Ethiopia is set to hold elections in a month, but with war in the north, ethnic violence elsewhere and major logistical hurdles, the path to credible polls is littered with obstacles.
A six-month-old war in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region is the most high-profile of several security crises that will make voting impossible in large swathes of the country.
The conflict in the Tigray region in Ethiopia broke out early November 2020. It is estimated that thousands of fighters and civilians have died, and around 4.5 million people require emergency food assistance, of whom an estimated 2.2 million are displaced. Over 60,000 have crossed the border into Sudan in search of safety.
Food distribution remains the main component of the emergency response. As of 29 April, the Government and World Food Programme have distributed more than 19,000 metric tons of food, reaching 1.1 million people in 35 districts in the region.
While calls for the Government of Eritrea to pull out of the conflict in Ethiopia increases, the international community must also consider the repercussions of Eritrean intervention in the Tigray war if a lasting solution is to be developed.
“Refugees International is concerned about reports that Ethiopian government forces and Eritrean soldiers have forced Eritrean refugees to return to Eritrea or other locations where they may be in danger. For example, Eritrean refugees who fled to Addis Ababa to avoid the fighting in Tigray have been rounded up and returned to camps in Tigray. This is unacceptable, as camps in Tigray are in the middle of an active conflict zone and have little access to food or medical supplies.”
“The reason I did this was to get evidence that the regime is oppressing the youth and the people and to show that the Eritrean people suffer a lot of abuses,”
“There are people who have been jailed for 20 years just for speaking out. So, me, I could have been executed.”
Tewodros Tefera is one of more than 60,000 people who have fled ethnic violence in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, crossing the border into a remote corner of Sudan. Horrified by what he saw when the fighting between Ethiopian and Tigray forces began six months ago, and by the tales of new arrivals, the 44-year-old chronicles the pain even as he treats it.
“”It is definitely genocide,” he says. “If someone is being attacked for their identity, if they’re threatened to be vanished because of their identity, there is no other explanation for this.”
Six months after the conflict began, governments need to be doing more to help those affected by the fighting
In any given humanitarian crisis, anywhere in the world, it is always the most marginalised, the most vulnerable groups that suffer the most. It is no surprise then that women and children are so often the bearers of the brunt of war.
Can the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia keep it together? Change has become increasingly bloody it The internet is routinely cut off in Ethiopia, CPJ has noted, including a nationwide shutdown in June 2020. The internet has been disrupted in Tigray since November 2020, when conflict broke out in the regional state, according to media reports. Officials have blamed the ousted Tigray leadership for the disconnection and Ethio Telecom, the state-owned telecommunications monopoly, said in December that it was making repairs. In an email to CPJ in mid-April 2021, Billene Seyoum Woldeyes, a spokesperson for the Ethiopian prime minister’s office, said that the authorities did not cause the disruption and did not respond to a follow up question about why it had not been fixed. Ethio Telecom did not respond to CPJ’s social media message requesting comment about the ongoing problems.
Can the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia keep it together? Change has become increasingly bloody it seems since the 2012 death of longtime leader Meles Zenawi, a Tigrean whose home region is now in open revolt against the central government. There, conventional fighting is morphing into guerrilla warfare with reprisals against civilians fuelling a vicious circle. Elsewhere, regional and ethnic tensions are also on the rise.
Ethiopia registered 322 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, taking the nationwide tally to 258,384 as of Sunday evening, the country’s Ministry of Health said.
Meanwhile, 17 new deaths from COVID-19 were reported during the same period, bringing the national death toll to 3,726, the ministry said.
