Ethiopia’s prime minister may want to coast on the laurels of the Nobel Prize but, realistically, he may very quickly become the first Nobel laureate to face war crimes charges.
Category: Resource
US: Aid pause to Ethiopia no longer linked to dam dispute
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.
The Telegraph: ‘You should have finished off the survivors’: Ethiopian army implicated in brutal war crime video
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.
xinhuanet: UN says humanitarian situation in Ethiopia’s Tigray region “remains deeply concerning”
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.
FP: Biden Mulls Special Envoy for Horn of Africa
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.
devex: EU development chief calls for united response on Ethiopia
The European Union’s top representative for development aid said Tuesday that the bloc needs to “plan very carefully” when it comes to Ethiopia, as Brussels continues to withhold funding from the government over the conflict in the country’s North. In December, the European Commission postponed €88 million in planned budget support payments, with officials saying they could not give one euro to the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed until unimpeded humanitarian access is granted to the Tigray region, among other conditions.
Jutta Urpilainen, EU commissioner for international partnerships, told reporters Tuesday that another five budget support payments, together worth €100 million ($120 million), are due in 2021.
CRD: Grave Human Rights Violations in Tigray Must be Investigated
Civil Rights Defenders is alarmed by the grave human rights violations that have occurred during the war in Tigray, Ethiopia’s northernmost region. The devastating number of confirmed cases of sexual and gender-based violence adds another layer of urgency to the crisis in the region. We urge the federal government of Ethiopia to immediately facilitate independent investigations that involve experts on sexual and gender-based violence to ensure proper scrutiny and accountability. Independent local and international organisations, as well as the media, must be allowed access to the conflict-affected areas.
AP: ‘Horrible’: Witnesses recall massacre in Ethiopian holy city
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.
AFP: Ethiopia’s Tigray region hit by power blackout
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.
devex: The price women and girls are paying for Ethiopia’s war
UM RAKUBA CAMP, Sudan — Marta’s life in the town of Shire in Ethiopia was happy. She attended school — where she loved math class the most — and afterward helped out at her parents’ clothing shop.
But then November came. The Ethiopian government launched a military campaign in the country’s northern Tigray region, and chaos ensued. Marta and her brother spent 12 days hiding in the forest. She returned to town to search for her parents, then six armed men broke into her home and one of them raped her.