Report prepared by a well-informed person (NGO worker) in NW Tigray in January 2021.
Received by Jan Nyssen on 5 February 2021
Full report: Situation in Shire
In Shire town alone, there are tens of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs).
Most came from Western Tigray, from where they had been expelled by Amhara Regional Forces and militia. Many IDPs shelter with their relatives. There are 3 IDP sites in Shire town, namely the Shire campus of Aksum University, the Shire Preparatory School and the Primary School.
IDPs at the Shire campus of Aksum University
- total population of more than 40,000 IDPs with around 6000 under five
- presence of pregnant and lactating mothers (more than 400)
- there are more than 800 people with chronic illness: diabetes, hypertension, epilepsy, bronchial asthma or HIV. Seven of them have died.
- there are around 200 persons with disability and around 600 elderly people
At the IDP site
- no organization or UN agency to coordinate and support the people
- only 20 kg of wheat per family was supplied for the last 3 months (supplied to the family heads)
- poor sanitation facilities with large-scale open defecation and many people with diarrhea
- there is treated water supplied by one partner but its amount is below the SPHERE Standard
- mobile clinic in place, organized by volunteer health workers; there is severe shortage of medicines
- not provided are non-food items such as mattress, sheets, water bucket, mosquito nets
- there is a critical challenge related to nutrition (severe acute malnutrition rate = 2.9; moderate acute malnutrition =10.00) with no program to support these children with malnutrition problem and no supplementary feeding program to children, pregnant and lactating women, people with disability and elderly.
MSF-Holland and ICRC support the nearby hospital but it is insufficient.
PHOTOGRAPHIC REPORT [More photos in the original report]
Some groups complain of their group being displaced from somewhere else, and at the same time, his group is displacing other groups. What an irony. I tried to find words that can cross each other 100% like:
Night and Day,
Down and Up
Left and Right
Wrong and ah…ah… Correct
Then I asked my friend for his opinion. he said both are correct, 1. Politically 2.Ethically, in which World are you living. It depends, which Lawyer enters first and uses maneuvering, strong words, that convince the court ,will be the winner.
East and West Day and Night , and so others , can be means to turn the clock by a fraction of 1 hundredth or 1 millionth of a second and still could be right,