Tigray, Ethiopia – Lately, 88-year-old Nireyo Wubet spends most of his days burying friends and family members. With much of his village in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region destroyed, he worries whether there will be anyone left to give him a proper burial when the time comes.
“We have little humanitarian support,” lamented an eight-year-old in Hitsats village, near the border with Eritrea, whose poor condition is mirrored by many others. “It’s not conflict that will kill us in the end, but starvation,” he says.
Recommended stories
3 List of itemsEnd of list
A proud farmer from Humera – now a disputed area in the Amhara region – Wubet took refuge in Hitsats four years ago, after fleeing conflict and ethnic strife that uprooted him and others.
He was first displaced in the interim Tigray Warwhich began in 2020, killing thousands and displacing millions. Even after the conflict ended in 2022, he could not return and regain his life.
Hitsats is a destitute village sustained mostly by humanitarian agencies, including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)—once Ethiopia’s largest source of humanitarian aid.
But that changed abruptly a year ago when US President Donald Trump took office and promptly dismantled the agency’s work and cut funding worldwide.
Across Tigray province, humanitarian organizations including the World Food Program (WFP) say 80 percent of the population is in need of emergency aid. But cuts to USAID mean less humanitarian funding is available overall, and what’s left is often directed to hotspots and global conflict zones that are considered worst emergencies.
Doctors Without Borders, the medical aid organization known by its French acronym MSF, which helps vulnerable populations in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa region, notes that the US is cutting “global health and humanitarian programs around the world” in 2025.
“The human costs (around the world) are catastrophic,” MSF said in a statement this week.
It said that in Somalia, aid disruptions halted shipments of therapeutic milk for months, leading to an increase in child malnutrition cases at MSF clinics there; In Renk, South Sudan, funding cuts forced the aid agency to stop supporting hospital staff, leading to gaps in maternity care; And in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, USAID’s dismissal led to the cancellation of an order for 100,000 post-rape kits, which included HIV prevention drugs.
In Ethiopia, the largest recipient of USAID funding in sub-Saharan Africa before Trump’s cuts, funding shortfalls have created critical gaps and put more pressure on other agencies.
In Tigray, “cuts in donor funding have put additional strain on an already fragile public health system,” Joshua Eckley, MSF’s head for Ethiopia, told Al Jazeera.
“As aid actors scale back or suspend activities in the region due to funding constraints, the most vulnerable are losing access to medical care, water and sanitation services … while overall humanitarian needs are outstripping collective capacity.”
‘Like pouring a glass of water into a pond’
Wubet and others in his community are living through the effects of cuts in humanitarian aid, which have brought further devastation to already struggling communities.
Terfuneh Welderuffel was displaced from the town of Mai Kadra during the Tigray War.
The 71-year-old has been living in Hitsats since 2022. They say that hunger runs deep in the village and that it is rare to find someone who has not cremated a loved one in the past year.
Abraha Mebrathu, coordinator of a government camp that houses about 1,700 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Hitsats, says he has seen minimal humanitarian aid entering the village. He confirms that many civilians are dying and there seems to be little support as the situation worsens.
He says they no longer keep data on people who have died because the numbers are too high and are now more focused on helping survivors in desperate situations.
“We have received little support and the need is high,” he told Al Jazeera. Most of the land is not arable and displaced people have no option to grow food. The majority, he says, are “waiting to die.”
To make matters worse, many local humanitarian workers have not been paid since last year, and Mebrathu says most are starving like their neighbors.
At the same time, the situation in Hitsats has been worsened by the sudden closure of a WFP office in nearby Shire, home to one of Ethiopia’s largest IDP populations, due to budget cuts related to USAID’s reduced role in Ethiopia.
Months after USAID was suspended in Ethiopia, the US government announced it would resume some of its support to the country, but many say little has come of it in regions like Tigray, whose economy, as well as its population, remains devastated after years of conflict.
