Ethiopia is sliding into a “humanitarian catastrophe” with more than 3mn people facing acute hunger in the north of the country, the UK government has said in a warning that will invite comparisons with the 1984 famine in which half a million Ethiopians starved to death.
Andrew Mitchell, the UK’s development minister, stopped short of using the word “famine”. But after a visit to Tigray region in the north, he compared the situation to a football heading straight for a plate-glass window. “If we don’t head the ball away, it’s going to smash the glass,” he told the Financial Times.
Mitchell said the UK government was making £100mn available to help 3mn people, including pregnant mothers, in combating malnutrition and gaining access to life-saving medical care. The crisis, he said, had been provoked by drought as well as by a two-year civil war fought between Tigray and the federal government in Addis Ababa.