NAIROBI: More than 4 million people have been driven from their homes in Ethiopia, mainly by conflict or drought, according to new UN figures.
The International Organization for Migration’s National Displacement Report, which covered the period from November 2022 to June 2023, said a total of 4.38 million people were internally displaced.
“Conflict is the primary cause of displacement and displaced 2.9 million IDPs (66.41 percent), followed by drought which displaced 810,855 IDPs (18.49 percent),” said the report.
More than 1 million were displaced in the war-scarred region of Tigray, which was included in the data for the first time since September 2021, it added.
Ethiopia’s northernmost region was wracked by two years of fighting between pro-government forces and Tigrayan rebels until a peace deal was signed in November last year.
The eastern Somali region hosted the highest number of people displaced by drought, at almost 543,000, the IOM report said.
A total of 28.6 million people are in need across Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous country, according to UN figures.
But the humanitarian response remains “significantly underfunded” with only 27 percent raised out of the some $4 billion required, the UN’s resident coordinator for Ethiopia Ramiz Alakbarov said in a statement earlier this week.