“Heatsats are starting to get some support, the acute and urgent need of nearly 2,000 people is like pouring a glass of water into a pond,” says Mebrathu.
Watching people ‘die from a distance’
In the absence of USAID assistance, some Ethiopians decided they wanted to help.
Last month, there was an outpouring of support for internally displaced and vulnerable citizens from Tigray’s provincial capital Mekelle and Addis Ababa, launched by online influencers.
However, Ethiopian officials said they were already sending a lot of resources to help the vulnerable community and warned citizens – including influencers – against raising funds and donating directly to those affected in places with Hitsats. The government has yet to officially acknowledge that a serious famine crisis is brewing. Observers say his focus is on presenting a positive, aspirational image of Ethiopia and avoiding narratives that portray it as destitute or aid-dependent.
An influencer named Adone, with millions of followers, joined others to help raise funds for Hitsats residents – but his effort was called off midway through fears of reprisals from the authorities.
Another influencer involved in the fundraising told Al Jazeera, speaking on condition of anonymity, “We went to the areas most affected by the drought, we had the will and ability to save lives and collect scarce resources and it hurts that we can’t do it and we are forced to watch them die from afar.”
The Ethiopian government has claimed that the Horn of Africa nation has become self-sufficient in wheat and is able to feed its vulnerable population, but critics have challenged that.
In 2024, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed told members of parliament that “no one is dying of hunger in Ethiopia,” while the WFP claimed that more than 10 million Ethiopians were facing starvation.
Last year, Abiy announced the creation of EthioAid, similar to USAID, to help neighboring nations facing drought, including war-torn Sudan, which received $15m from the Ethiopian government.
The Ethiopian Disaster Risk Management Commission, a federal government agency responsible for disaster relief, has denied claims of widespread starvation in villages like Hitsats and across the country. However, according to the latest outlook from the Famine Early Warning System Network, more than 15 million Ethiopians are in need of emergency food aid as international humanitarian support dwindles.
The government agency said it had recently distributed $1.8 million worth of food aid to the Tigray provincial government, blaming them for misuse and distribution problems. The provincial government, however, denies receiving such support.
The head of the Tigray Disaster Risk Management Commission, Gebrehiwot Gebre-Egziaber, told Al Jazeera that the provincial government has been forced to cut humanitarian support across much of the region, particularly in rural areas where severe hunger affects large populations.
Despite Addis Ababa’s insistence that the situation is stable as dwindling international humanitarian aid and a massive hunger crisis drive people to flee, the government announced late this month that it would soon introduce a new tax system on fuel and telecommunications to help local enterprises tackle future famine, many say.
There is less space for burials
Almaz Gebrezedel, 71, has lived in Hitsats for four years. She takes any kind of help from strangers and some organizations that come to help. The village has few resources, so it competes for what is available – mostly leftovers from local restaurants.
She says many people are just falling like leaves, with little humanitarian support in the village and little financial support from local organizations.
Her next-door neighbor, Marta Tadesse, is bedridden, sick and hungry, in a makeshift shelter under a torn tent.
The 67-year-old widow says she has HIV, her children abandoned her when they sought better opportunities elsewhere, and she was forced to fend for herself.
Courtesy of her, she was given HIV drugs PEPFARThe US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which was launched in 2003 by former President George W. Bush. Credited with saving millions of lives around the world, Tadese and millions like her are no longer receiving this help.
But more than her medical needs, Tadese says her priority now is food, as hunger has become a frequent problem.
Tadese predicts that she will die a silent death among her neighbors, who face a desperate and worsening situation.
Yonas Hagos, a deacon at the church overlooking the village, says burial sites are filling up fast.
“With so many residents dying all the time, mostly as a result of starvation, it’s clear we’re going to run out of space soon,” he says.
Wubet, farmers, are burying people who died of starvation and malnutrition in Hitsat. With aid cuts now accelerating the crisis, he believes he will soon die. “It was before I left,” he says.