AMECEA: Chairman Appeals for Humanitarian Aid in Response to Ethiopia’s Tigray Crisis

Sr. Jecinter Antoinette Okoth, FSSA

The Chairman of the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in Eastern Africa (AMECEA) region has appealed for assistance to support the suffering communities who have been faced with a lot of challenges in the past months.

This is in attempt of the solidarity organization of the Catholic bishops in the region to respond to the massive humanitarian crisis for the people of the Catholic Eparchy of Adigrat, Ethiopia.

“The people in the affected communities need food, medication, shelter, water and other health and sanitary items in such a volatile environment,” AMECEA chairman Bishop Charles Sampa Kasonde shared in a statement dated Wednesday, May 12.

The Catholic Eparchy of Adigrat is within the jurisdiction of Ethiopia’s Tigray region where conflict broke between the Government security forces and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and has been ongoing for now nearly six months.

“The conflict in Tigray which ended up into military intervention has affected the entire population in the area, Bishop Kasonde of Zambia’s Solwezi Diocese disclosed adding that the Local Ordinary of Adigrat Bishop Tesfaselassie Medhin confirmed that “many people have been displaced from their homes and are forced to live in refugee camps within Ethiopia and outside the country.”

Even though the Church in Ethiopia and its partner Caritas are doing their best to assist the suffering communities with the meager resources they have, said the Chairman, “The local Church is getting overwhelmed with the increasing number of needy cases.”

Based on the massive crisis and appeal from Bishop Medhin which he made early in the year, the Executive board of AMECEA have in the spirit of pastoral solidarity resolve to extend the same appeal to all AMECEA Member Conferences to assist the people of Tigray.

In his earlier statement shared with AMECEA Online Bishop Medhin noted that “The people including Eritrean refugees have run out of food items, basic life-saving medicines, water etc. and have no access to essential services like shelter, electricity, banking, telephone, internet connection, transport and health to help their families.”

“It is a daily reality to hear people dying with the fighting consequences, lack of food, insulin and other basic medicines…and the conflict has led to displacement of millions of people who have escaped from their homes to “ragged mountains and valleys” for safety and to escape from “artillery shelling and air-strikes” in order to save their lives, while those from the western Tigray Region have fled to Sudan,” reads an excerpt from Bishop Medhin.

Bishop Kasonde has kindly requested that contributions be channeled to AMECEA Secretariat by 30th June, 2021, so the Secretariat leadership can then forward to the Catholic Eparchy of Adigrat to support the affected needy people.