APA-Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in its latest humanitarian situation report, has announced that the number of Ethiopians who need humanitarian aid has reached 31.4 million.
UNICEF said 16.6 million of those who need the humanitarian aid are children and as many as 4.38 million people are internally displaced people.
UNICEF is saying that it needs $674.3 million to address the humanitarian needs in the country. $255 million is to be spent on its humanitarian work in North Ethiopia, and $345.4 million is needed for those impacted by drought situations in the country.
The funding that UNICEF has secured so far is only $187.7 million which is said to constitute only 28 percent of the funding that is needed.
It is pleading for charitable organizations to support humanitarian aid by donating money.
Last year’s UNICEF report indicated that the number of people that need humanitarian aid in Ethiopia was 25.3 million.
After emerging from a two years devastating war between the TPLF and the Federal government, which is said to have claimed over a million lives based on estimate African Union peace broker, Olusegun Obasanjo, the federal government is waging another war in the Amhara region of Ethiopia in an attempt to disarm local militias also known as Fano fighters.
Apart from claiming civilian lives, the war in Amhara is expected to worsen by far grain supply to the Ethiopian market as the farming practice this year is heavily impacted by the ongoing war in the region.
All areas of the Amhara region are experiencing war and much of it is wagged in the rural areas after the Fano forces withdrew from many of the major cities in the region.
There has been a conflict in the Oromia region too.
Here it takes two forms. The radical ethnic Oromo nationalist group is fighting government forces. It is also massacring civilians – mostly ethnic Amhara farming communities.
MG/as/APA