Ethiopian families fleeing conflict face difficulties with food access

A seven-month-old baby has been crying for days and his forehead is abnormally large, so his mother has taken him to get checked. Ethnic Amharans, they were displaced from renewed conflict where they lived in neighbouring Oromia. But now back in Amhara, they face another challenge. Access to food. After we took all these vital signs and measurements, we know that the child has acute malnutrition. Despite an influx of internally displaced people, only one health-related NGO remains here. When you see the proportion of the population and the clinic, it is not proportional. And it is not enough. Doctors Without Borders came on ground to support those IDPs in providing gender nutrition service, but still we can't cover all the burdens by ourselves. Debre Berhan has become a hub for internally displaced people since conflict between the Oromo Liberation Army and federal troops began in 2018. And thousands more have come since the renewed war in September. The Oromia-Amhara border has seen ethnic persecution on both sides. I'm not that deep. The Oromo Liberation Army butchered our people. Our properties were looted. We were being targeted based on the language we speak. That's why we're displaced. People can't live in this camp longer than a month. They'll die due to a lack of food. Death is the only thing that's left. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm at that. Newcomers meet with the camp coordinator, asking for shelter from the cold. There are more than 3,000 internally displaced persons that came from the fresh conflict. But we could only accept 218. We didn't have space or resources for them. And sufficient humanitarian relief is nowhere in sight. The WFP in Ethiopia has a $251 million funding gap for the next six months.