Ethiopia Famine: 40th Anniversary
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Baroness Featherstone
That this House takes note of the 40th anniversary of the 1984 Ethiopia famine in the light of the current conflict and food insecurity in the country.
Baroness Featherstone (LD)
My Lords, 40 years ago almost to the day, on 23 October 1984, the nation was shocked by Michael Buerk’s famous BBC broadcast. It was a watershed moment in TV and world history that alerted the world to the terrible famine in Ethiopia. Close to 8 million people became famine victims during the drought of 1984, and more than 1 million died.
It was a broadcast that woke millions of people across the world to both the suffering of the people and the scale of the inequities across the world. It was transmitted by 425 television stations worldwide and gave birth to world fundraising in a way that we had never seen before, in the shape of the unforgettable Live Aid concert in July 1985, driven by Bob Geldof. It spawned Band Aid and subsequent initiatives such as the Jubilee 2000 campaign and Make Poverty History. It galvanised a whole generation into action. But what happened next, when the focus moved on, years passed and Governments changed?
In the decades that followed, huge progress was made to tackle hunger and malnutrition around the world and improve global health, with new resources committed by the developing world and effective pro-poor policies enacted by partner Governments in many countries. As an International Development Minister for two years during the coalition, I went to Ethiopia six times and saw both the progress and the need.
Today that progress is in reverse. As we look back and try to understand what the world can do to help deliver lasting change, with all the challenges that beset countries such as Ethiopia, what is the single most important thing that we—indeed, the world—can do to change the future more positively? Bill Gates has said:
“Every now and then, somebody will ask me what I would do if I had a magic wand. For years, I’ve given the same answer: I would solve malnutrition”.
He is right, because it is fundamental to everything.
This is important, not just because of the millions of lives lost to malnutrition and the millions more blighted by it but because every step forward to tackle the world’s challenges is made harder by malnutrition. Tackling malnutrition is fundamental in every aspect of improvement and change. It is absolutely foundational to global development and to a safe, secure and prosperous world. Without it, people cannot reach their full potential either physically or cognitively, economies are less productive and economic development is undermined.
Tackling malnutrition is also cost effective. It is the proven way to make progress on global development. For every $1 invested in nutrition, $16 is returned to the local economy, making it one of the most effective investments in the world. Conversely, malnutrition costs African economies between 3% and 16% of their GDP annually.
We know what to do; the world knows how to make progress on hunger and malnutrition and has done so to a remarkable degree in the past. Between 1990 and 2015 the proportion of undernourished people in low and middle-income countries was halved by global collective action. Sadly, we are no longer doing it. Today the world is cutting official development assistance, even as climate change and conflict contribute to growing levels of malnutrition and hunger.
When the UK Government reneged on their 0.7% commitment to overseas development aid in 2021, the global nutrition budget was disproportionately cut. A Development Initiatives report, commissioned by the UK Government, calculated that nutrition received a 60% cut. At the same time, debt servicing is once again placing unsustainable pressures on countries. We all remember Gordon Brown’s remarkable intervention in that regard.
So progress is going into reverse. In 2023 the World Health Organization estimated that 148 million children experienced stunting and 45 million children experienced wasting. Those are the two most severe forms of chronic and acute malnutrition, and they rob children of their life chances and, sometimes, their lives. Malnutrition is an absolute marker of inequalities in human development and will severely constrain the economies of low and middle-income countries in the future. That, in turn, will limit their ability to provide education and undermine their ability to provide public services and meet the aspirations of their people.
I remember a visit I made to a village in Ethiopia. I gave a talk to a group of women about contraception. Afterwards, I remarked to my civil servants that I was surprised to see so many children there—but, of course, they were not children but stunted adult women. I had never seen a stunted adult before. It was a truly shocking experience, one that we are fortunate never to see in this country.
What do we, and for that matter the developed world, need to do? I am hopeful that, with the new Government, we will see change from the retrograde actions in recent years. First and foremost, we must restore UK aid funding to the 0.7% of GNI for which we legislated under the coalition Government, becoming the first G7 country to meet this long-standing commitment. We must also reverse the 2021 cuts to the global nutrition budget, with an emphasis on long-term, predictable and multiyear funding so that we can build resilience. We need to invest in cost-effective and nutrition-specific interventions such as prenatal multiple micronutrient supplementation, MMS, which costs just $2.60 for an entire pregnancy. If all low and middle-income countries switched from iron and folic acid to MMS, half a million lives would be saved by 2040 and 25 million babies would have better birth outcomes.
We must also specify the proportion of the 2021 Nutrition for Growth summit pledge that will be spent on nutrition-specific interventions, as the Government did previously with a floor of 20%, representing the figure specified in the previous Nutrition for Growth pledge. The Government pledged to spend £1.5 billion on nutrition in the period to 2030—can the Minister update the House on where we are with that pledge?
We need to invest in research to improve climate resistance and the nutrient value of crops, and to support the fortification of staple foods to provide those vital micronutrients. Talking of crops and climate change, I note that one of DfID’s initiatives, together with local partners, was about creating routes to market and improving yield through knowledge. One such market that I visited was organised for local people to learn how to purchase good seeds, when to plant, where to plant and how to irrigate. Perhaps the most impressive thing I saw, and something I have never been able to forget, was a supplement in cow feed that meant a cow would fatten in 2.5 years, rather than the seven it usually took. That would triple the income of a family with one cow—although I dreaded to think what was in the supplement.
The environment in which nutrition suffers is plagued by conflict. There are so many warring parties, and we need to pressure them, to the best of our ability, to adhere to international humanitarian law and allow access to food supplies. We need to work with international and local partners to promote food security and peace- building.
Investing in nutrition is a cost-effective and proven way to make progress on global development. As I said before—it bears repeating—for every $1 invested in nutrition, $16 is returned to the local economy. It is one of the most effective instruments and investments. Equally, malnutrition costs low-income economies between 3% and 16% of their GDP, and the economies of reducing malnutrition in sub-Saharan Africa are beyond proven.
The proportion of undernourished people in low and middle-income countries fell by nearly half between 1990 and 2015, as stated in the World Food Programme’s state of food insecurity report of 2015. In that period, Ethiopia saw a 57.2% reduction in the proportion of undernourished people in the population—noted in that report—and made remarkable progress in reducing child stunting, from 57.4% to 36.8%. Child wasting was reduced from 12.4% to 7%, and child underweight levels were reduced from 41.8% to 21.3% over the past two decades.
However, the recent conflict in northern Ethiopia, governance challenges and natural disasters have reversed some of that progress. Progress on infant and young child feeding practices is mixed, and children’s dietary diversity remains among the lowest in Africa. Malnutrition is the leading cause of deaths in children under five years old, responsible for 45% of deaths and claiming 2 million lives each year. According to the World Food Programme, over a quarter of a billion people across 58 countries and territories face acute food insecurity or worse.
Of course, it is not just Ethiopia; we see other terrible situations across the region—in Sudan, in Tigray and, sadly, many more countries. I could not believe the previous Government collapsing DfID into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The soft power and the good that DfID did were unquestionable. I do not know whether our new Government plan to re-establish it at some point, but the focus it brought to the critical pathway needed was extraordinary. The separation between what the Foreign Office did—foreign affairs—and what DfID did gave two angles, and soft power was extraordinary where DfID was at work.
