Omna Tigray Statement on the Renewed War on Tigray and the Need for a Comprehensive Political Settlement

Omna Tigray strongly condemns the Ethiopian government’s siege and aerial bombardment of Tigray and the return of full-scale war to the region. The recent drone attacks are not isolated incidents; they are the latest escalation in a sustained pattern of systematic violence, deprivation, and coercion–as a silent genocide has ensued in the years since the Pretoria Agreement.

The Ethiopian government spent the past year escalating tensions and laying the groundwork for renewed war. When Tigrayan forces seized federal airports on September 23, the international community widely recognized the development as a turning point in the tensions between the Ethiopian government and Tigrayan officials, fearing another war. However, for the people of Tigray, September 23 did not mark the beginning of a new conflict. The war that began on November 4, 2020, never truly ended for them, as it continued through siege, occupation, violence, deprivation, political exclusion, displacement, and repeated attacks on civilian life.

Since its signing, the Pretoria Agreement has been weaponized against the people of Tigray. It was not fully implemented, as the humanitarian crises continued–as did the occupation of Tigrayan land and disenfranchisement of Tigray. The Ethiopian federal government’s chokehold on Tigray tightened over the last year and a half, cutting off access to fuel, medicine, and salaries on which civilian life depends. Fuel deliveries fell steadily through 2025 and stopped entirely in January 2026, grounding ambulances and crippling hospital care. The Ethiopian federal government withheld salaries for more than 141,000 public servants and cut off access to medicine supplies to Tigray, pushing a population already on the brink closer to famine.  

That siege now collides with a severe drought. The 2026 rains failed across much of Tigray. y mid-August 2026, 148 communities had received no rain at all, and crops and livestock were being lost across the Southern, South-Eastern, Central, and Eastern Zones. Tigray’s Disaster Risk Management Commission estimates that up to 3.7 million people may need humanitarian assistance, including more than 900,000 people already displaced, yet by early August, it had secured just $3.38 million of the $626.8 million its response requires. War will turn this emergency into a catastrophe. Flights to Tigray have been suspended, roads have been blocked in Afar, communications have been cut, and aid deliveries have already come under attack. During the 2020 to 2022 war, the siege and telecommunications blackout imposed on Tigray created famine-like conditions for hundreds of thousands of people. Without immediate humanitarian access and funding, that history will repeat itself.

Additionally, the Ethiopian federal government has imposed financial restrictions that have further destabilized and deprived Tigrayans. For months, physical cash has been scarce across the region: banks capped withdrawals at as little as 1,000 birr (about $6) a day or suspended them altogether, while brokers charged premiums of up to 25 percent for banknotes. As cash became increasingly unavailable, families were forced to rely on electronic transfers. With the fighting escalating, that lifeline has also been disrupted. On September 24, 2026, mobile and internet service across Tigray was shut down, cutting civilians off from their families, their livelihoods, their own money, and essential information.

After strikes earlier this year, the Ethiopian government has, since early August, waged a sustained campaign of aerial bombardment across Tigray. Ethiopian drones and aircraft have struck schools, homes, a farmer training center, and a humanitarian convoy carrying more than 41 metric tons of food for 56,273 displaced people. Human Rights Watch has called for the August 20 strike on a teachers’ residential compound in Mekelle, which wounded 13 civilians, including seven children, to be investigated as a possible war crime. On September 22, 2026, before Tigrayan forces seized any airport, more than twenty airstrikes hit southern Tigray, killing 14 civilians in a single day. On September 25, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that Ethiopian National Defence Force airstrikes had hit five schools in Tigray. On September 27, a drone strike on the headquarters of Tigrai TV in Mekelle forced the station off air, six days after the federal media regulator suspended it.

Each of these strikes hit civilians or civilian infrastructure, and together they form an escalating pattern of violence that has now erupted into open war across northern Ethiopia, with Tigray’s civilians among the most exposed. The international community must therefore confront the disparity between the scale of harm inflicted on Tigray’s civilian population and the limited public accountability for those responsible. Allowing such attacks to proceed without meaningful consequences further emboldens the Ethiopian federal government to continue its use of force against civilian and humanitarian lifelines.

