Dear national and international media

Thank you for participating in the joint press conference our global President, Mr. Francesco Rocca and national President, Ato Abera Tola, conducted virtually and face to face today at our HQ in Addis Ababa and Geneva.

But while monitoring some of the news we found a misquotation from AFP to which we earnestly respond as follows:

It is with sadness that we read AFPs line of news/rather TweetsDeck of 9:27 AM on 2/10/21 that reads: “#BREAKING: Ethiopian Red Cross says 80 percent of Tigray is cut off from aid” totally unfounded to the best and misreporting to the least.

During his press conference our President was not referring to geographical location. Ethiopian Red Cross Society has never been denied access to reach people in need in various parts of Tigray. He was rather expressing lack of capacity and shortage of resources we are currently encountering to reach 80% the vulnerable community in Tigray.

The fact that we have so far reached close to 400,000 beneficiaries in Tigray, close to 20% of the total beneficiaries in need of assistance is what our president alluded to.

ERCS is currently continuing to provide relief assistance to more people in Tigray, Benishangul Gumuz, among other places. This is to confirm that Ethiopian Red Cross Society has never been denied access to reach people in need in various parts of Tigray. What we lack is capacity and capability to reach 80% of the vulnerable community. That is why we are appealing to the public and international community to fill the gap. This was what our president alluded to and surprisingly misquoted by AFP.

We are really perplexed by AFP Africa among so many of the humanitarian intervention ERCS is making, to wrongly address ERCS president’s speech and misquote him, while he was appealing for further assistance.