IOM Study Reveals Critical Humanitarian Gaps Across 78 Tigray Displacement Sites

Nearly 307,000 people displaced across Tigray are living in conditions of severe deprivation, according to a comprehensive assessment released by the International Organization for Migration. The study examined 78 displacement sites spread across five zones and twenty-one districts, painting a picture of humanitarian infrastructure that exists in name only—present enough to claim coverage, but nowhere near adequate to sustain the people it is meant to serve.

The paradox runs through every sector. Food assistance reaches ninety-five percent of the sites, yet the amount delivered falls drastically short of what people need to eat. Shelter tells a starker story: thirty-six sites receive no shelter support at all. Water and sanitation, essential to preventing disease in crowded displacement camps, shows the deepest failure. Only four of the seventy-eight sites have adequate water and sanitation services. Twenty-seven sites have none whatsoever. The remaining forty-seven operate with insufficient provision—enough to keep people alive, perhaps, but not enough to maintain dignity or prevent illness.

Protection services, the mechanisms meant to shield the most vulnerable from exploitation and violence, are almost entirely absent. Forty-five sites have no protection services at all. The assessment documented child protection concerns across sixty-four sites. Fifty-five sites show documented vulnerabilities for women and girls' safety. Forty-six sites face elevated risks of sexual violence. Thirty-nine sites present physical barriers that make them inaccessible to persons with disabilities. Beyond these specific threats, the sites contend with land disputes, tensions with host communities, and populations lacking legal documentation—all conditions that compound vulnerability.

The coordination that might tie these services together and ensure some coherence in the response simply does not exist at scale. Thirty-seven sites lack a dedicated Camp Coordination and Camp Management presence—the mechanism meant to track who is where, coordinate the delivery of aid, and provide a channel for complaints and grievances. The failure is most complete in the Central Zone, which holds nineteen percent of Tigray's total displaced population. Every single site in that zone operates without formal coordination oversight. When the assessment classified sites by overall risk, it found forty-four at moderate risk, twenty-two at high risk, and ten at critical risk. Seventy percent of sites reported environmental vulnerabilities, with forty-three percent exposed to seasonal flooding.

The assessment was conducted by a multi-agency team working with Ethiopia's Camp Coordination and Camp Management Cluster, financed by the Ethiopian Humanitarian Fund and the European Union, and formally acknowledged by the Tigray Regional Health Bureau. The study's scope and methodology carry weight. What it documents is not speculation or projection, but the current state of displacement across the region—a system that has failed to meet the basic needs of nearly a third of a million people, and in many cases has failed to try.