OMNA TIGRAY – JANUARY 2022 SITUATION REPORT

Upon the 14th month of the Tigray genocide orchestrated by the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments, which has included extrajudicial killings, massacres, weaponized sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), detention, torture and execution, and wholesale destruction, the humanitarian crisis in Tigray continues unabated. The region remains isolated and under siege, leaving survivors of these atrocities without the medical and psychological support they need. Civilians continue to die daily from starvation and lack of access to medical services and life-sustaining medicines. The humanitarian response remains stalled, with the United Nations (UN) food distribution operating at 10%, while most other operations are suspended.

Inaccessibility to the region has hindered more accurate estimates of food insecurity figures. Estimates of 900,000 Tigrayans in famine and 1.8 million on the brink of famine have not been updated since July 2021 despite a continued
humanitarian blockade. Malnutrition rates established by the Tigray government are illustrative of the dire food insecurity. In November 2021, 28,000 children under five were screened for malnutrition and 2.8% were diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition (SAM) while 20% were diagnosed with moderate acute malnutrition (MAM). Among 18,800 pregnant and lactating mothers, 69% were diagnosed with malnutrition.

As Tigrayan civilians, especially children, starve to death, they also have to worry about airstrikes conducted by the Ethiopian government with the assistance of foreign military equipment and personnel. In an effort to bring peace, the President of Tigray, Dr. Debretsion Gebremichael ordered the Tigray Defense Forces (TDF) to withdraw from the Amhara and Afar regions of Ethiopia. Yet the Tigray government’s overtures were rebuffed and the Ethiopian government responded by aerially bombarding Tigray. As the TDF were making progress in their march to Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa to lift the total siege that Tigray has been under since the end of June 2021, the Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s administration was making arms deals with Turkey, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), China, and Iran. The Ethiopian government receiving drones from the aforementioned countries has consistently targeted schools, marketplaces, residential areas, and public infrastructures, causing dozens of civilian casualties and further disrupting the limited power the region had.

Despite the Ethiopian government reportedly calling on its forces not to enter Tigray, the reality on the ground indicates the Ethiopian government’s rejection of Tigray’s call for the start of peace negotiations. This rejection is not only illustrated by an intensification of aerial bombardments, but also by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces’ attempt to reinvade liberated Tigrayan land, the continued brutal ethnic cleansing in Western Tigray by Amhara and Eritrean forces, and the Eritrean occupation of Irob land in the north of Tigray on the Eritrean border. Eritrean troops, the Ethiopian army and its allied militias are attempting to reinvade Tigray from the north through Badme, northeast from Irob, southeast through Afar, and the west through Western Tigray.

In the Afar region, there are several credible reports of Eritrean and allied Afar militant groups extrajudicially killing and massacring Tigrayans. Therefore, the crimes against humanity, war crimes, and acts of genocide against Tigrayans
continue. Furthermore, Tigrayans outside of Tigray, living throughout Ethiopia, are targeted for their ethnicity and tens and thousands remain in concentration camps that lack food, water and hygienic sanitation facilities where they face rape, torture and executions.

The international community called upon the Tigray government to withdraw the TDF from Afar and Amhara region to facilitate a peace process, which it has, but renewed acts of genocide across Tigray on the part of Ethiopia, Eritrea, and allied forces loom. The international community has yet to seriously address the consistent aerial bombardments and the threat of another round of genocidal acts throughout Tigray. There have, however, been some measures taken. On December 17, 2021, after a special session of the United Nations Human Rights Council called by the European Union, member countries voted in favor of the establishment of an independent Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the crimes committed in Tigray—a development crucial in establishing accountability and justice for victims. Furthermore, on December 23, 2021, the United States government terminated Ethiopia’s participation in the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) as a result of its human rights abuses. That said, more meaningful action needs to be taken by the international community, as the Tigray genocide continues and Tigrayans starve to death, are massacred, sexually assaulted, bombed, detained, tortured, and executed.