UN and Ethiopia reach agreement on humanitarian corridor for rebel-held Tigray region
The United Nations’ Refugee Agency, UNHCR, has launched a humanitarian response plan to assist the growing number of Ethiopian refugees that continue to arrive in eastern Sudan.
Ethiopia’s prime minister Abiy Ahmed on November 4 ordered air strikes and sent soldiers into the country’s northern Tigray region after accusing the the local ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) of revolt and an attack on a government base.
Communications and transport links to Tigray have since been severed, and the UN and humanitarian agencies have pleaded for access to provide food, medicines and other supplies in the camps that sheltered nearly 100,000 Eritreans before the hostilities began.
Ethiopia’s government has said it will create a “humanitarian corridor” for the delivery of aid. The UN has said that some two million people in Tigray now need assistance – a doubling from the number before the fighting – and some one million people are displaced, including nearly 46,000 Ethiopians who have fled into Sudan as refugees.
The latest plan brings together 30 humanitarian partners working together with the government to provide urgent life-saving assistance including shelter, water and food at a cost of $147 million which will meet the needs of up to 100,000 refugees for the next six months.