I declare an interest. As I said, I spent two years as a Minister in DfID with special responsibility for sub-Saharan Africa, and I came to love those countries. That is why, when the noble Lord, Lord Oates, asked me whether I would become one of the three cross-party patrons of United Against Malnutrition and Hunger, together with the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, I said yes. I almost never say yes to any requests, as we get many, but I said yes to this, because our international development was something I was incredibly proud of and something that we as a nation were truly proud of too. We did good in the world, in partnership with local and world actors, and moved the dial forward.
But this is where we stand today. And as I stand here, I call on our new Labour UK Government to focus on malnutrition and to press our international partners to do the same. Surely we can promote this message—shout from this Chamber to reach across the world—of the urgent and ever-pressing need to focus primary development efforts on tackling malnutrition. It is the basis of everything, for without food you cannot study, you cannot grow, you cannot think, you cannot live, and you certainly cannot thrive.
Let us help enable the world to feed itself. I beg to move.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, given the gravity of the events that are the subject of today’s proceedings, if it is not exactly a pleasure to contribute to this debate, I am pleased to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone. I thank her for securing this debate and for a clear-eyed, informed, impressively analytical and forensic speech. I intend not to repeat the appalling statistics that show the extent to which food insecurity in Ethiopia remains a present reality but to focus on the Tigray and Amhara regions.
As the Motion before your Lordships’ House makes clear, when we examine the situation in Ethiopia today, there is an awful resonance about the events of 1984. Though thankfully different in scale, the current acute food insecurity has one key element in common with the famine of the 1980s: both are, to some extent, manmade. An essay published in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Food Studies in June underscores the extent to which, in the conflict between the Ethiopian armed forces and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front,
“belligerent parties on all sides employed food as a weapon, actions that included destroying local food supplies, dismantling capacities to produce food and market infrastructure, and diverting humanitarian aid toward supporters and away from adversaries”.
Though the TPLF and the Ethiopian Government concluded a fragile—and, in the case of the neighbouring Amhara region, largely ostensible—peace in November 2022, the concentric circles of that conflict continue to ripple outwards. Last year, we saw starvation deaths in both Tigray and Amhara. Almost 700,000 people are still displaced and over a quarter of a million men remain under arms and the TPLF banner. Despite the efforts of both this Government and their predecessor, there remains a significant gap between the humanitarian funding needed to feed the hungry in Ethiopia and the amount pledged by the international community.
Perhaps most importantly for those who wish to see the fragile peace between the TPLF and the Ethiopian Government endure, there has been no peace dividend in Tigray. History tells us that, if swords are to be beaten into ploughshares, a demonstrable improvement in everyday conditions needs rapidly to be achieved. Though this summer’s rainy season saw some crops being brought in, many farmers continue to suffer from the historical effects of drought, with some having been unable to harvest for years. Critically, agricultural infrastructure is in a parlous state, with many farmers having had their equipment looted or damaged during the period of conflict. The USAID-supported Famine Early Warning Systems Network has estimated that large parts of northern and eastern Ethiopia experienced crisis levels of food insecurity from August to September 2024 —that is the last two months—and parts of Afar, Tigray and Amhara in the north were in the emergency category.
Meanwhile, the western part of Tigray is disfigured by a campaign of ethnic cleansing prosecuted by Fano militia. They have displaced hundreds of thousands of Tigrayans, perpetrated massacres and used torture, sexual violence and arbitrary detention. That region is now cut off from aid delivery, and sesame, a crucial cash crop that underpins the economy of that region, is going unharvested. Negotiations between the Fano leadership and the Ethiopian Government are not progressing, with a resolution appearing unlikely in the months ahead. Indeed, the counteroffensive of the Ethiopian National Defence Force has led to the indefinite suspension of all transportation activities within the Amhara region, effective from 3 October. That will only impede humanitarian access further, lead to further food shortages and intensify the horrors of conflict.
Where food has so often been used as a weapon of conflict, there is nothing that will act as a greater spur to a renewal of hostilities as the persistence of starvation in peacetime. Earlier this afternoon, your Lordships’ House debated the link between conflict and extreme poverty. That link is as profound as it is inexorable, and no less indissoluble is the need to ensure that peace brings, if not plenty, at least the means of minimum subsistence.
All the humanitarian issues we have heard enumerated in this debate so far are taking place against a darkening backdrop in the Horn of Africa as a whole. The expansionist ambitions of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed are placing a severe strain on relations with Somalia, are pulling other regional powers, including Egypt and Turkey, into the orbit of this diplomatic crisis, and have fashioned an ideal context in which al-Shabaab recruitment and funding have spiked. I know, partly from a ministerial response to my Question I asked on the 7 October, that my noble friend Lord Collins and the Foreign Secretary have made representations at the highest level with the Government of Ethiopia to urge de-escalation. I know that the whole House will wish them well in those efforts.
As the FCDO’s report on UK aid spending in Ethiopia published in July last year made clear, there is something of a paradox about the economic situation there. It described 20 million people as “severely food insecure”, outlines the plight of
“11 million in drought-affected areas”
and identifies an upsurge in cases of cholera, malaria and measles. But this deterioration sits alongside an “ambitious reform agenda”, with significant investment in clean energy, aviation, finance and telecoms. Though any measures which improve the Ethiopian economy are positive, a sharp disjunction between the beneficiaries of this investment and those regions of Ethiopia that continue to see starvation deaths, a lack of basic infra- structure and outbreaks of conflict may serve only to stiffen the resolve of separatist movements to continue their armed struggle against a Government who are apparently oblivious to their suffering.
When preparing my remarks for today’s proceedings, a quotation from Marx’s essay on Louis Napoleon repeatedly came to mind. It runs:
“Men make their own history … under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living”.
I hope that when our successors gather to debate Ethiopia a few decades hence, they will be in a position to celebrate long-term peace and progress rather than trace the outline of that dreadful historical circularity which has so often held Ethiopia in its grip.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on securing this debate at such a critical time for the security of the peoples not only in Ethiopia but across the whole region. There are high levels of humanitarian need across many parts of Ethiopia, as has been described. It is driven by climate changes, conflict, disease outbreaks and high inflation. The debate is also timely, since the noble Lord, Lord Collins, has only just returned from his diplomatic visit to Ethiopia.
I thank the Minister for his helpful response to my Question for Written Answer on the humanitarian situation in Ethiopia. I admit that I tabled it only just after he had been appointed as a Minister, so it was rather a testing time but he responded with a very full and helpful Answer, for which I am grateful. He referred to the pledging conference in Geneva in April this year, which was co-led by the UK, Ethiopia and the UN. The conference helped to increase humanitarian funding by pledging almost $630 million, including $253 million from the US and $125 million from the UK. What is the Government’s expectation of the period of time over which those countries—not just the US and UK, but others that pledged—will contribute their pledges in full?
The Minister also referred to the provision of UK support to the Government of Ethiopia’s productive safety net programme. That is welcome and should strengthen food security and resilience for the 8 million people living in extreme poverty in Ethiopia. However, is he confident that this will be fairly distributed among the different and sometimes conflict-affected regions of Ethiopia? The noble Lord, Lord Browne, referred to the conditions in some parts of the country but, indeed, all regions are at times affected by conflict.
