It’s gone on too long, but it’s not too late for Tigray

Right now, the world is failing the people of Tigray. 

There are children working all day in the hope they’ll earn a piece of bread, but it’s not guaranteed because the person they’re begging from is starving too. 

Where are the universal headlines? 

The horrors of the aftermath of war are still present. Services to help people deal with the trauma they have lived through are few and far between in a society where everything from homes to hospitals has been looted by soldiers. 

But now, in this third year of catastrophic drought, the horror of starvation has the potential to be even worse. 

Hunger doesn’t kill you quickly. It saps you of everything you have first, slowly. And communities are enduring this right now. 

At one of the internally displaced person (IDP) camps, a little boy tells our partner that his hunger pangs have stopped, but only because he doesn’t have the energy to feel pain any more. 

In Gendet Primary School, a little boy stretches, and as the bottom of his t-shirt rides up, it reveals his distended tummy beneath. We hear that 28 people have already died of hunger in his community and more than 30 children have been classed as ‘red’ on the MUAC test – they are dangerously malnourished, but so far, no help has come. 

And at Beati-Akor Primary School, four children and their mother turn up, dusty from begging at every door in the town, holding out their hands to the school children to ask them to share their school meals with them.

One pupil, 12-year-old Amlak, sees them and ‘feeling sad’ for their situation she shares some of her precious food from Mary’s Meals, even though this sacrifice means she won’t have all she needs to eat herself. She does it without question, knowing it might help them to keep going for one more day.

In September last year, our dear friend and partner asked, “if you don’t help people from starving – from dying – now, when are you going to do it? Tomorrow is too late.”

For some, it already is.