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Category: Humanitarian Crisis

US: Aid pause to Ethiopia no longer linked to dam dispute

Posted on by Sami Mulaw

The United States says it has decided to “de-link” its suspension of millions of dollars of aid to Ethiopia from that country’s dispute with Egypt over a massive hydroelectric dam project.

But the State Department early Friday said that does not mean all the roughly $272 million in security and development assistance will immediately start to flow, and it depends on more recent “developments” — an apparent reference to the deadly conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region.

The State Department said humanitarian assistance remains exempt from the aid suspension. It said it has informed Ethiopia’s government. A spokeswoman for Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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The Telegraph: ‘You should have finished off the survivors’: Ethiopian army implicated in brutal war crime video

Posted on by Sami Mulaw

The ground of the Tigrayan village is soaked with blood and dozens of bodies lie strewn in the grass.

Groans can be heard from a seriously wounded man squirming on the floor between two corpses.

Chatting as they wander through the aftermath of what appears to be a mass execution of civilians in the Tigray region, soldiers laugh and joke among themselves.

Off to one side they spot a young man who seems to have survived by pretending to be dead.

“You should have finished off the survivors,” the cameraman says in Amharic, Ethiopia’s lingua franca, in an apparent rebuke of the perpetrators of the massacre.

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xinhuanet: UN says humanitarian situation in Ethiopia’s Tigray region “remains deeply concerning”

Posted on by Sami Mulaw

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) on Thursday said the humanitarian situation across Ethiopia’s conflict-affected northernmost Tigray regional state “remains deeply concerning.”

“Many refugees, internally displaced persons and host communities have endured more than three months of conflict with extremely limited assistance, leading to a significant escalation in humanitarian needs,” the UNHCR said in its latest situation update issued on Thursday.

According to the UNHCR, the security situation “remains volatile” especially in rural areas, and in and around Shire, affecting civilians and constraining humanitarian actors on the ground.

The UNHCR, however, said basic services have gradually resumed in parts of Tigray. It also stressed that electricity and banking services remain intermittent.

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FP: Biden Mulls Special Envoy for Horn of Africa

Posted on by Sami Mulaw

The Biden administration is weighing plans to establish a new special envoy for the Horn of Africa to address political instability and conflict in the East African region, including a brewing civil war and humanitarian crisis in northern Ethiopia, current and former officials familiar with the matter told Foreign Policy.

The new special envoy post could fill a diplomatic leadership gap in the administration’s foreign-policy ranks as it works to install other senior officials in the State Department, a process that could take weeks or even months to complete, as they require presidential nomination and Senate confirmation. Special envoy posts do not require Senate confirmation.

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AP: ‘Horrible’: Witnesses recall massacre in Ethiopian holy city

Posted on by Sami Mulaw

Bodies with gunshot wounds lay in the streets for days in Ethiopia’s holiest city. At night, residents listened in horror as hyenas fed on the corpses of people they knew. But they were forbidden from burying their dead by the invading Eritrean soldiers.

Those memories haunt a deacon at the country’s most sacred Ethiopian Orthodox church in Axum, where local faithful believe the ancient Ark of the Covenant is housed. As Ethiopia’s Tigray region slowly resumes telephone service after three months of conflict, the deacon and other witnesses gave The Associated Press a detailed account of what might be its deadliest massacre.

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AFP: Ethiopia’s Tigray region hit by power blackout

Posted on by Eyasu Berhe

Tigray region has been hit by an electricity blackout, the government said Wednesday, blaming the outage on the ousted ruling party in the semi-autonomous zone.

Tigray has been the theatre of fighting since early November 2020, when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced military operations against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), accusing them of attacking federal army camps.

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Forbes: Mass Atrocities, Including The Use Of Rape And Sexual Violence, In The Tigray Region Of Ethiopia

Posted on by Sami Mulaw

Recent reports suggest that the situation is not getting better either. At the end of January 2021, U.N. Special Representative of the Secretary General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Pramila Patten, reported on serious allegations of sexual violence in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, including a high number of alleged rapes in the capital, Mekelle. As Patten states: “There are disturbing reports of individuals allegedly forced to rape members of their own family, under threats of imminent violence. Some women have also reportedly been forced by military elements to have sex in exchange for basic commodities, while medical centers have indicated an increase in the demand for emergency contraception and testing for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) which is often an indicator of sexual violence in conflict. In addition, there are increasing reports of sexual violence against women and girls in a number of refugee camps.”

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Irish Times: Ireland must speak up for the starving in Tigray

Posted on by Sami Mulaw

The world’s newest humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. The stories of desperate human tragedy and heartless political leaders are both familiar and shockingly fresh.

For those of us old enough to remember Bob Geldof’s Band Aid in 1984, Tigray and the next-door province of Wollo were the epicentre of the famine that the generals who ruled Ethiopia at the time tried so hard to conceal from the world. As many as a million died of starvation in those years, victims of a war fought without mercy and a government too proud to beg for help.

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Across The Culture: Hope and a Hiccup in BLM NY’s Recognition of the Tigray Genocide

Posted on by Tech Support

Chivona Renee Newsome, co-founder of the Greater New York chapter of Black Lives Matter, spoke at a Tigray Genocide protest Sunday morning. This is one of the earliest, if not the first, recorded instances of a BLM representative recognizing the Tigray Genocide as a global Black issue.

In the fiery minute-and-a-half clip, Newsome denounces the intentional blocking of humanitarian aid to Tigray by Ethiopia’s unelected PM Abiy Ahmed. She also condemns the widespread sexual violence being perpetrated by Eritrean soldiers, an issue that seems to grow in scope with every new report.

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