The fighting now reaches far beyond Tigray. On September 21, seven armed opposition groups from across Ethiopia, including the TPLF, the Oromo Liberation Army, and the Amhara Fano National Movement, announced an alliance that seeks to replace the federal government with a transitional one. Since September 23, fighting between federal forces and Tigrayan and allied forces has spread into Afar and Amhara, where federal forces were already fighting Fano militias. The UN reported civilians were killed by an Ethiopian army mortar strike in Kobo, Amhara, on the same day. Ethiopia’s wars in Tigray, Amhara, Oromia, and Afar now threaten to merge into a single national conflict. Omna Tigray is not party to any political or armed alliance. Our concern is the civilians of Tigray and of every region now caught in this war, and we reiterate that no party can secure a just outcome by force of arms.

Across Ethiopia, young people are being forced to participate in the war. Federal and regional authorities have forcibly conscripted young people in Oromia, including in the zones surrounding Addis Ababa, seizing them from streets and homes and, in some cases, demanding payment for their release. Ethiopia’s own Human Rights Commission has investigated the forced conscription of youth, including minors, in Oromia and Amhara, and on September 25, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights cited reports of arbitrary conscription by government forces. Within Tigray, Human Rights Watch has documented the same practice by Tigrayan authorities since April 2026, including the recruitment of children as young as 15, and young Tigrayans have fled toward Addis Ababa to escape it. Omna Tigray opposes the forced recruitment of any civilian and the conscription of any child by any party.

Renewed war and the forced conscription it has entailed could have been avoided; however, the Ethiopian government not only deliberately isolated Tigray militarily and economically, it implemented a calculated strategy of suppression in political life. Tigrayans have been excluded from every process meant to shape Ethiopia’s future and reckon with its past. They did not vote in the 2021 general election, nor in the June 2026 election. Tigray has had no elected representation in the federal parliament since 2021. If the new parliament serves its full term, Tigray’s exclusion from federal electoral politics will have lasted a full decade. Tigray has also been sidelined from the national dialogue meant to reconcile the country and excluded from the transitional justice process meant to deliver accountability for the atrocities committed against its people. The continued exclusion of Tigrayans from electoral, political, and accountability processes means that decisions about their future are being made without their meaningful participation. Their exclusion from each of these processes is not incidental; it is by design, and it is not a sustainable foundation for peace.

For these reasons, Omna Tigray holds that a pause in the fighting, however urgent, is not sufficient. The Pretoria Agreement temporarily paused large-scale fighting in 2022, but it did not deliver the protections and commitments necessary for a durable peace. The federal government never implemented its core terms: hundreds of thousands of Tigrayans remain displaced, Western Tigray remains under occupation, Eritrean forces remain on Tigrayan soil, and no one has been held to account for the atrocities of the genocidal war. An agreement that leaves these conditions unfulfilled will not deliver lasting peace. Pausing hostilities will only exacerbate the current crisis. What is required for lasting peace is a comprehensive, internationally guaranteed political settlement, the full withdrawal of all occupying forces, the safe and dignified return of the displaced, the restoration of Tigray’s institutions and services, the restoration of Tigrayans’ political representation, and genuine accountability for the crimes committed against the people. No party can secure these outcomes by force of arms; they require a fair, inclusive, and sustained political process, backed by guarantors prepared to enforce what is agreed.

Omna Tigray is therefore calling for:

• The Ethiopian government to immediately and unconditionally end the bombardment of Tigray and lift the siege in full, restoring fuel, medicine, telecommunications, and budget transfers, unfreezing Tigrayans’ bank accounts and restoring cash and banking services, and guaranteeing unhindered humanitarian access;
• All parties to the fighting to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure, end the forced recruitment and conscription of civilians and children, and comply fully with international humanitarian law throughout Ethiopia, including in Tigray, Afar, and Amhara;
• The African Union, United Nations, European Union, United States, United Kingdom, and IGAD to move beyond calls for calm, to use their diplomatic and economic leverage to end the siege and bombardment of Tigray rather than reward those responsible for it, to fully fund the humanitarian and drought response before famine takes hold, and to convene a genuine, inclusive, and internationally guaranteed political process aimed not at a temporary ceasefire but at a comprehensive settlement that addresses the root causes of this conflict;
• All parties and guarantors to place at the center of that process the full implementation of what the Pretoria Agreement promised and failed to deliver: the withdrawal of all occupying forces from Tigrayan territory, the safe return of displaced Tigrayans, and independent, credible mechanisms for investigation, justice, and accountability.