A critical question is how soon aid can return to Tigray, whose communications and transport links have been largely severed since the conflict began. Doctors have described running out of basic medicines like vaccines, insulin and therapeutic food while people die of easily preventable diseases and starvation. United Nations human rights investigators have said the Ethiopian government was using "starvation of civilians" as a weapon of war.
"We're back to 18th-century surgery," a surgeon at the region's flagship hospital, Fasika Amdeslasie, told health experts at an online event Wednesday. "It's like an open-air prison."
A humanitarian source said their organization could resume operations almost immediately if unfettered aid access to Tigray is granted. "It entirely depends on what the government agrees to ... If they genuinely give us access, we can start moving very quickly, in hours, not weeks," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The conflict began in November 2020, less than a year after Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for making peace with Eritrea, which borders the Tigray region. Abiy's government has since declared the Tigray authorities, who ruled Ethiopia for nearly three decades before Abiy took office, a terrorist organization.
The brutal fighting, which also spilt into the neighbouring Amhara and Afar regions as Tigray forces tried to press toward the capital, was renewed in August in Tigray after months of lull that allowed thousands of trucks of aid into the region. According to minutes of a Tigray Emergency Coordination Center meeting on Oct. 21, seen by the AP, health workers reported 101 civilians killed by drone strikes and airstrikes, and 265 injured, between Sept. 27 and Oct. 10 alone.
In a speech Wednesday before the peace talks' announcement, Ethiopia's prime minister said that "we need to replicate the victory we got on the battlefield in peace efforts, too. We are finalizing the war in northern Ethiopia with a victory ... we will now bring peace and development."