Fleeing the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, tens of thousands of people walked days to get to neighboring Sudan, where they are staying in crowded refugee settlements. On assignment for British newspaper The Telegraph, I traveled with Africa correspondents Saskia Houttuin and Will Brown to eastern Sudan, where we were some of the first journalists to talk to refugees.
The Tigrayans told us horrifying stories, about indiscriminate bombings, machete attacks, decapitations and executions. But it’s hard to check if their stories are true, as in Tigray, the electricity and communication services have been cut off for weeks. On top of that, journalists are not allowed to enter the region to do their work independently. And so the only way to get an idea of what might have happened in Northern Ethiopia, is to talk to the many refugees that we found in the camps.
To read some of the stories that Will and Saskia wrote for their newspapers, click through the screenshots below. To read the story I wrote for Trouw’s De Verdieping segment, click here. To hear the radio interview I did for ‘Met Het Oog Op Morgen’, in conversation with Wilfried de Jong, click here. To hear the conversation I had in the ‘NOS Radio 1 Journaal’ with Jurgen van den Berg, together with Africa correspondent Bram Vermeulen, click play on the video underneath the newspaper clippings (or click here). To listen to NOS podcast ‘De Dag’ about the situation in the Sudanese camps, click play on the player below.
In addition to the work I did for The Telegraph, NOS and Trouw, I also worked for NGOs, who are working on the ground to help the Ethiopian refugees. To see some of the work I did for World Food Programme (WFP), click here. The photos I took for Save The Children can be seen here. To see the video interviews and pictures I created for Dutch refugee NGO Stichting Vluchteling, click here. And to see the pictures I took for ZOA, click here.