Tigray, Ethiopia – Lately, 88-year-old Nireayo Wubet spends many of his days burying friends and family members. As he grieves, he worries about whether there will be anyone left to offer him a decent burial when the time comes, as severe hunger ravages a large swath of his village in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region.
“We have little humanitarian support,” laments the octogenarian whose frail appearance is mirrored by many others in his village of Hitsats, near the Eritrean border. “It’s not conflicts that will ultimately kill us, but famine,” he says.
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Once a proud farmer from Humera – currently a disputed area within the Amhara region – Wubet took shelter in Hitsats four years ago, after fleeing conflicts and ethnic strife that uprooted him and others in the region.
He was first displaced in the middle of the Tigray war, which started in 2020, killing thousands of people and displacing millions more. He has not been able to return and reclaim his life even as the conflict ended in 2022.
Hitsats is a destitute village that has been sustained mostly by humanitarian organisations, 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 demolished the agency’s work and cut funding across the globe.
Across Tigray province, humanitarian organisations including the World Food Programme (WFP) say that up to 80 percent of the population is in need of emergency support. But the USAID cuts mean there is less humanitarian funding available overall, and what remains is often directed towards hotspots and global conflict zones that are considered worse emergencies.
Medical charity Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, which assists vulnerable populations in Ethiopia and across the Horn of Africa region, notes that the US cuts “upended global health and humanitarian programs around the world” in 2025.
“The human costs have been catastrophic,” MSF said in a statement this week.
It said in Somalia, aid disruptions caused shipments of therapeutic milk to stop for months, leading to a rise in child malnutrition cases at the MSF clinic there; in Renk in South Sudan, funding cuts forced an aid organisation to stop supporting hospital staff, which left gaps in maternity care; and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the dismantling of USAID caused the cancellation of an order of 100,000 post-rape kits, which included medication for preventing HIV.
In Ethiopia, which used to be the largest recipient of USAID funds in sub-Saharan Africa prior to Trump’s cuts, the funding shortfalls have created critical gaps and put more pressure on other organisations.
In Tigray, “donor funding cuts have placed additional strain on an already fragile public health system,” Joshua Eckley, MSF head of mission for Ethiopia, told Al Jazeera.
“As aid actors scale back or suspend activities in the region due to funding constraints, the most vulnerable are experiencing reduced access to medical care, water and sanitation services … while overall humanitarian needs continue to exceed the collective capacity.”
‘Like pouring a glass of water in a lake’
Wubet and others in his community are living through the impact of the cuts to humanitarian aid, which have brought more devastation to already struggling communities.
Terfuneh Welderufael was displaced from the town of Mai Kadra during the Tigray war.
The 71-year-old has lived in Hitsats since 2022. He says hunger runs deep in the village, and that it’s rare to find anyone who has not buried a loved one in the last year because of it.
Abraha Mebrathu, the coordinator of a government-run camp housing about 1,700 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Hitsats, says he has witnessed minimal humanitarian aid entering the village. He confirms many civilians are dying, and that there seems to be little support forthcoming even as the situation worsens.
He says that they no longer keep data on the people who have died since the numbers are too high, and they are now more focused on helping advocate for those surviving in a desperate situation.
“We have had little support, and the need is overwhelming,” he told Al Jazeera. Most of the land is not arable, and displaced people don’t have the option to grow food. The majority, he says, are “waiting for their turn to die.”
To make matters worse, many local humanitarian workers have not been paid for the last year, and Mebrathu says most are starving like many of their neighbours.
At the same time, the situation in Hitsats has been made worse by the abrupt closure of the WFP office in nearby Shire, which is host to one of the largest IDP populations in Ethiopia, because of budget cuts linked to USAID’s reduced role in Ethiopia.
Months after suspending USAID in Ethiopia, the US government announced the resumption of some of its support to the country, but many say little has come to regions like Tigray, whose economy, as well as population, remain devastated after years of conflict.
