The World Food Program said on Tuesday, April 22 that it was a suspension aid for 650,000 women and malnourished children in Ethiopia due to the lack of funds. The UN agency warned that they were between 3.6 million people in Ethiopia that would no longer have access to food aid in the coming weeks without new urgent funds.
“The PMA is forced to stop treatment for 650,000 women and malnourished children in May due to insufficient funds,” he said in a statement. “The PMA had planned to reach two million mothers and children with nutritional assistance to save lives in 2025,” he added.
The PMA, like other aid agencies, has been caught at the cross -cut door of fund cuts by the president of the United States, Donald Trump, who signed an executive order that frozen all foreign aid for three months shortly after its inauguration in January. It occurs since several Western countries have also reduced help spending.
More than 10 million people face hunger in the Eastern Africa country of around 130 million, said the UN agency. Ethiopia is still recovering from a brutal civil war between federal forces and rebels in the northern region of Tigray between November 20 and November 2022 that killed at least 600,000 people. Around one million people, a sixth of the population of Tigray, are still displaced.
There are also armed conflicts in the two most popular regions of Ethiopia, Amhara and Oromia, which have displaced hundreds of thousands. The PMA warned that violence was interrupting humanitarian operations, restricting its ability to “reach more than half a million vulnerable people in the region.” Ethiopia is also seeing a wave of refugees of neighbor Sudan, grabbed by the Civil War since April 2023, and South Sudan, tarnished by instability.
The PMA added that the cash and food assistance for up to one million refugees would also stop in June “if additional funds are not received and the number of people fleeing the violence in South South,” continues. Ethiopia, a country without a coast in the horn of Africa, also faces an intense drought, partly in its Somali region on the border with Somalia.
Financing deficit
Amid the growing needs, PMA said it faced a deficit of $ 222 million for the period from April to September in Ethiopia. “I think this is an important moment to remind the world and our donors and others that the humanitarian situation in Ethiopia is not very good, and it is real that it deteriorates,” said Zlatan Milisic, director of the country of the PMA, A Agence Presse.
Last week, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) based in Paris (OECD) said that development assistance was already decreasing throughout the world before USAID cuts. He said the aid fell 7.1% between 2023 and 2024, the first decrease in six years, since several countries cut their budgets.
]
