The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on Thursday made an appeal to raise $116.5 million to help the vulnerable people of Ethiopia, reported CGTN Africa.
In a statement, UNICEF said it needs $116.5 million to meet the needs of 2.3 million Ethiopian people between December 2020 and January 2021 living in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region and neighboring states of Amhara and Afar.
The international body had already developed an emergency response plan for the months of November 2020 to January 2021. It updated the response plan on Thursday to readjust to the needs and requirements of vulnerable people living in the three Ethiopian regional states.
“The plan seeks to increase the readiness of the humanitarian community in Ethiopia to sustain relief assistance to the already existing vulnerable people in Tigray,” the statement read.
It added that the revised plan seeks to prepare the humanitarian community to respond to the protection and other needs of those who are likely to be affected in Tigray, Amhara, and Afar regions by the crisis in December 2020 and January 2021.
There are various categories of vulnerable groups living in Ethiopia’s Tigray region including 750,000 non-displaced people, 100,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), and 96,000 Eritrean refugees.
The UNICEF’s response plan is also targeted to meet the needs of about 34,000 IDPs living in the Amhara regional state and over 25,000 IDPs living in the Afar regional state.
Notably, the fight between the Ethiopian army and the rebellious forces in the northern Tigray region that has been going on for more than six weeks has displaced close to 950,000 people.
The United Nations is soon going to send a team to Ethiopia to investigate alleged human rights violations, including a mass killing in Tigray. The UN rights chief described the incident as one of many “appalling” human rights abuses that could amount to war crimes.
