The United Nations is considering suspending relief operations, including food aid deliveries, in Ethiopia’s Amhara region, following deadly attacks on humanitarian workers, according to a draft proposal seen by Reuters and verified by two diplomats.
Five aid workers were killed in the first six months of 2024, 10 were physically assaulted or injured and 11 kidnapped by unidentified criminal groups, according to the document which is dated August 2024.
The three-page document, which is marked “internal”, states that the UN is “seriously considering implementing a temporary cessation of relief operations in the region.”
Several NGOs and donors have already opposed the move, according to three sources familiar with discussions surrounding the proposal.
A cessation of relief operations would have a dire impact on more than 2.3 million people in Amhara who rely on food aid to survive, two donor nations and an NGO opposed to the suspension told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Amhara is home to more than 36 million people as well as the first stop for thousands of refugees fleeing the war in neighbouring Sudan.
Fighting between Ethiopia’s army and Amhara Fano militiamen broke out in July 2023 and has killed hundreds and displaced thousands according to UN estimates.
Fano militia fought alongside the army in a two-year civil war that pitted Addis Ababa against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which controls the northern region of Tigray.
During that conflict, Ethiopia’s government denied accusations that it was using starvation as a weapon of war against Tigray, which was under a de facto blockade.
After the war ended, relations between Fano and the government nosedived over accusations that Addis Ababa was undermining Amhara’s security by dismantling its regional army.
