The Director General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has said the situation caused by the ongoing conflict in his home country is worse than any other humanitarian crisis in the world.
In a press briefing held on Wednesday, the WHO chief said in an emotion-filled speech “unimaginable cruelty” was being inflicted on six million people in the northern region, effectively cut off from basic services for nearly two years.”
The Oromo Liberation Army has also proposed a humanitarian truce to facilitate assistance to hungry people in Ethiopia’s Oromia region as it warns of famine.
HO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus —an ethnic Tigrayan has also suggested that racism is behind a lack of international attention being paid to the plight of civilians in Ethiopia’s war-shattered Tigray region. Tedros served as Minister of Foreign Affairs for Ethiopia between 2012 and 2016 and as Minister of Health prior to that, from 2005.
More than 20 million people are in dire need of humanitarian assistance in Ethiopia this year, the United Nations has reported. Malnutrition and loss of millions of livestock resulting from extended periods of drought across some parts of East Africa have left millions in conflict-ridden northern Ethiopia region of Tigray, desperate for humanitarian assistance.
