About 4 million people in drought-affected Afar, Amhara, Tigray, Oromia, South Ethiopia, and South West need urgent food assistance, the UN’s humanitarian response agency OCHA said in a statement published on January 10.

OCHA has urgently appealed to donors to expedite funding to enhance the humanitarian response in January. The agency has cautioned that funds received in March-April 2024 will come too late for many, exacerbating their suffering and deepening destitution.

The UN agency citing Ethiopia’s Disaster Risk Management Commission and Food Cluster said that drought has affected nearly 1.7 million people in North Gondar, South Wello, North Shewa, Oromo Special Zone, North Wello, and Wag Hamra zones of Amhara Region.

In Tigray, rain failure was recently assessed to have caused severe drought in 36 districts in five zones: Southern, Eastern, Southeastern, Central, and Northwestern, OCHA reported. The Agency has indicated that, since January, 1.4 million people in these affected areas are in immediate need of emergency food assistance. “Out of the region’s total arable land (1.3 million hectares), only 49 percent was planted due to drought and inaccessibility problems, and only 37 percent of production was harvested during the Meher season,” OCHA said.

Regional authorities in Amhara and Tigray have stressed the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation due to drought and food insecurity and that catastrophic conditions could unfold if timely humanitarian assistance is not provided, according to the UN.

Overlap of food insecurity, high malnutrition rates with malaria, measles, and cholera outbreaks, and livestock emergencies are worsening the situation in drought-affected areas, OCHA stated.

The UN agency emphasized the critical importance of implementing an integrated and multi-sectoral humanitarian response to prevent further deterioration in the drought-affected regions.