“The Horn of Africa is very badly affected”

The number of displaced people in the world reached a record level in 2021: nearly 60 million people fled their homes to take refuge elsewhere in their country, according to a count by the non-governmental organization Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC).

Ethiopia, in the grip of armed conflicts and an unprecedented drought, is the country that holds the sad record of the largest number of internally displaced people on the planet, ie 5.1 million people. Ivana Hajzmanova, IDMC’s coordinator for Africa and the Middle East, details the causes of displacement in Ethiopia while stressing that the general picture for Africa is “very alarming”.

In the Horn of Africa, we are witnessing a double crisis: violent conflicts as in the province of Tigray and, in parallel, a record drought. Is this region at the top of your concerns?

Ivana Hajzmanova What is happening in Africa in general is very alarming. In 2021, out of 14 million new internal displacements, 80% took place in sub-Saharan Africa. The Horn of Africa in particular has been badly affected. In Ethiopia, there are more than 5 million internal displacements related to the conflict in Tigray.

The situation in Sudan is also precarious: there are, in this country, five times more displaced people than the previous year. And in Somalia, under the effect of the drought, food insecurity has reached an acute level, causing very significant population movements. This country has had 500,000 displaced people since the beginning of 2022. The camps are overcrowded and humanitarian assistance completely overwhelmed. Alas, the situation should not improve. Weather forecasts tell us that the next rainy season will be less than expected in this region.

Ethiopia is the most affected country on the planet, with 5.1 million internal displacements in 2021. Have other countries already experienced such a situation?

According to our data, the previous ” record “ was recorded in Syria, with around 3 million displaced in 2013, when civil war was taking place across the country. After 2013, for a few years, more than 1 million new displaced people were counted in Syria or the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The figures are now exploding as we are seeing with Ethiopia and probably currently with Ukraine. The IDMC statistics were collected at the end of 2021 and do not include those displaced by the war in Ukraine, which are estimated at around 8 million.

What has the humanitarian truce decided in March between the Ethiopian government and the Tigrayan rebels of the TPLF changed on the ground? Can we hope for an improvement in the situation for displaced persons?

We have seen a slightly positive development since March. With the reduction in the fighting, hundreds of thousands of displaced people have started to return to their homes, in Tigray, but also in the Amhara and Afar provinces. This gives a clear indication of what we can expect in the coming months if the truce holds in northern Ethiopia.

The main challenge concerns the destruction of habitats and public services, and the lack of access to education. But, at the same time, there are new displacements, further south, in the Oromia region, around the capital Addis Ababa. The situation in the country remains very fragile and our first estimates [de début 2022] show that there are approximately 500,000 new internally displaced persons, victims of violence.

Some parts of Oromia are known to be inaccessible due to insecurity, including for humanitarian agencies. Are there areas that constitute blind spots in Ethiopia?

This is indeed the case, particularly in Oromia, as well as in the Benishangul-Gumuz region. [à la frontière soudanaise]. It is very complicated to get information there. The same can be said of Western Tigray [aussi appelé Wolkait], which is extremely difficult to access. Our partners are struggling to gather reliable information. It is mainly the individuals who flee who inform us about the reality of what is happening there.

The civil war in Tigray is taking place without real access for observers. How do you analyze the impact of this crisis?

IDMC is not present in Ethiopia. But we work very closely with partners, such as the International Organization for Migration (IOM), who collect the data that we process and analyze independently. We take those numbers, identify newly opened camps, and combine that with other reports.

In Ethiopia, NGOs have encountered great difficulties in responding to the humanitarian drama. With the crisis in Ukraine, can we fear additional difficulties?

Due to administrative and security constraints, entire areas of Tigray have indeed been cut off from aid for a long time. Since the beginning of 2022, the situation has been improving. More and more humanitarian organizations can work in the region, in particular to deliver food and drinking water. But NGOs lack funding even as the humanitarian situation worsens.

The crisis in Ukraine is obviously receiving a lot of attention, especially from European governments who have been mobilizing up to now to respond to Africa’s needs. Now it has become more difficult to draw attention to the continent.