a humanitarian crisis in the already poor region of about 5 million people.

Though the government captured regional capital Mekelle and declared the war over by the end of the month, aid groups, the United Nations and some officials say reaching needy people has been hindered by violence, bureaucracy and logistical obstacles.

“The people are terrified, they have suffered a lot,” Medecins Sans Frontieres’ (MSF) emergency program head Mari Carmen Vinoles told Reuters as the medical charity made first forays into rural areas near towns including Adrigat and Axum.

MSF said there was barely any healthcare provision beyond Mekelle and a handful of towns, meaning people were dying without life-saving help for conditions such as pneumonia or childbirth complications.

In Adigrat, MSF found doctors and nurses struggling to keep “hungry patients” alive, Vinoles said. The main hospital’s ambulances had been stolen.

“Every time we reach a new area, we find food, water, health services depleted, and a lot of fear among the population. Everybody is asking for food,” she added.

‘PEOPLE ARE STARVING’

The United Nations’ children’s agency UNICEF said on Monday that malnutrition was the leading cause of death in clinics in the town of Shire, where the situation was particularly grave.

Many Tigrayans had relied on food aid even before the war, with locust plagues in early 2020 worsening their plight.

“Central Tigray is a black hole” because most people remain in villages and aid groups only have access to towns, said Action Against Hunger’s (AAH) Ethiopia director Panos Navrozidis.

Fear of fighting appeared to be keeping people hiding in mountains unable to seek food and medical treatment, he said.

Health workers had not been paid for three months, both MSF and AAH said.

The state-run Ethiopian Press Agency quoted the Tigray Water Resource Management Bureau as saying clean water was running short for many because of damaged infrastructure, looted offices, stolen equipment and an inoperative dam.

With media access and communications to Tigray still difficult, Reuters was unable to independently verify the reports. Representatives for the TPLF, who said weeks ago they were still fighting from hideouts, could not be reached.

Mulu Nega, Tigray’s government-appointed interim leader, told Reuters earlier this week that authorities had begun distributing aid last weekend after struggling to find cars to transport supplies around rural mountainous terrain.

The Ministry of Peace said on Tuesday that the government was working with humanitarian partners to rapidly deliver aid, with 1.8 million beneficiaries so far.

Even so, foreign disquiet remains.

The European Union last week suspended budget support for Ethiopia worth 88 million euros ($107 million) until aid groups had better access.

One Ethiopian official acknowledged that “people are starving” during a meeting with the United Nations and aid groups on Jan. 8, according to official notes of the meeting seen by Reuters and authenticated by two sources.

“If urgent emergency assistance is not mobilized, hundreds of thousands might starve to death,” Berhane Gebretsadik, an administrator for the federally-appointed interim Tigray government, told the meeting.

(Reporting by Nairobi newsroom; Writing by Maggie Fick; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)

No famine in Yemen but over half on the brink: U.N.-backed report

A malnourished boy lies on a bed outside his family's hut in al-Tuhaita district of the Red Sea province of Hodaida, Yemen September 26, 2016. REUTERS/Abduljabbar Zeyad

By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) – A U.N.-backed report on Yemen has found no full-blown famine in the country but said 60 percent of Yemenis, or 17 million people, are in “crisis” or “emergency” food situations, 20 percent more than in June.

The World Food Programme said in a statement on Wednesday that the governorates of Taiz and Hodeidah along the Red Sea risked slipping into famine if they did not receive more aid. Both have long traditions as food-producing regions.

The crisis follows two years of civil war pitting the Iran-allied Houthi group against a Saudi-backed coalition, which has caused economic collapse and severely restricted the food and fuel imports on which Yemen depends.

“If humanitarian actors do not access all the people in need by the coming months, the situation may deteriorate dramatically,” the report said.

Taiz and Hodeidah governorates, home to important Yemeni ports, “have the highest rates of global acute malnutrition in the country, ranging from 17 percent in Taiz City to 25 percent in Hodeidah,” the WFP said.

“The emergency threshold set by the World Health Organization is 15 percent,” it added.

The report was written by an expert team using the globally recognized IPC methodology. The IPC, or Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, is a system of analyzing food security on a five-point scale, where five is “famine”.

The report, drawing on analysis from 69 experts from Yemen’s government and regions, the United Nations and non-governmental institutions, said 10.2 million people were at phase three, or “crisis”, and 6.8 million at phase four, or “emergency”.

The worst affected governorates – those in the emergency phase – were Lahej, Taiz, Abyan, Sa’ada, Hajjah, Hodeidah and Shabwah, it said. Taiz, where heavy fighting looks likely to continue, has seen its biggest spike in livestock and commodity prices since the war escalated in 2015.

Yemen is one of four current famine or near-famine situations, along with South Sudan, northeast Nigeria and Somalia, with more than 20 million people at risk of starvation in the next six months.

