People are starving in the Tigray region. The culprit is the devastating war

In the early 1980s, as a terrible famine claimed between 400,000 and 1 million lives in Ethiopia, the international community responded to what was widely misunderstood and misreported as a natural disaster. Famines are never just a matter of drought. Human Rights Watch later noted that Ethiopia’s repeated crises – especially the devastating one of 1983-85 – “were in large part created by government policies, especially counter-insurgency strategies”. Tigray was “the very nadir of the famine”, as a destructive army offensive was accompanied by the deliberate blocking of aid.

Now famine has reached Tigray again – and once more, it is because an Ethiopian government is at war with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. The federal government wants to celebrate the beginning of twice-delayed parliamentary elections on Monday, portraying them as the advent of democracy. But the polls are overshadowed by questions over electoral conditions and multiple crises, most of all in Tigray (where there will be no voting). Over 350,000 people in the region are in famine conditions, and 2 million more are on the brink – more than a third of the region’s population. They include 33,000 children at imminent risk of death.