FALSE: Humanitarian food aid donated by the UAE to Ethiopians in the Tigray region is not unsafe
Ethiopia’s Disaster Risk Management Commission deputy commissioner confirmed to PesaCheck that UAE has been donating during various disasters in Ethiopia and safety has never been an issue.
A post shared on Facebook claiming humanitarian food aid from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to the Tigray region in Ethiopia might be unsafe, is FALSE.
The post, in the Amharic language, says, “Warning: after committing a massacre in Tigray using armed drones, the UAE is now aiming to destroy the people of Tigray in the name of food aid. Please take care. UAE is Tigray people’s historical enemy. Never eat food aid supplied by UAE”.
The post is accompanied by a picture capturing the delivery of the aid and shows two men in the foreground being interviewed by journalists, with the aid consignment behind them.
A similar image used by the Ethiopia News Agency (ENA) identifies the men as Ethiopia’s Ministry of Peace Executive Office Head, Ahmed Seid, who received the aid, with UAE’s ambassador to Ethiopia, Mohamed Al Rashedi, at the Bole International Airport. The Ministry of Peace also shared this and other photos on their Twitter page.
However, the claim that the UAE’s humanitarian food aid to the affected people in Tigray might be unsafe is unfounded.
A report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) — the agency responsible for the coordination of humanitarian responses all over the world — corroborates a story published by ENA, confirming that the UAE sent an aid plane containing food and medical supplies in support of the humanitarian situation in the Tigray region.
Ethiopia’s Disaster Risk Management Commission deputy commissioner, Mr. Nesibu Yasin, confirmed to PesaCheck that UAE has been donating during various disasters in Ethiopia and safety has never been an issue.
“We had many donations previously from UAE for different disasters that we had. however, there was no experience of such kinds of toxicity from them. They are respectful donors. No political agenda in terms of the neediest person,” the commissioner said in an email to PesaCheck.
PesaCheck has looked into a post shared on Facebook claiming UAE aid planes might have delivered unsafe food in the name of humanitarian food aid to Ethiopia’s Tigray region and finds it to be FALSE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake news or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Tolera Gemta and edited by PesaCheck deputy editor Eden Berhane and chief copy editor Rose Lukalo. The article was approved for publication by managing editor Enock Nyariki
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.
