Ethiopia Famine: Using Starvation As A Weapon Of War

Famine in Tigray was not an outcome of war. It was the result of policies – a siege, economic blockade and obstruction of aid – designed to destroy civilian life.

Failure to document the famine has serious implications. It distorts global understanding of what happened in Tigray, limits accountability for war crimes and leaves the international community unprepared to respond to future politically induced famines.

When famine goes unrecorded, the suffering of entire populations is erased from the world’s moral and political map. It also weakens the mechanisms designed to prevent such atrocities elsewhere.

As a result, modern famines driven by political violence – in places like Tigray, Sudan and Gaza – are missed, downplayed or denied until it is too late.

Background: war and siege

The Tigray war broke out in November 2020 between the regional leadership, Tigray People’s Liberation Front, and the central government.

From the earliest days, it was marked by large-scale and systematic destruction and looting of social and economic infrastructure. Industries, farms, irrigation systems, food stocks, crop fields, orchards, food storage facilities and businesses across Tigray were looted and destroyed.

Beyond the physical damage, occupying forces actively obstructed farmers from tilling and planting their land. Within six months, this had driven Tigray – home to about six million people at the time – into mass starvation.

In famines caused by natural calamity and economic crisis, poorer communities or those in remote locations are often the worst hit. In Tigray, places along roads were devastated because they were accessible to invading forces.

The destruction and looting of infrastructure was followed by a siege that lasted more than two years. The Ethiopian government and its allies imposed a full-scale blockade on Tigray.

Banks were shut down. The bank accounts of ethnic Tigrayans – both within the region and nationwide – were frozen. The movement of people, goods and humanitarian aid to and from the region, and within Tigray, was brought to a near complete halt.

Communications and access to the media were shut down. The multilayered siege left Tigray almost entirely cut off from the world. Commercial and humanitarian supplies were deliberately obstructed for most of the period.

This resulted in widespread deprivation, suffering and death, much of which has received little documentation or recognition.

The conflict is now described by some studies as a genocide and the deadliest conflict of the 21st century. An estimated 800,000 people were killed through massacres, enforced disappearances and starvation.

Even after the 2022 African Union-brokered ceasefire, hunger and deprivation persist, especially in the western zones and areas bordering Eritrea that remain under occupation. Urban populations whose livelihoods and workplaces were destroyed have yet to rebuild.

The implications

The Tigray famine reveals deep flaws in how global institutions – including the UN and international humanitarian agencies – measure and classify famine.

The siege prevented humanitarian access and data collection. This made famine difficult to measure and easier to deny.

International famine frameworks rely on indicators like market food prices and malnutrition rates among displaced people. They look at crop failure, loss of livestock and disrupted rural livelihoods. Not at urban households, civil servants or small traders – groups who were among the worst affected in Tigray. They don’t capture urban forms of deprivation, such as banking exclusion or a sudden loss of salary or assets.

Agencies’ dependence on official government data led to a system failure. The absence of data was treated as an absence of suffering.

Famine in Tigray was a deliberate effort to weaken and humiliate a population. The implications go beyond Ethiopia. They expose how global systems remain unfit for documenting or responding to politically induced famine.

What must change

To prevent future famines from being erased, there needs to be a transformation of global famine detection and humanitarian response systems.

• First, the UN and humanitarian agencies must reform famine assessment metrics and systems to account for politically induced starvation. They must include urban and middle-income groups in their analyses. This will help identify and expose deliberate starvation strategies early.
• Second, human rights bodies should investigate famine as an intentional act of war rather than as an unfortunate by-product. This is a step in the direction of holding perpetrators to account for policies such as sieges, blockades and aid obstruction.
• Third, donor governments and humanitarian organisations must insist on accountability and transparency in their engagement with states that obstruct humanitarian access to populations in need.
• Finally, scholars and human rights advocacy organisations should continue documenting how famine functions as a tool of genocide. This would ensure that invisibility does not shield perpetrators from scrutiny. In an age of global connectivity, the absence of data should trigger investigation.

Failing to learn from Tigray will leave the world just as blind to the next famine.

(Published under Creative Commons from The Conversation)