Famine – the extreme scarcity of food – devastated Ethiopia’s Tigray region during and after a two-year war that began in November 2020. Yet, the famine’s impact is one of the least documented crises of recent years.
Despite the enormous scale of suffering and the far-reaching consequences of the 2020-2022 war, there hasn’t been enough attention paid to all aspects of the disaster, or to aid to enable the region to recover.
The famine dimension of the conflict – how starvation was used as a weapon of war and continues to shape the region today – has largely failed to garner the global and domestic attention it demands.
We have closely followed and extensively written on the Tigray crisis since 2020 as researchers and firsthand witnesses. In a recent article published by the World Peace Foundation – a research institution focused on understanding and preventing conflict, particularly in Africa – we argued that the famine in Tigray was deliberately produced and deliberately obscured. In a recent journal article, too, one of us examined how the Ethiopian government and its allies created a “zone of invisibility” around the Tigray war.
In our view, famine was used as a weapon in a campaign of destruction in Tigray. Our research draws on humanitarian reports, testimonies, satellite imagery and conflict data to reconstruct how deprivation unfolded. We studied who was affected and why global famine detection systems failed to recognise the scale of the crisis.
The lack of reliable data caused by government restrictions, international inaction and structural blind spots in global famine monitoring systems hid the scale of one of the deadliest wars of the 21st century.
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 infrastructures. 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.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Hyper Kong
Van is hitch-hiking and he gets picked up by a larnie in a merc. After travelling awhile and making small talk, Van asks the larnie what the 3-pointed star on the bonnet is for. The larnie decides to have some fun with Van.
\”Oh, that\’s the sights, you know, for aiming. When I see someone on the side of the road and I want to run him over, I just line him up in the sights.\”
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Fun South African Fact: Three different destinations make up South Africa’s capital cities. This is to represent the South African government being divided into three sections. Cape Town is the legislative capital, Pretoria is the administrative capital and Bloemfontein is the judicial capital. Interestingly, Parliament meetings take place for six months in Cape Town and six months in Pretoria.