I note that one of the commitments made by the Ethiopian Government in Geneva was to facilitate unimpeded and sustained access for humanitarian organisations to reach affected populations throughout the country, including conflict-affected regions, and to ensure the safety and security of humanitarian personnel and assets. We have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Browne, about what has been happening. Can the Minister therefore give an assurance that the UK Government will focus pressure on the warring parties in conflict zones to adhere to international humanitarian law to allow access to food supplies?
The noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, referred to the disastrous 1984 famine; I think all of us here are of a generation that can remember that. It meant, however, that huge progress was made around the world to tackle malnutrition and hunger, not only in Ethiopia but elsewhere. Ethiopia did indeed make remarkable progress after that famine. I had the opportunity to see some of the consequences of that progress when I went on a British Group IPU scoping visit to Ethiopia in February 2019. I went with just the noble Baroness, Lady Barker—I say “just”, but no one could say “just” about the noble Baroness, who is a force to be reckoned with; she is sadly not here today, but that is not her fault—and my then honourable friend in another place, Pauline Latham.
At that time Ethiopia was undergoing a profound political transition, set alongside economic and social transformation. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had been in office for nearly a year and had set a fast pace of reform. He declared the end of the conflict with Eritrea; appointed women to 50% of his Cabinet posts; appointed the first ever female President; and appointed a Tigrayan woman as Speaker of the House of Federation, with whom we had a very friendly and, I would say, very feisty meeting.
We saw construction under way of a high-tech business park and of a factory for the production of Ethiopian textiles and garments. The latter was expected to give employment particularly for women, who were experiencing high levels of violence and neglect and lacked the opportunity to get legal, regular employment. Our delegation left Ethiopia with hope that there could be a positive future. Later that same year, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Fast forward one year to November 2020, and the same Prime Minister declared a state of emergency in the Tigray region and Ethiopia endured two years of conflict, resulting in the deaths of thousands and the internal displacement of millions of people.
At this stage, we still hoped there might be a way of finding peace and progress. In November 2022, an agreement on a permanent cessation of hostilities was signed by the Ethiopian Government and the Tigrayan forces. However, the World Food Programme has reported that, despite agreement in the Tigray region, intense armed conflict had erupted elsewhere. Conflict combined with projections of severe drought conditions mean that over 8 million people are expected to be at risk of food insecurity this year. The expert briefing from the organisation United Against Malnutrition and Hunger, to which the noble Baroness has rightly referred, points out that some of the progress achieved over the previous two decades had been reversed by the recent two years of conflict but also by governance challenges, disease outbreaks—including malaria, cholera and measles— and natural disasters. By August this year, an estimated 16 million people needed food assistance and approximately 4.7 million children and women required immediate nutrition assistance.
While the Minister was in Addis, I note that he was able to have a meeting with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, which the Minister’s tweet—I follow him on Twitter, obviously—reported was:
“A constructive first meeting to discuss strengthening cooperation on shared priorities: promoting economic growth; bolstering global security; conflict prevention; reducing humanitarian need”.
I was rather concerned that conflict resolution was not in that list. Was it discussed and, if so, what were the consequences?
It is encouraging that the Minister took so much of his time this summer to pay attention, as Minister for Africa, to the very areas that crucially need that attention. I know it has been well received in the countries he visited, but it also means he is able to give us a much more up-to-date report today than we would otherwise be able to get. I look forward to hearing his views on how he sees the future for that region and particularly the future for our relationship with Ethiopia.
Baroness D’Souza (CB)
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness on securing this debate. “Make poverty history” was the mantra in 1984, and who will forget the pictures of tiny children starving to death? Never again, we said. Indeed, while there has been remarkable progress in Ethiopia in the intervening years, certainly between 1990 and 2015 there has been a clear reversal, due in large part to conflict. It is estimated that something like 4.7 million women and children are in need of emergency assistance, reflecting a global trend of malnutrition once again becoming the leading cause of death in children under five. We hear these figures with a kind of resignation: it is too large a problem for any one source to deal with. But it remains an obscenity that we have what, in many cases, can be called deliberate starvation—a term far stronger than “manmade famine”.
We see two shocking examples in Gaza and Sudan: the deliberate blocking of life-saving humanitarian aid to those most in need—a clear flouting of international humanitarian law. I often wonder how many of us actually imagine what it is like to say to our children or grandchildren, whose stomachs are cramped with hunger, “No supper tonight, and nothing tomorrow, but there might be some food in the future”. It is unthinkable.
There are, of course, some uncontrollable causes of food shortage, through drought, disease or pestilence, but food shortages in these conditions do not necessarily imply famine. Famine is a phenomenon against which whole communities use their last possible defence: to uproot and trek to where food might be available. In this final stage, mass deaths from hunger and disease are inevitable. However, there are many discernible stages before this catastrophic uprooting, all of which can be managed, for example, by ensuring that the price of staples remains affordable, with cash incentives and food for work.
Working in Africa and Asia many years ago, it became clear to me that all vulnerable societies have food shortage survival mechanisms. Some of these centre around diversification of income sources. For example, a village woman may grow crops, weave baskets for sale in markets, brew local beer or ensure that some family members leave the rural area to become wage labourers in towns.
Rural groups often develop life-saving transactional relations with neighbours and with distant relations. All these strategies stand populations in good stead when food shortage is threatened. In this context, we should persistently monitor how far development agencies bolster these intelligent choices, or whether they perhaps instead focus on introducing new techniques which have no inbuilt protection elements.
In today’s world, the most devastating cases of starvation arise due to artificial man-made actions—as I have said, deliberate starvation. These include the forcible movement of populations by militias, the destruction and/or pilfering of food crop stores, control of markets as means of punishing one ethnic group or another, and the deliberate blocking of humanitarian aid.
We are dealing with the impossible—armies and militia groups marauding, bombing and making all coping mechanisms immediately redundant, as was the case in Ethiopia in 1984, when government policies of mass population relocation followed by a widespread cholera epidemic caused mass deaths from starvation. One has only to remember Mao Tse-Tung’s Great Leap Forward, the devastating famine of the 1960s, when the entire country was forced to abandon agriculture in order to manufacture steel in their back yards. A conservative estimate at that time was that 20 million people died.
What can be done? I believe that the international community can insist on accountability and culpability for abuses of the right to humanitarian aid, using some of the following channels. There should be meticulous monitoring of efforts to interrupt or block humanitarian aid, naming names and following up with prosecutions. I really would like to see a dedicated unit, UN-sponsored or otherwise, to note and list all those involved, including government agencies and armies. New food supplements should be developed for easy, effective and rapid distribution, possibly using drones, along with increased ratification of international instruments safeguarding the rights of civilians in armed conflict. Freedom of movement should be safeguarded and non-voluntary relocation prohibited, and the right of free access to humanitarian assistance for everyone should be affirmed.
The Lord Bishop of Sheffield
My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for securing this important debate and for the opportunity to contribute to it.
I remember 1984 very vividly. That summer, I graduated from university and got married, and early that autumn, I began training for ordained ministry. I have clear memories of the powerful BBC news coverage of the Ethiopian famine—which, as the noble Baroness reminded us, was broadcast exactly 40 years ago this month—and of the Band Aid Christmas single that year and the Live Aid concerts of 1985. Those events were all quite formative for me.
