Along with AU envoy, UN’s Rosemary DiCarlo called for an immediate cessation of hostilities as crisis in Tigray widens.
UN political chief Rosemary DiCarlo has said the risk of Ethiopia “descending into widening civil war is only too real”, adding that the political repercussions of “intensifying violence in the wider region would be immense, compounding the many crises besetting the Horn of Africa”.
Addressing the Security Council on Monday, the UN under-secretary-general for political and peacebuilding affairs said, despite much speculation on how the Ethiopian crisis will unfold in the coming weeks, “in a country of over 110 million people, over 90 different ethnic groups and 80 languages, no one can predict what continued fighting and insecurity will bring”.
She said more than seven million people needed humanitarian assistance in northern Ethiopia alone, with an estimated 400,000 people in Tigray living in famine-like conditions.
She said, while some emergency supplies have been moved, it has been four months since the last big shipment of medicines and health supplies into Tigray which is home to about six million people.