Last month the U.N. said more than $4 billion was needed by the end of March to stave off starvation in the four countries on the brink of starvation.

U.N. officials say that once a famine is officially declared, it is usually too late because large numbers of people have already died.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Beset by economic, political woes, Nigerians protest for change

nigerians protesting

By Angela Ukomadu

LAGOS (Reuters) – Hundreds of Nigerians called for a change of government on Monday as they marched through the streets of Lagos, reflecting mounting public anger over a sputtering economy and political tensions blamed on an absentee president.

In a rare show of public dissent against the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, more than 500 demonstrators halted traffic in the commercial capital, flanked by a heavy police escort as a truck blasted out protest songs.

Buhari has been in Britain since mid-January for treatment for an unspecified medical condition and, with no indication of when he might return, many Nigerians suspect his health is worse than officials admit.

The country is also mired in its first recession in 25 years and high inflation is driving up prices of basic goods.

“Unemployed people are hungry and angry,” read one Lagos demonstrator’s sign, against a backbeat of anthems by Afrobeat superstar Fela Kuti, a fearless critic of Nigeria’s often brutal and corrupt military rule until his death in 1997.

“Government of the rich, for the rich, making rules for the poor,” chanted other protesters.

Buhari, whose age is officially given as 74, took office in 2015 on pledges to diversify the economy away from oil, fight corruption and end an Islamic insurgency by Boko Haram that broke out in the northeast in 2009.

But critics say he has made little progress, with Nigeria still heavily dependent on crude exports whose price has halved since 2014.

The still active insurgency has killed more than 15,000 people and led to a humanitarian crisis has left 1.8 million Nigerians at risk of starvation and turned millions more into refugees.

With Buhari’s hold on power looking increasingly uncertain, some fear a rerun of the unstable three-month transition triggered when President Yar’Adua fell ill before dying, after which his vice president Goodluck Jonathan was sworn in in 2010.

Like Yar’Adua, Buhari is a Muslim from the north, and like Jonathan, the current president’s deputy Yemi Osinbajo is a southern Christian.

Traditionally the two religious groups have taken turns to hold the presidency, but that accord was unbalanced by the death of Yar’Adua before his first four-year term ended. Olusegun Obasanjo, his Christian predecessor, held office for the maximum eight years, while Jonathan was in power for five.

Ethnically-charged violence has swept Nigeria’s heartland, where hundreds have died in clashes between Muslim herders and mainly Christian farmers, and militants continue to operate in the oil-rich Delta region in the southeast.

(Corrects paragraph 10 to show transition was during Yar’Adua’s illness)

(Reporting by Angela Ukomadu, Seun Sanni and Nneka Chile in Lagos; Additional reporting by Abraham Terngu and Afolabi Sotunde in Abuja; Writing by Paul Carsten; editing by John Stonestreet)

Venezuela floods shops with unaffordable goods ahead of Christmas

Venezuela's people looking for affordable groceries

By Fabian Cambero

CARACAS (Reuters) – Topping off a year of economic crisis that left many Venezuelans hungry, the country’s socialist government is flooding shops with products ahead of Christmas, at prices that most cannot afford.

Thousands of containers of festive food and toys are on their way, say authorities, and while supermarket shelves appear fuller, prices are ludicrously high for people earning just tens of dollars a month at the black market exchange rate.

“If you’ve got money, then of course you’re happy,” said Geronimo Perez, selling newspapers in the center of Caracas. “But if not, you’re left empty-handed.”

A 1.8-kilogram (4 lbs) carton of powdered milk costs the equivalent of $20 in Caracas at the black market exchange rate. That’s more than two weeks’ work at Venezuela’s minimum wage.

The country is undergoing major economic and social problems, as a decade and a half of currency controls, price controls and now low oil prices have left the government and businesses without sufficient hard currency to import goods.

This means supermarkets are empty of basics from rice to chicken, let alone Christmas gifts.

“AT LEAST THE CHILDREN”

Queues at supermarkets that stock regulated goods can run into hundreds or thousands, many of whom are left disappointed.

President Nicolas Maduro blames the problems on an “economic war” waged against the country and his government has promised that supply will be “sufficient” in December.

The bolivar currency has weakened some 40 percent against the dollar at the black market rate in the last month alone. One dollar buys nearly 1,900 bolivars on the street, compared to just 10 bolivars at the government’s strongest official rate.

This means that importers bringing products in on the black market are paying even more and passing those costs onto consumers, fueling inflation that the IMF says will surpass 2,000 percent next year.

Anger is mounting and hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets in recent weeks hoping for change. Some though, are pleased with the festive respite.

“It’s better that at least we can celebrate a little amid all these problems, at least the children,” said Karina Mora, as she left a supermarket in the center of Caracas with her two small children.

(Writing by Girish Gupta; Editing by James Dalgleish)