In retrospect, our crowd-sourced responses to the famine in 1984 were naive, not least in treating the famine as simply a natural disaster and in failing to take into account the human factors that contributed to it, including both the global climate emergency, or global warming as we were just beginning to call it then, and the more local political and military practices. Although we may have learned a good deal in the past 40 years, and although we may be significantly more sophisticated now in our analysis of the causes of famine in that part of the world, it is evident that we are barely more effective at responding to it, let alone at preventing it. Both those aims are urgent: we need to respond effectively to the current crisis, and we need to improve our capacity to anticipate and therefore to forestall future famines.
The current humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia is again drastic, with climate shocks, including flooding as well as drought, compounded by widespread armed conflict inside the country and on its borders. Christian Aid estimates that at least 21 million people in the country need humanitarian assistance right now, and that is of course nearer to three times than to twice the number affected in 1984.
We also need to become better at anticipatory action: reducing the risk of recurring droughts and floods in future years. If solutions were easy, we would have found them by now, but there are steps that can be taken both at once and in the medium to longer term. I tentatively offer two of each. For the short term, first, I urge the Government to ensure that next year the overseas development aid budget really is spent overseas and on development, and not any longer on in-donor refugee costs. Secondly, I urge the Government to take advantage of the UK’s influence, as current co-chair of the Green Climate Fund, to focus climate finance on this region. For the medium term to longer term, I trust that the Government really will, as soon as fiscal conditions allow, and as other Lords have already urged, restore our ODA budget to the 0.7% of gross national income to which we committed ourselves in 2015.
Finally, we on these Benches welcome the Government’s manifesto commitment to tackle unsustainable international debts. We ask that this agenda be taken forward with urgency, and with due priority given to those parts of the world, including Ethiopia, where the humanitarian need is greatest. I would be grateful to know what assessment the Government have made, or intend to make, of these potential positive steps.
Lord Oates (LD)
My Lords, I declare my interest as chief executive of United Against Malnutrition and Hunger. I was 14 years old when that famous Michael Buerk broadcast led the 6 pm evening news on Tuesday 23 October 1984. It grabbed my attention like no news item ever had before or ever has since. It opened with these powerful words, which have haunted me ever since:
“Dawn, and as the sun breaks through the piercing chill of night on the plain outside Korem, it lights up a biblical famine, now, in the twentieth century. This place, say workers here, is the closest thing to hell on earth. Thousands of … people are coming here for help. Many find only death. They flood in every day from villages hundreds of miles away, dulled by hunger, driven beyond the point of desperation. Fifteen thousand children here now; suffering, confused, lost. Death is all around, a child or an adult dies every twenty minutes. Korem, an insignificant town, has become a place of grief”.
That broadcast shocked a pop star—Bob Geldof—into action, and a world out of its indifference. However naive the response was, it was the waking of a movement which made a huge amount of difference in years to come. It changed my life; it led me to run away from home. I managed to get myself to Ethiopia, feeling somehow that simply by the passion of my desire to do something, I could make a contribution. Noble Lords will not be surprised to learn that, when I arrived, I discovered fairly rapidly that the demand for unskilled 15 year-old English kids was not great and that Ethiopia, at that time under its Marxist military Government, was not a fun place to be. But, luckily, more strategic responses were in hand.
Over the next three decades, as we have heard, huge progress was made in reducing poverty and hunger. As my noble friend Lady Featherstone said, that led to the proportion of people in the world going hungry halving between 1990 and 2015—a huge accomplishment. In Ethiopia, following the defeat of that brutal Marxist-Leninist regime of Colonel Mengistu, remarkable advances were also made. Economic growth took off and a focus by the new Government on pro-poor policies, supported by donor countries, including and in particular the UK, saw rates of extreme poverty and hunger reduced by half.
Today, as we have also heard, much of that progress has been going into reverse around the world, including in Ethiopia. Internal conflict, disruption to food systems as a result of Covid and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and drought and flooding, have led to a deteriorating situation across many regions of Ethiopia. The World Food Programme estimates that 19.7 million people are now facing high levels of food insecurity.
The UK Government have a long-standing commitment to development in Ethiopia and it was heartening that the Minister for Development, Anneliese Dodds, visited Ethiopia just a month after taking office and placed a real focus on the need to resolve conflict and secure peace and security across the country. It is also great to know that the noble Lord the Minister for Africa was also recently in Ethiopia. It is extremely heartening to have a Minister with such a long-standing commitment as a champion in the fight against malnutrition.
It is vital that we maintain our commitment to tackling the causes of malnutrition and hunger, because Ethiopia’s experience is not an outlier but part of a pattern where the achievements of the past three decades are going into reverse. Today, the World Food Programme estimates that 309 million people in 71 countries face acute hunger, and millions more are not getting the nutrients they need.
That matters because it means millions of children dying every year unnecessarily, and millions more who will not have the nutrients they need to develop physically and cognitively. It means lost productivity and economies that will not prosper, jobs that will not be available and societies that will be destabilised. In neighbouring Sudan, almost unnoticed by the world, a catastrophe is playing out that may prove even more devastating than the 1980s famine in Ethiopia. Already, as we heard in a debate we had at the initiative of the Minister a few weeks ago, famine has been declared in regions of Darfur and is likely to become far more widespread, and the displacement of people is having an impact on Ethiopia as well, adding to the pressures that it faces.
Even before the brutal civil war began over a year ago in Sudan, hunger was widespread and contributing to the displacement of people—because that is what happens when people go without food: they move, and when people move, tensions rise, with competition for pastureland and water, and other resources.
As in Ethiopia, so in Sudan—hunger drives instability and conflict, and conflict drives hunger, in a vicious and horrifying circle. Outside actors helping to sustain and fuel the conflict in Sudan have a wide series of motivations, one of which is the desire to secure access to food production. The United Arab Emirates, which denies involvement in the conflict but is widely held to be supporting the Rapid Support Forces, has invested heavily in agricultural land in Sudan as part of its efforts to secure food security for its own population, adding to this complex web of hunger and violence. In Ethiopia, Sudan, Gaza, Yemen and the DRC, conflict and hunger are coming together to cause immense human suffering. As Concern Worldwide (UK) warned in a report published today, climate change is only exacerbating the pressures on food systems, threatening hunger and instability across Africa.
If we are not as morally outraged as we should be about the suffering of millions of people around the world who do not receive the nutrition that they need to survive and thrive, perhaps we should consider the geopolitical consequences of a world that becomes ever hungrier. My hope and prayer are that we rediscover the moral outrage we felt in 1984 and marry it with our self-interest, so that I can look back at the 14 year- old me who sat and watched that BBC news broadcast and say, “In 2024, the world woke again from its indifference and demanded action”.
Baroness Helic (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for introducing this crucial debate.
As many noble Lords have already said—it is worth repeating—the Ethiopian famine of the 1980s was one of the most devastating humanitarian crises of the last century, claiming up to a million lives and displacing millions more. It shocked the world into action. However, famine is not just a historical tragedy. It remains a deadly weapon in modern conflicts, including in Ethiopia.
