The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has provided emergency food assistance to 1 million people since starting distributions in Northwestern and Southern zones of Tigray region in March.
Aster Beyene, a 43-year-old mother of seven, who lost both her home and crops two months ago to conflict, became the 1 millionth person to collect wheat, split peas and vegetable oil from WFP.
“Up until now I have relied on what little food I can get from my neighbours. At least now we have some relief from the hunger we have been suffering,” said Aster from Adi Millen, a remote rural village 50 kilometres from Shire in Northwestern zone. WFP provided food to the 4,500 villagers, bringing the first round of food distributions – which will be carried out every six weeks in Tigray – to a close.
“I am glad that WFP was able to bring the food to us here in Adi Millen, where we are far and cut off from many towns and markets,” Aster added.
WFP is responsible for emergency food assistance across Northwestern and Southern zones of Tigray and will scale-up operations to reach 2.1 million people in need of food assistance across these operational areas. Since April, it has managed to access all 13 woredas (districts) of Northwestern and assisted 885,000 people.