Eritrea crisis worsens Djibouti food shortages

A large percentage of Djibouti’s population could face food shortages due to drought, rising prices, declining earnings, and high levels of livestock deaths, according to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net). Some 130,000, including 50,000 in Djibouti’s capital, require emergency food assistance, the network found. FEWS Net also noted that the recent border conflict with Eritrea could aggravate the situation. “Approximately 1,000 people have been displaced in and around the conflict zone, and as many as 22,000 could be displaced, should the violence worsen,” it stated in an alert.

Tension between the two neighbors flared up when Eritrean troops attacked the northern territories of Doumeira and Ras Doumeira in early June. Several casualties were reported before fighting ceased on June 12. “The situation has remained calm, but both countries are sending additional troops to the area, threatening renewed violence,” the network warned. “The border conflict could have important food security implications for Djibouti and the greater East Africa region.”

Djibouti’s pastoral communities, which rely on Eritrean markets for food, are already affected and reportedly fleeing to Khorangar, Obock City, or further inland. A semi-desert state that experiences frequent droughts and imports all its staple foods, Djibouti is classified by the UN as both a least developed and a low-income, food-deficit country. (IRIN, June 26)

See our last posts on the Djibouti crisis, the Horn of Africa, and peak food.

  1. Deja vu
    It seems like any nation that goes to war against Eritrea starves its own citizens. During the 1980’s great famine in Ethiopia, the then Ethiopian regime was spending billions of dollars in modern weaponries on a war against Eritrea as millions of Ethiopians were starved to death. Even the current Ethiopian regime has manufactured a “famine” by starving millions of people in the southern region of the country under the pretext of war. The regime has banned Foreign media and journalists from the southern regions that are severely affected by the man-made famine of the regime’s making.

    And now, Djibouti is following the same destructive path as Ethiopia by manufacturing a “conflict” against Eritrea and starving its own citizens in the process. Every time you have an African nation ruled by a puppet regimes such as in Ethiopia and Djibouti, who serve the interests of the self-serving external powers, the outcome is always the same: famine of a Biblical proportion, severe starvation, war of aggression, illegal invasion and so on….

    I just don’t understand how the Ethiopian and Djiboutian regimes starve their own citizens in order to achieve their master’s agenda, albeit futile and unattainable in their case against Eritrea. When do these people finally wake up and start thinking as a sovereign and independent nation instead of being the beggar maid nations they are today?
    If war against Eritrea was difficult yesterday, it sure is impossible today !

    Here is my favorite quote by a very brilliant daughter of the Horn of Africa….

    “Eritrea has become a threat – “a threat of a good example”, a beacon of hope in a continent filled with misery and despair, and where Africans, despite their abundant resources, because of corruption and greed, and most of all because of economic programs prescribed by self-serving external forces, have been relegated to live on handouts from the “generous” West.”

    1. Egypt deporting your fellows Mr. ‘deja vu’
      What is worse than having a problem is not admitting you have it. That is exactly the problem with many Eritrea Tigreans.
      Your priority before bad mouthing your neighbors should be:
      getting your sisters and brothers in Egypt to somewhere safe before they return them (You very well know torture is no propaganda when it comes to Isayas-it is a routine).
      Can you imagine how much especially your sisters went through?
      From having their genitals mutilated-removed-(as circumcision 90.2% women) when they were babies to fighting wars as Eritreas ‘brave’ female fighters (why brave-FGM),now getting killed in Islamist Egypt prisons. It is sad for Christian Erireans on Arab refugees camps.

      1. I hate lyers and God forbid
        I hate lyers and God forbid if i do.What is the problem of our horn.i dont think that every human here knows who is the culprit.ethiopia invading somalia. for what do you think for alquda. ethiopia has a lot of bad doings in its history.to get peacefull horn etihopa regime must be babitized again.and ihope then there will not be wars ,prpoganda, critics and comments. i pray for peace in horn and the day will come as GOD wills.

      2. Deja Vu
        There are credible reports that revealed the Ethiopian regime has intentionally sent thousands of Tigrigna-speaking-Ethiopians from its Tigray region to Egypt in order to cross them in to Israel in an attempt to ask political asylum in Israel posing as “Eritreans” so it would appear there are more Eritrean refugees fleeing their country.

        Nevertheless, the ever cautious and ever vigilant Israeli Immigration officials were fully aware of the Ethiopian regime’s scheme, and arrested around 2800 Tigrigna-Speaking-Ethiopians who had posed as “Eritreans”, and their deportation process to Ethiopia is due in the coming few weeks. The remainders who were unable to reach Israel through Egypt got arrested by the Egyptian police and are awaiting a deportation process to Ethiopia as well. The weyane regime in Ethiopia in an attempt to save face and to cover up its failed evil schemes “offered to receive” the “Eritrean” refugees to Ethiopia, when in fact, the refugees are indeed Tigrigna-speaking-Ethiopians, or agames in short.

        Few months ago, the Eritrean ambassador to Israel had warned the Israeli government officials that if any of those thousands of Ethiopians posing as “Eritreans” commit any type of crimes, all fingers will be pointing at Eritrea, and that is what the Ethiopian regime wants to accomplish by sending thousands of its own citizens to pose as “Eritrean refugees” as part and parcel of the Ethiopian regime’s propaganda tool to smear Eritrea’s reputation.

        The Ethiopian regime had also attempted the same scheme in Yemen by sending thousands of its citizens to pose as “Eritrean refugees” that failed to materialize when some level-headed UNHCR staff in Yemen exposed them as Ethiopians and posted the following report on the UNHCR’s website to clearly show how many of those refugees in Yemen are indeed Eritreans, Ethiopians, and Somalians. This is a UNHCR report that is speaks volumes of the Ethiopian regime’s schemes.
        Check out the link and you be the judge……

        http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1904766/posts

        1. Re:deja vu
          Yet again you deflected the problem.
          Your little stories may sound sweet b/c they are sugar coated. “Ethiopian Tigrean hoax story” might actually be Isayas’s scheme to counter the floodgate of refugees from the boat we call Eritrea.
          Even if your story were partially true it does not capture the whole Eritrean refugee disaster.
          I think governments around the world( including Ethiopia) should give hand to Christians held at the camps of Islamic Egypt who slaughter Black African refugees every other day. Egypt is another place like Darfur where Arabs shoot Black Christian Africans. Arabs are Arabs not Africans and they should go back to Arabian peninsula.
          As an Amhara, we like our Agames-They are the source of some of the great Kings who fought invaders as opposed to you who were leaks. Why don’t Eritrea declare itself “Islamic Republic of Eritrea”-Extension of Egypt?