I personally witnessed the use of food as a weapon during the 1990s, when the Bosnian Serb army laid siege to Sarajevo. My friends and relatives perished, some from bombings and others due to a lack of food and medicine. I also recall the so-called UN safe area of Srebrenica, where mass starvation of the civilian population preceded the genocide. Ethiopia’s tragedy should have served as a warning—a call to ensure that such horrors were never repeated—yet, in some cases, the lessons learned have been exploited to further weaponise food, with dire consequences.
It is worth reflecting on what this means in practice. The suffering inflicted on families deliberately deprived of the means of sustaining life is horrific; the effects persist long after the fighting. Children in the final stages of starvation endure their bodies self-cannibalising. Growth ceases. Limbs wither, bones decay and organs shrink. In the South Sudanese conflict, for example, women and girls were raped. They were forced into marriage and prostitution to survive. Single women, female-headed households, adolescent girls, elderly women, women with disabilities, and children are at particular risk.
Today, in Tigray, where food was used as a weapon during the recent conflict, the situation is particularly dire. Some 3.5 million people—more than half of the region’s population—require aid throughout the year. The root cause is the war’s devastation, which has plunged Tigray into extreme poverty. Soldiers were stealing and destroying food, destroying farms and livestock, vandalising water systems and obstructing humanitarian aid. Although natural disasters such as droughts and floods may seem inevitable, famine is often a man-made crisis, resulting from a deliberate withholding of supplies and a failure to act, leading to inhumane and catastrophic outcomes.
The integrated food security phase classification system warned recently of catastrophic and emergency levels of food insecurity across Haiti, the DRC, Sudan, Gaza and Afghanistan. USAID has described the crisis in Sudan as potentially even worse than the Ethiopian famine of the 1980s. The Norwegian Refugee Council stated that,
“Sudan is experiencing a starvation crisis of historic proportions. And yet, the silence is deafening. People are dying of hunger, every day, and yet the focus remains on semantic debates and legal definitions”.
I therefore welcome the noble Lord’s personal commitment to this region and look forward to more progress than we have made so far.
Although the climate crisis is a leading cause of the global rise in hunger, with climate shocks destroying crops, livelihoods and communities’ ability to sustain themselves, nearly 70% of the 309 million people facing acute hunger are in fragile or conflict-ridden countries. Violence and instability in regions such as the Middle East, Africa, the Caribbean, South Asia and eastern Europe disrupt food production, displace populations and often hinder humanitarian access to those in need.
The weaponisation of food is a political and military strategy intended to inflict suffering. However, rather than securing military victories, these policies fuel further violence and sow seeds of long-term instability. Since Defense Minister Gallant’s speech on 10 October, the Government in Israel have targeted food supplies, healthcare facilities and water infrastructure, cut communications and blocked humanitarian aid. Recently, humanitarian assistance was denied to 400,000 civilians in north Gaza. We decided to intervene, in particular the United States, and four days ago a letter was sent to Minister Gallant requiring assurances that American aid would not be arbitrarily restricted or obstructed, and signalling a potential halt to arms transfers if it was. The pressure seems to have worked, as 50 trucks were immediately allowed in; more might follow. However, it has taken way too long. One might cynically attribute this belated intervention by the US Administration to the upcoming US elections and competition for votes. Just imagine what a timely, earlier intervention, combined with a concerted diplomatic pressure, could have achieved, and the lives that might have been saved as a consequence.
The impact extends beyond hunger. Famine tears apart communities, weakens state structures and contributes to atrocities such as sexual violence. Famine often leads to forced resettlement, leading to overcrowding, insecurity and chaos, which creates the enabling environment for rampant sexual violence. Perpetrators frequently exploit the depleted protection mechanisms to inflict horrific suffering. The stories of sex for food and of sexual starvation crimes in Tigray and Sudan have been tragic examples of this.
We must act, not only because it is morally right and our common humanity demands it but because it serves our national interest. The unanimous adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 2417 in 2018 was a milestone in recognising the links between conflict and hunger, yet today, Sudan’s conflict has ignited a hunger crisis of historic proportions. Without urgent action, hunger will claim more lives than the fighting itself.
Hunger is not merely a byproduct of conflict. It results from deliberate choices by warring parties to ignore international law, disrupt food systems, displace populations and obstruct aid. It often may appear that nothing can be done. That is not the case. We must prioritise ending fighting and ensuring respect for international humanitarian law. This includes insisting upon unhindered access for humanitarian aid, whenever and wherever, across borders and front lines; the protection of civilians and essential infrastructure; monitoring and mitigating threats to children, women and girls at risk of abuse due to food insecurity; helping to boost food production through steps such as the removal of mines from farmland; and supporting local communities.
In 2021, we committed to the G7 famine prevention and humanitarian crises compact, pledging to uphold UN Security Council Resolutions 2417 and 2286, yet we have lost momentum. I therefore urge the Government to recommit to these resolutions, particularly Resolution 2417, which condemns the starving of civilians and unlawfully denying humanitarian access.
Sadly, the famine of the 1980s was not an isolated incident. It was a collective failure to prevent and respond to policies of collective punishment that were repeated elsewhere. The culture of impunity persists, allowing the weaponisation of food and abuse to go unchecked. I hope that we can learn from the past and from our own mistakes. The best way to honour victims is to use every tool to ensure that starvation can no longer be used with impunity as a weapon of war. For that, we must act decisively, not just to respond but to prevent future conflicts and famines.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, the whole House is indebted to the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for initiating today’s important debate. During her remarks, she referred to the consequences of indebtedness on development—a point taken up by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield. Forty years ago, on 22 November 1984, in the House of Commons, I challenged the then Government on their policy on Ethiopia, stressing that Ethiopia was still paying back more in debt than it was receiving in aid.
As the noble Baroness rightly remarked, in comments that were echoed very movingly by her friend the noble Lord, Lord Oates, the catastrophe in Ethiopia was brought into our homes by the extraordinary journalism of the BBC’s Michael Buerk. His devastating first hand accounts roused our consciences and indignation —a point to which I will return in my comments.
I will follow what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, and roll the clock forward from the two years of war in Tigray between 2020 and 2022 to the situation there now. Professor Jan Nyssen of Ghent University, a leading European authority on the war, put the number of war fatalities at between 300,000 and 500,000 people, including 50,000 to 100,000 from fighting, 150,000 to 200,000 due to famine and 100,000 from a lack of medical attention. To be clear, this was manmade, but no men have been brought to justice.
Professor Alex de Waal, the executive director of World Peace Foundation, draws parallels with the catastrophic situation in 1984. He says:
“In 1984, the Ethiopian government wanted the world to believe that its revolution heralded a bright new era of prosperity, and foreign donors refused to believe warnings of starvation until they saw pictures of dying children on the BBC news”.
On Tuesday evening, while speaking here at a meeting held in the Palace, I was struck by the intervention of a Tigrayan who believed that a complete denial of media access to the region from 2020 to 2022 enabled the regime to repeat these unspeakable acts of horror—these atrocities. That meeting was held to discuss a report of the New Lines Institute, undertaken over two years and comprising some 100,000 words. It concludes that the crime of genocide has occurred in Tigray. I have a copy for the Minister, which I will give to him during the debate.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
The Minister will know then, having seen the report, that that the situation has echoes of 1984. Ethiopia, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Oates, was then ruled by the Marxist-Leninist, pro-Soviet Derg. That ended in 1991, when its leader, Mengistu, fled to Zimbabwe. The House should note that an Ethiopian court found him guilty of genocide in absentia. His regime was estimated to be responsible for the deaths of 0.5 million to 2 million Ethiopians, mostly during the famine. Of course, he has never been brought to justice, becoming a role model for others who commit atrocities with impunity.
