Displaced families are enduring subhuman conditions in Ethiopia without enough food and shelter, Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said on Thursday. Egeland told Reuters he had seen 3,500 people without food in an abandoned factory, sharing 16 overflowing latrines flooded by torrential rains, during a visit to the southern town of Dilla a day earlier.
"These people feel abandoned and I don't blame them," the former Norwegian politician and U.N. official said. "We are all failing. The IDPs (internally displaced people) are living totally in subhuman conditions."
2.3 million citizens are displaced inside the country, 1.7 million of them after fleeing conflict. The Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre estimated 3.2 million Ethiopians had fled conflict and drought by April this year. Those - on top of 900,000 refugees, mainly from South Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea - meant the Horn of Africa nation hosted the most displaced people in the world, the centre added.
The United Nations' Ethiopia appeal for this year is $1.31 billion, but it has only received a third of those funds, Egeland said.
No comments:
Post a Comment