Armed conflict and household food insecurity: evidence from war-torn Tigray, Ethiopia

Abstract Background Exposure to armed conflicts result in strongly adverse and often irreversible short- and long-term effects which may transmit across generations. Armed conflicts directly cause food insecurity and starvation by disruption and destruction of food systems, reduce farming populations, destroying infrastructure, reducing resilience, and increasing vulnerabilities, disruptions in access to market, increasing food price or making goods and services unavailable altogether. The objective of the present study was to determine the status of household food insecurity in the armed conflict affected communities of Tigray in terms of Access, Experience and Hunger scale. Method Community-based cross-sectional study was conducted to assess impact of armed conflict on household food insecurity among households with children with under one year. FHI 360 and FAO guidelines were used to quantify household food insecurity and Household hunger status. Results Three-fourth of the households had anxiety about food supply and eat undesired monotonous diet due to lack of resources. Households were obliged to eat few kinds of foods, eat smaller meals, eat foods they do not want to eat, or went a whole day without eating any food. Household food insecurity access, food insecurity experience, and hunger scales significantly increased by 43.3 (95% CI: 41.9–44.7), 41.9 (95% CI: 40.5–43.3) and 32.5 (95% CI: 31.0-33.9) percentage points from the prewar period. Conclusions Household food insecurity levels and household hunger status of the study communities was unacceptably high. The armed conflict has significant negative effect on food security in Tigray. It is recommended that the study communities need to be protected from the immediate and long-term consequences of conflict-induced household food insecurity.