Earlier today I posted a Tweet questioning the WFP’s claims.

What games is the WFP playing in #Ethiopia? On 29 June, the United Nations boasted that since 1 April, it had delivered enough food to #Tigray to feed 5.9 million people per month. Sounds great! But hang on…is it true?

This was an inaccurate rewording of the original tweet by @WFPLogistics : “WFP has delivered enough food to feed 5.9 million people for a month.” Very different. But it gets worse…

The announcement provided a link to the WFP’s own Ethiopia country brief, which states: “In the Tigray Region, WFP delivered food assistance to 461,542 people in May.” That is very different to 5.9 million! The WFP needs to explain what’s going on https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP-0000140825/download/

The WFP has now provided this clarification

Both posts are correct. At the time our last operational update went out on 23 June we had delivered 100,000 metric tonnes of food – this is enough for WFP and food partners to feed 5.9 million people in the region. WFP’s current target number is 2.1 million while other food partners will reach the rest. 

Since 1 April to date, WFP-led convoys have delivered over 150,000 metric tonnes of food (for WFP and other food partner operations in the region) – this food (150,000 mt) is sufficient to complete the current distribution round of WFP and partners for 6 million people and will meet WFP’s target food needs in the next round. Around 59,000 metric tonnes of the food delivered since convoys restarted has been for WFP operations and WFP has reached 1.1 million people in Tigray since April 1st. In May alone we delivered food to 461,542 people.

The reason we have not yet distributed all of the food delivered is primarily due to the lack of fuel, as you will see highlighted in the operational update which went out on 23 June. Due to fuel scarcity, food partners have been forced to scale down or temporarily suspend dispatch and distribution since mid-June. The amount of fuel required for resuming life-saving activities at full scale is way beyond the amount brought into Tigray.

As of 29 June, food partners urgently require 106,000 litres of fuel to dispatch 9,000 mt of food (equivalent to enough food baskets for around 530,000 people) currently in the region to complete this current round of distributions.