“While little support is starting to come to Hitsats, with close to 2,000 people in dire and urgent need, it’s like pouring a glass of water in a lake,” Mebrathu says.
Watching people ‘die from a distance’
In the absence of USAID support, some Ethiopians decided they wanted to help.
Last month, there was a wave of support for internally displaced and vulnerable civilians initiated by online influencers from Tigray’s provincial capital Mekelle and from Addis Ababa.
However, the Ethiopian authorities said they were already sending ample resources to support the vulnerable community there, and warned citizens – including influencers – against raising funds and directly donating to those affected in such places, including Hitsats. The government has yet to officially acknowledge that there is a severe hunger crisis occurring. Observers say its focus is on presenting a positive, aspirational image of Ethiopia and avoiding narratives that may depict it as destitute or aid-dependent.
One influencer called Adonay, with millions of followers, had joined others to help raise funds for the residents of Hitsats – but their effort was aborted midway, fearing reprisal from the authorities.
Another influencer involved in the fundraiser, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Al Jazeera, “We went to the area most affected by the famine, we had the will and ability to save lives and collect scarce resources, and it hurts that we cannot do that and we are forced to watch them die from a distance.”
The Ethiopian government maintains that the Horn of Africa nation has become wheat self-sufficient and able to feed its vulnerable populations, but that is challenged by critics.
In 2024, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed told parliamentarians that “there are no people dying due to hunger in Ethiopia,” while WFP claimed more than 10 million Ethiopians were facing famine.
Last year, Abiy announced the creation of EthioAid, similar to USAID, to help neighbouring nations facing famine, including war-torn Sudan, which received $15m from the Ethiopian government.
The Ethiopian Disaster Risk Management Commission, a federal government agency in charge of disaster relief, has denied claims of massive starvation in villages like Hitsats and around the country. However, according to the latest outlook by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, more than 15 million Ethiopians are in need of emergency food aid amid shrinking international humanitarian support.
The government agency said it recently distributed food aid worth the equivalent of $1.8m to the Tigray provincial government, blaming them for misappropriation and distribution problems. The provincial government, however, denies receiving such support.
The head of the Tigray Disaster Risk Management Commission, Gebrehiwot Gebre-Egziahber, told Al Jazeera the provincial government has been forced to cut humanitarian support in most places across the region, mainly in rural areas where severe hunger affects a large population.
Despite Addis Ababa’s insistence that the situation is stable, with dwindling international humanitarian aid and an overwhelming hunger crisis causing people to flee in desperation, this month the government belatedly announced that it will soon launch a new tax system on fuel and telecommunications to help fund local initiatives to curb the impending famine that many say is in Ethiopia’s future.
Running short of burial space
Almaz Gebrezedel, 71, has lived in Hitsats for four years. She scouts around for any kind of help from strangers and the few organisations that have come to help. There are few resources in the village, so she 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 aside from small donations from local organisations with little financial means.
Her next-door neighbour, Marta Tadesse, in a makeshift shelter under a torn tent, is bedridden, sick and hungry.
The 67-year-old widow says she has HIV, was abandoned by her children when they sought better opportunities elsewhere, and she has been forced to fend for herself.
Her HIV medication was provided to her courtesy of PEPFAR, the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which was initiated in 2003 by former President George W Bush. It was credited with saving millions of lives around the world, but the assistance is no longer provided to Tadesse and millions like her.
But more than her medical needs, Tadesse says her priority now is food, as hunger has become a recurring problem.
Tadesse predicts she will die a silent death amid her neighbours, who are facing a desperate and deteriorating situation.
A deacon, Yonas Hagos, at a church overlooking the village says the burial sites are being filled up fast.
“With the many residents that are dying constantly, mostly as a result of hunger, it’s obvious we will soon be running out of space,” he says.
Wubet, the farmer, continues to bury people in Hitsats who have died from hunger and malnutrition. With the crisis now expedited by the aid cuts, he believes he will almost certainly die soon. “It’s a matter of time before I am gone,” he says.
