More than 110 scholars and researchers from 21 countries ask you to join us in calling for an end to the blockade of food and medicine in Ethiopia.

After a year of war, Tigray has been devastated and cut off for months, and humanitarian deliveries to neighbouring regions are also threatened. Our fears of a catastrophic famine have not only been realised: they have been exceeded. Ethiopia has the highest numbers of starving people on the planet, and the largest active ongoing war.

We continue to call on all parties to pursue a political settlement to political problems: to ceasefire and negotiate. But lifting the blockade on people who have been starving for months cannot and should not wait for negotiations: it must happen now; it must happen first.

The onus is on the Ethiopian government to allow adequate food, fuel and medicine to reach people in those growing areas which it does not control.

We call on our own governments, and UN bodies, to do much more to achieve this – to prioritise full access for life-saving deliveries.

International law includes the international responsibility to protect and withholding food from civilians during war is a crime. Women, children and the elderly are dying needlessly in Ethiopia, a country that we all love. It must stop now!

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Thank you!