In September 2023 I chaired a cross-party inquiry, which published a report entitled The Three Horsemen of the War in Tigray: Mass Killings, Sexual Violence and Starvation. It called on the UK Government and other actors to provide a response commensurate with the gravity and scale of what had occurred. It made clear that starvation in Tigray is not an unintended consequence of the conflict but, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, a method of war. That finding is underlined in the New Lines inquiry, which concludes that there was an
“intent to destroy Tigrayans as an ethnic group, in whole or in part”.
That is one of the criteria for the crime of genocide, fuelled by torture, rape, mutilation and sexual violence. Another criterion—one of those factors taken into account when declaring a genocide—is the prevention of birth, illustrated by the slogan:
“A Tigrayan womb should never give birth”.
In October 2021, Mark Lowcock, the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, commented on the situation in Tigray, including the attempt to block aid from going into the region. These are his words:
“There’s not just an attempt to starve six million people but an attempt to cover up what’s going on. What we’re seeing play out, I think, is potentially the worst famine the world has seen in the 21st century … What’s happening is that Ethiopian authorities are running a sophisticated campaign to stop aid from getting in by, for example, making it impossible for truck drivers to operate by setting up checkpoints with officials and militia people, by preventing fuel from getting in … And what they are trying to do is starve the population of Tigray into subjugation or out of existence, but to avoid the opprobrium that would still be associated with a deliberate, successful attempt to create a famine taking the lives of millions of people”.
In 2021 Pekka Haavisto, Finland’s Foreign Minister and a European Union special envoy to Ethiopia, said that, following his talks with Prime Minister Abiy and other Ministers, he believed that they were
“going to wipe out the Tigrayans for 100 years”.
In response to our cross-party inquiry, the Tigrayan Advocacy and Development Association told us:
“The Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Amhara forces left a trail of scorched earth … in which they deliberately burned houses, forests, and field crops ready for harvest; cut mango orchards, papaya trees, and plant nurseries; mixed grains with soil; looted and slaughtered livestock; and killed hundreds of protected wild animals. To ensure no harvest for the next season, ENDF, EDF, ASF, and Fano militia worked in tandem to block vital agricultural supplies, including seeds, destroyed and looted farm tools and prevented farmers from tilling their land during the most crucial period”.
Martin Griffiths, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs reported that, at the height of the crisis, 100 trucks a day of aid needed to get to Tigray but only 10% had gained access in the previous three months. New Lines highlights the shooting of truck drivers and the arrest and detention of drivers before they reached Tigray as another way of preventing food getting through.
The restrictions of aid continued after the ceasefire and during the informal truce. Although WFP and OCHA reported a resumption of aid deliveries at the beginning of April 2022, in reality, while they estimated that 115 food trucks would be needed every day throughout May, convoys were able to bring supplies into Tigray on only six occasions.
That brings us to today. In February 2024, Tigray officials warned of an unfolding famine that could equal or eclipse the 1984 famine. Ethiopia’s ombudsman said it confirmed the starvation deaths of at least 351 people in Tigray and another 21 in the neighbouring Amhara region as a result of drought and instability. Once again, the scale of this tragedy—like that in Sudan, as we have heard—has been massively under- reported.
In February the Guardian reported that
“humanitarians have mostly kept quiet, fearful of losing their operating licences”.
It went on to say:
“In private, however, their language is stark. A recent memo circulated among aid agencies warns that ‘starvation and death are inevitable … in considerable numbers’ from March onwards in some areas of Tigray if aid does not reach them soon. Another says child malnutrition rates”—
the role that malnutrition can play in long-term development was emphasised earlier in the debate by the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, and others—
“are as high as 47% in parts of Oromia, Ethiopia’s biggest region”.
On 30 July, I asked the Minister to comment on reports that more than 2 million were reported to be at risk of starvation in Tigray. He responded:
“The humanitarian community is targeting 3.8 million people … with food assistance”.
I was pleased to hear that the UK is leading a pledging conference. I echo the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, as to how much of the $610 million has been raised and deployed.
I ask once more: what is being done to bring those responsible to justice? I hope, like the noble Lords, Lord Oates and Lord Browne, that in another 40 years there will not be a similar parliamentary debate asking why those with political power in 2024 did no better than those who went before them.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, I join with others in congratulating my noble friend and commending her on securing this debate. We are very proud to have her on our Benches, with her record as a Minister. She is a perfect example of what Ministers can do, even in a short period, with passion, persistence and dedication. I am pleased that she initiated this debate, which has allowed us to reflect on failure. There is an element of success, of course, but fundamentally, 40 years on, we still have enormous challenges. The global community is not living up to the required response.
My noble friend highlighted the power of the BBC and broadcasters, of what good journalism can do, and of the ability to shock and then galvanise a response from the public. But with conflict and climate-induced hunger and starvation, famine is now back in the Horn of Africa and, as we have heard, on the worst scale in 30 years. The public appeals are less clear and there is little action. As we heard in the debate on neighbouring Sudan, the conflict has brought about a humanitarian crisis deeper and broader than Ethiopia 40 years ago, but it does not even warrant a Disasters Emergency Committee appeal. It does not even trigger the lowest level of what the DEC might seek to gain public support. What a contrast between that and 40 years ago.
Another contrast with 40 years ago is that when there was famine in 1984, global GDP was $40 trillion. At the end of last year, global GDP was $140 trillion, but now we have the worst malnutrition in that 40-year period. The IDA of the World Bank is now struggling to have a replenishment that might even just simply stay static, not grow. The World Bank has indicated that the majority of developing nations still have not recovered from pre-Covid levels, when the richest countries in the world operated out of self-interest rather than good interest.
I, like many colleagues taking part in this debate, have been to Addis Ababa on a number of occasions—most recently just three weeks ago. I know that many Ethiopians today do not like references to 1984 and the perception of a country in need. I can understand this and have seen for myself many areas where development has been raised. I congratulate policymakers for this, but with conflict, neighbouring tensions, lack of food security, drought and flood—a combination of natural and manmade impacts—there are too many still in grave need in the area. Some might consider the climate-induced impact to be natural, but this is a region that contributes just 0.6% of the world’s greenhouse gases yet is most afflicted by the consequences of our pollution.
In his excellent contribution, the noble Lord, Lord Browne, gave the scale of the crisis. My noble friend Lord Oates quoted Michael Buerk, who said that in the camp he was in a child was dying every 20 minutes. The nutrition and hunger crisis in the wider Horn of Africa continues today unabated. During the short time of this debate, 200 children will die hungry.
In response to this crisis in the Horn of Africa, the previous Government cut UK assistance by 80%. It was impossible to infill from other donors, so it was an actual cut to the global response. In 2017 the Government provided £800 million to a famine that was less than it was last year, when the Government provided £156 million. When it comes to the famine prevention initiative, working with the G7, the UK pulled back. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm the current Government’s position with regard to the famine prevention initiative. It is needed even more; we need to build on it, not retreat from it.
The noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, in her excellent contribution cogently said that much of the crisis is manmade, and she is absolutely right. In her opening remarks, my noble friend said that the response to 1984 showed the best of humanity, but today we see the worst excesses of what man can do to man. But as we have heard, it is the girl and the woman who are the principal victims.
As a consequence of conflict and tensions around Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Somaliland, an increased number of people are now being smuggled from Metema in Ethiopia to eastern Sudan and, ultimately, trafficked towards Europe. The current situation in the Amhara region sees traffickers exploiting the conflict and crisis there.
As I indicated, the world is nearly four times richer than in 1984. Why is it that its leaders are not rising to the moment? Why is it that our public seem to be bored of seeing conflict? Why is it that they switch off? Policymakers seem to be cynical: as long as the growth of wealth is in the hands of those with power, they need not have the kind of response necessary for the crisis today.
This debate and the excellent one obtained by the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, in which we debated 0.7% and sustainable development goals, sandwiched a debate in which more Members of this House spoke on the charitable status of private schools than those who have spoken on conflict, global hunger and malnutrition. In the wonderful memoir of my noble friend Lord Oates, telling his story as a precocious 15 year-old seeking single-handedly to solve the issue, there is a short chapter with which, with great coincidence, I want to close. One of the elements that motivated him as a youngster was seeing on the telly stories of the European Community stocking food that could not be resold. He said:
“In a desperate attempt to dispose of the grotesque mountains of excess, these stocks were handed out to charities, and—thanks to their charitable status—the most exclusive schools in the country were among the happy recipients. Subsidised butter fed to the richest people in the land while millions faced starvation. Don’t tell me there weren’t things to be angry about”.
In my mind, this debate means that we still need to be angry. The Minister and the new Government with an enormous mandate—a historic mandate on which I congratulate them—have a historic opportunity. I very much hope that they do not squander it, that we do not repeat the mistakes we have made in recent years and that we respond, as we should as one of the richest countries in the world, with a moral heart.
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, it is difficult to follow such a powerful speech. Like others, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for securing this debate and reminding us of a couple of things: first, those terrible events 40 years ago and, secondly, just how old some of us are getting, yet we remember those days as if they were yesterday. As we mark this solemn 40th anniversary of the famine, we must not forget, as a number of other speakers, including the noble Lord, Lord Alton, have reminded us, the present situation in Ethiopia and surrounding countries.
In April this year, 21 million Ethiopian people needed food assistance—these numbers just get larger every time; they almost fade into insignificance, with a million here and a billion there. In this case, that would be about a third of the population of the UK. From these Benches, we offer our full support to the Government in taking constructive measures to support those many vulnerable communities in Ethiopia and highlighting the urgency to act.
The World Food Programme’s ramped-up efforts in February of this year were desperately needed to prevent the already severe food shortages becoming a major humanitarian catastrophe. According to the FAO and the World Food Programme, Ethiopia is predicted to be among the top five hungriest countries from June to October of this year. It was solemn to hear many contributors saying that this is not an accidental disaster; it is entirely man-made. The poor women and children are those who suffer, but it is usually made by men.
To what can we attribute the causes of this? Sadly, of course, it is the usual suspects of armed conflict, communal violence, flooding and localised crop production shortfalls. The friction between civilians, militias and Ethiopian federal forces has led to states of emergency in many parts of the country. The Ethiopian authorities, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, reminded us, have imposed curfews and restrictions on people’s movement. These appear to have worsened the situation in many respects by affecting livelihoods, access to market and important trade flows.
In April this year, the previous Government pledged to provide life-saving support to hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians. I take on board the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, that it was not enough; nevertheless, we did do that. The UK Government pledged to cover the deficit in nutrition supplies, to increase safe water and sanitation, and to provide emergency funding to help improve food security and resilience in Ethiopia’s vulnerable areas. Now that we have a new Government in office, I very much hope to hear the Minister confirm that that work to improve Ethiopian food security will continue. I hope that they will be able to keep to the promises that the previous Government made—I am sure they will, but it will be interesting to hear that confirmed by the Minister—and continue to act in the best interests of the Ethiopian people.
Let me also ask the Minister a couple of other questions. First, much of the Government’s current support is for short-term relief efforts, rightly, as we have just heard. But in addition, how can the Government best support the long-term resolutions, which will solve the problem only in the longer term, and what support can they give to institutions that will aim to resolve Ethiopia’s long-term food insecurity?
Secondly, would food aid and other current government pledges be best provided alongside diplomatic assistance to help resolve internal conflicts? If so, how can the Government best support existing NGO and IGO schemes to assist in conflict resolution? How can they effectively monitor the success and impacts of the aid that is given to Ethiopia and what metrics will they use?
According to the World Food Programme, South Sudan and Sudan are more severely affected by food insecurity. We had an excellent debate on that subject recently, so how do the provisions for and response in Ethiopia compare with those that will be given to other African countries? I very much look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to those questions and some of the others posed in the debate.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for opening the debate with such insight and care on issues that are incredibly important. I share in what the noble Lord opposite quite rightly said: many of the interventions that we have made are not short-term but long-term. They require continuity to ensure that we deliver proper support, so I welcome his comments. Let me reassure him that we will continue, where appropriate, the good work of the previous Government.
Having visited Ethiopia just last week, I was struck by just how pertinent the issues from the famine of 1984 are. The scale of human suffering in 1984 affected our collective conscience and taught us some vital lessons about how we can prevent such disasters happening again. We can all be incredibly proud of the way the British public rallied round in what remains the biggest humanitarian fundraising effort in history. The BBC’s expert reporting was a contributory factor in bringing that famine to global attention, and we should pay tribute to that.
The celebrity-endorsed Live Aid event united 1.9 billion people and raised £110 million, or $333 million. Live Aid asked some tough questions of western governments and relief agencies around the world, and rightly so. It helped people become more aware of global inequality and exposed them to the politics of international development and assistance, particularly in Africa. However, the horrific images also contributed to the perception of Ethiopians needing to be saved by West, and the idea that famine is a natural disaster rather than a manmade one, as we have heard in this debate.
Over the last 40 years, I think our views have changed and our perspectives have widened, as the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, highlighted. Other events have brought to our attention the need for a changed attitude. I am pleased to say that this Government are bringing a modern approach to development and our relationship with the people and Government of Ethiopia. We want to learn the lessons from the last four decades and tailor our approach to both humanitarian response and bilateral relationships. That means working hand in hand with our development partners, making sure that it is just that—an equal partnership. That requires leadership and responsibility from both sides, not just to respond to the crises but to prevent them in the first place. That is why I visited Ethiopia, including the affected Tigray region, within months of becoming a Minister.
Today, not only do we have better monitoring systems for assessing levels of need, but better global co-ordination and preparatory measures. That means we are much more capable than before of preventing such crises. At the same time—I want to stress this point—it is the responsibility of the Ethiopian Government to find political solutions to the internal conflicts, which, as we have heard in this debate, worsen humanitarian needs. Let me reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, that I did make these points when I met Premier Abiy. He certainly gave me a history lesson, but we also focused very much on the future and what steps he needs to take to ensure that political effort is put into resolving potential conflicts in the future.
