It isn’t just Ethiopia’s relentless civil war that has featured in breaking news. No less close to the bone must be that more than 400,000 people in the country’s crisis-wracked Tigray region are now facing the worst global famine in decades and 1.8 million are on the brink.

While the United States has warned that up to 900,000 people in Tigray face famine conditions in the world’s worst hunger crisis in a decade, little is known about vast areas of Tigray that have been under control of combatants from all sides since November last year.

With blocked roads and ongoing fighting, humanitarian groups have been left without access. The food crisis and the endemic hunger ought to be no less riveting than the second surge of the pandemic though both scourges have afflicted the world at large and a swathe of embattled Africa to a truly horrendous degree.

The United Nations said over last weekend that more than 400,000 people in the Tigray region were facing the worst global famine in decades; it has warned that despite the government’s unilateral cease-fire, there is serious potential for fighting in western Tigray. The UN reports are dire.

The documents were presented to the first open meeting of the Security Council since the conflict in Tigray began. It was a devastating picture of a region where humanitarian access is extremely restricted, where 5.2 million people are crying out for assistance.

The forces in Tigray that returned to their capital, Mekele, after the government’s June 28 cease-fire and exit from the region, have not agreed to the halt to hostilities. The food crisis is more severe than has been generally recognised by the member-nations.

The UN’s political chief, Rosemary DiCarlo, has urged the Tigray Defence Force “to endorse the cease-fire immediately and completely underlining that the immediate concern of the voice of the comity of nations is to send desperate assistance to the region”.

The acting UN humanitarian chief, Ramesh Rajasingham, said the situation in Tigray “has worsened dramatically” in recent weeks, citing “an alarming rise in food insecurity and hunger due to conflict” with the number of people crossing the threshold to famine increasing from 350,000 to 400,000. Some suggest “the numbers are even higher.”

“The lives of many of these people depend on our ability to reach them with food, medicine, nutrition supplies and other humanitarian assistance,” he said. “And we need to reach them now. Not next week. Now.” The outlook, in a word, is much too fearful to imagine.

Assistance for Tigray is no less critical than vaccines for protection against the virus. The UN now plans to send convoys to areas that are difficult to reach, but the UN. World Food Program only has enough food for one million people for one month in Mekelle.

“This is a fraction of what we need for the 5.2 million people who need food aid,” the acting aid chief said. “However, we have almost run out of health, water, sanitation and other non-food item kits. Food alone does not avert a famine.”