How conflict in Ethiopia is driving the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in a decade

Severe hunger and malnutrition is the latest episode of the Tigray conflict in Northern Ethiopia that has come to be the worst humanitarian and human rights crisis in the world.

Over 5 million people need humanitarian assistance and up to one million are living in famine conditions in northern Tigray, as fighting continues to be waged between Tigray rebels and government forces, threatening a full-scale civil war that could disrupt the entire East African region, according to figures from the United States Agency for International Development.

International media and Twitter sources have been reporting over the last month incidents of ethnic cleansing of Tigrayans, gang rape and expolsion, amid a blockade imposed by the government of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, banning the delivery of aid, food and medicine to the region.

For over a month now, Ahmed began mass recruitment of civilians to fight against Tigrayan rebel forces, a war he’s largely seen as responsible for, when he sent soldiers to arrest the elected leaders of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front party (TPLF) on charges of rebellion in November 2020, because they had refused to hand over their regional autonomy to the centralizing government of Abiy.

The Tigray rebels then withdrew from the Mekelle, their regional capital and into the mountains, leading to months of fighting.

Holder of the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2019, Abiy Ahmed came to power after the 2018 elections and was reelected in 2021. He’s brought about several reforms to the country’s political stalemate, including the release of thousands of political prisoners, creating gender parity in his cabinet and establishing a ministry of peace.

But his government sought to obliterate decades of ethnic rule enshrined in the country of more than 90 distinct ethnic groups. His actions are largely targeted towards the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), an ethnic-based party that held the majority of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, an ethnic federalist political coalition in Ethiopia that ruled between 1988 and 2019 that Ahmed disbanded.

The deteriorating conflict in Africa’s second-most populous country is raising alarm of Western powers, with US President Joe Biden threatening to impose sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes on individuals and entities that are prolonging the fighting, blocking efforts to reach a ceasefire and the delivery of aid.