We are increasingly aware of the compounding impacts of climate change on the humanitarian crises. As I heard on my visit last week, it affects conflict, education, healthcare, the economy and our very ability to co-ordinate action globally. The UK’s engagement with Ethiopia has focused on tackling these issues, and adopting a multifaceted approach is key. That is why we have increased our focus on food, health, water and sanitation, and on the most vulnerable populations. We are also investing in improving data and evidence to enable informed decisions—a point that was made well in today’s earlier debate. We do this bilaterally through established routes and monitoring systems, via the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Of course, our approach must continue to evolve and we must focus more on preventive measures. It is hugely encouraging that we are one of the biggest contributors to the UN Central Emergency Response Fund, because equity is a key part of our approach. It provides a tailored response to vulnerable people, including internally displaced people and women and girls. As all noble Lords here are aware, women and girls bear the brunt of major crises. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for his and the APPG’s work on this. I certainly have read the New Lines report— I will keep his copy as an additional copy.
When I was in Tigray, I met women and girls in the Sabacare IDP camp there. Such shocks worsen existing inequalities and education prospects, undoing the progress achieved in empowering women and girls. For example, the incidence of child marriage and gender-based violence significantly increases in the areas of drought. These facts show why we are adopting a more tailored approach.
This year, we are helping over 435,000 children and pregnant and breastfeeding women with nutritious food—the previous Government also contributed to this. I saw examples of our collaboration with the World Food Programme in Tigray, as it delivers holistic support to women and children in the health centre. It was a continuous programme, doing excellent work.
In 2023-24, we reached 36,879 women and girls suffering gender-based violence, and child protection services supported 52,000 wasted pregnant and breast- feeding women with critical nutrition. We provided regular cash transfers to 2,871 households with pregnant women and young children, and we placed 500,000 girls in school over the last year.
We have consistently called for the end of the wide- spread gender-related sexual violence in Ethiopia. We have deployed preventing sexual violence team experts in Ethiopia, as the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, mentioned. We will continue to focus on that work. We will protect more than 23,000 women and girls through those services, with regular cash transfers, as I said.
We obviously also need to focus on how to have future growth in Ethiopia. We have rallied international support for a multibillion dollar financial package from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. But no country’s economy can flourish in the midst of conflict, which remains a persistent contributing factor to the humanitarian crisis—another point I absolutely stressed to Premier Abiy. We know that the conflict in Tigray claimed the lives of up to 600,000 people.
The noble Lord, Lord Alton, has constantly pushed on the issue of genocide, and he knows the long-standing government position on how you make such a determination. But I reassure him that I am absolutely committed to ensuring that we hold those responsible to account and that we have proper policies to end impunity. That means ensuring that we not only support the evidence-gathering process but help survivors—who are left with a legacy of widespread human rights atrocities perpetrated by all sides—to get justice. We are committed to supporting them, which is why we support Ethiopia’s transitional justice policy and why, in my visit, I announced £16 million to help 75,000 Tigrayan military personnel return to civilian life.
As my noble friend Lord Browne mentioned, since August last year the Amhara region has been plunged into instability, with a full-scale insurgency. In other regions, violence is coming on. I assure my noble friend and others that the Government are absolutely focused on bringing international attention to this. We want to ensure that we join those affected by this conflict to call on the Ethiopian Government to find a peaceful resolution. I raised that not only with Premier Abiy but with all leaders in Tigray; I spoke to the Acting Premier and President in the region.
I want to underline the importance that we place on these issues. The noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, spoke about the pledging conference in Geneva. Certainly, we will continue that work—$610 million has been raised. The pledges made were intended for 2024-25, but we will host a follow-up meeting in November to ensure not only that we deliver those pledges, which have been met, but that we increase them from April. We are working on that. In the post-conflict situation in Tigray, I visited a manufacturing factory in the war zone. We will pledge further support, just under £7 million, for Ethiopia’s textiles and garments sector. Jobs are vital to changing people’s lives, and I have seen how this can work.
On malnutrition, I think noble Lords know exactly where my heart lies on that—for 10 years, I supported the Nutrition for Growth summits for the APPG. As noble Lords have highlighted, malnutrition has long-term consequences such as stunting, which excludes affected people from the economy and harms development prospects for populations far into the future. In tackling the risks of famine, we are also safeguarding Ethiopia’s future economic prospects. This is in all our interests.
The noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, and others raised the issue of ODA spending. Certainly, the Prime Minister and this Government are committed to restoring 0.7% of GNI once the fiscal situation allows. However, as I said in the earlier debate and will repeat now, we are focused on impact and on delivering what we can. Nutrition is vital. Our support for the pledges of the Nutrition for Growth summit remains. It has the biggest multiplying effect in investment and development, and we will continue to support it. In 2021, the UK pledged £1.5 billion to improve nutrition of women, girls and children. It also pledged to integrate nutrition across the ODA portfolio and to use the OECD/DAC nutrition policy marker to report on nutrition integration in our programme. We will publish annual nutrition accountability reports on progress against our pledges—the previous one was published in August. We will continue that work, and I hope that I will be in a position to report on it in the future.
We know we are operating in a difficult environment in Ethiopia, with active conflicts, hard-to-reach areas and tough regulations, and many humanitarian agencies struggle to help those who most need it. As a result of the Geneva pledging conference, the Government of Ethiopia made commitments to reform humanitarian practices. I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, that that includes facilitating unimpeded and sustained access to all areas and affected people, collaborating on an analysis framework that draws on global best practice—again, another issue raised with Premier Abiy. While food insecurity and malnutrition remain a cause for concern in Ethiopia, we hope that these steps will reduce prevalence over time.
In conclusion, this has been an excellent debate. Looking to the future, prevention has to be our primary goal. Our objectives must be to ensure that the events that stunned us 40 years ago are never repeated. We will do that by promoting sustainable economic growth, creating climate-resilient humanitarian systems and prioritising human rights alongside empowering women and girls. We will do this working in genuine partnership with the Government of Ethiopia. With conflicts currently raging across the country, reports of human rights abuses and violations, serious economic challenges and food insecurity crises throughout Tigray and Afar, there is much work to be done. As partners, our Governments must work towards the benefit of both our peoples. Resolving this is the collective responsibility of the Ethiopian Government and the international community, because only by working together can we discover lasting solutions to poverty and inequality.
Baroness Featherstone (LD)
My Lords, I shall not detain noble Lords for long. It has been an excellent debate, and I want to thank every single contributor for their wisdom, knowledge, passion and intellect in addressing what are insoluble problems. When I was in Africa, they had an expression: “Eat while you are at the table”, which basically meant that if your tribe, ethnic group, people of your religion or whoever were in power, then all your relatives and your tribe were okay—at the expense of everybody else. Until that basic way of fighting for scarce resources is changed, I do not know how much you can change for the long term, because it is a massive undertaking. But in the short term, people are dying because they have no food.
I am grateful to the Minister, and I wish him well, and speed, with his work in Africa; it needs him. I again thank all noble Lords for their contributions, particularly my noble friend Lord Oates. If we had not had a 14 or 15 year-old boy running away to Ethiopia, we might not have had this debate today.