Just 14% of 3.2 million people targeted for food aid by humanitarian agencies in the region this month had received it by January 21, according to the memo by the Tigray Food Cluster, a group of aid agencies co-chaired by the UN’s World Food Program and Ethiopian officials. The UN and the US paused food aid to Tigray in mid-March last year after discovering a “large-scale” scheme to steal humanitarian grain. Aid agencies are also struggling with a lack of funds. A third aid worker said the food aid pause and the slow resumption meant some people in Tigray have not received food aid for over a year. “They went through multiple rounds of registration and verification, but no actual distributions yet,” the aid worker said.
