Attachments
What happened, where and when?
The conflict that broke out on 4th November 2020 between the Federal Democratic Government of Ethiopia (GoE) and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) left an estimated 1.8 million people displaced, claimed several hundred thousand lives according to some estimates, and left Tigray in ruins with many Tigrayans struggling to obtain basic needs and medical care. A telecommunications, electricity, and banking blackout that lasted for roughly two years, effectively cut Tigrayans off from the rest of the world. Furthermore, the distribution of aid was blocked for many months; in December 2022, an estimated 5.5 million people in Northern Ethiopia were facing severe acute food insecurity.
In November 2022, the two parties, GoE and TPLF, signed an agreement on permanent cessation of hostilities to end the two-year-long conflict including the protection of civilians’ human rights, the resumption of public services in the region, the unobstructed flow of humanitarian supplies to Tigray, and facilitation of the return of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees to the region.
Following the signature of the Agreement, humanitarian access to Tigray has improved, allowing the Ethiopian Red Cross Society to complete an assessment shared on 15th March 2023 and demonstrating the critical need to scale up assistance in newly accessible areas. This assessment is a basis to inform immediate action to save lives through provision of humanitarian assistance but also to build confidence with local communities and returnees, authorities, and donors that assistance can be sustained at scale.
The ERCS with its regional, zonal, and woreda branches across the North Part of the country are well positioned to play a key role in supporting the response to the multidimensional crisis in Tigray where the communities remain in a critical needs pattern. This includes food access, shelter, access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), basic lifesaving health services, and critical non-food items (NFIs) as part of the pressing needs for most of the people, especially in the context of high displacement of the communities and linkage to the overall food insecurity crisis in the North.