Category Archives: Ethiopia

Ethiopian PM appoints TPLF official as head of Tigray interim administration

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Move follows peace deal between rebels and federal government that ended two-year conflict

The Ethiopian government has said it has appointed a senior official in the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) as head of the interim Tigray regional administration after a peace deal ended a brutal two-year conflict.

“Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has appointed Getachew Reda as president of the Tigray region’s interim administration,” Abiy’s office said in a statement posted on Twitter on Thursday.

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‘War crimes’ committed by all sides in Ethiopia, says US secretary of state

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Ethiopian, Eritrean and rebel forces committed offences during two-year conflict, Antony Blinken has said

The United States has concluded that Ethiopian and Eritrean troops as well as rebels committed war crimes during the brutal two-year conflict, secretary of state Antony Blinken has said after visiting Addis Ababa.

Blinken, who had sounded upbeat in Ethiopia about the prospects for peace after a breakthrough 2 November accord, made a forceful call for accountability on his return to Washington.

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Tigray rebels start handing over weapons to Ethiopian army

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Surrendering weapons is a central part of the November ceasefire agreement which seeks to end a conflict that has killed thousands

Tigrayan rebels have begun handing in heavy weapons, a key part of an agreement signed more than two months ago to end a deadly conflict in northern Ethiopia, a spokesperson for the rebel authorities said.

The demobilisation of Tigray forces is seen as central to the 2 November ceasefire agreement, alongside the restoration of services, resumption of humanitarian aid and withdrawal of Eritrean troops, who fought alongside Ethiopia’s army but were not party to the truce.

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Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says uncle murdered in Ethiopia

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WHO director-general says he is ‘not in good shape’ after learning Eritrean troops killed his uncle in Tigray

The head of the World Health Organization said on Wednesday that Eritrean troops “murdered” his uncle in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.

The WHO director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a former Ethiopian minister who comes from Tigray, has previously been a vocal critic of Ethiopia’s role in the conflict that has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions.

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Meta faces $1.6bn lawsuit over Facebook posts inciting violence in Tigray war

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Legal action backed by Amnesty alleges hateful posts inflaming war in northern Ethiopia were allowed to flourish on platform

Meta has been accused in a lawsuit of letting posts that inflamed the war in Tigray flourish on Facebook, after an Observer investigation in February revealed repeated inaction on posts that incited violence.

The lawsuit, filed in the high court of Kenya, where Meta’s sub-Saharan African operations are based, alleges that Facebook’s recommendations systems amplified hateful and violent posts in the context of the war in northern Ethiopia, which raged for two years until a ceasefire was agreed in early November. The lawsuit seeks the creation of a $1.6bn (£1.3bn) fund for victims of hate speech.

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Former development secretaries urge Sunak to increase east Africa aid amid drought

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‘Famine in all but name’ ravaging Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, yet British aid is one-fifth of 2017 amount

The UK urgently needs to do more to help more than 28 million people in drought-stricken Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, two former secretaries of state for international development and the heads of 14 of the UK’s leading aid agencies have warned in a joint letter to the prime minister, Rishi Sunak.

They say one person is dying every 36 seconds, yet British aid to the region is only one-fifth of what Britain provided when the region was struck by famine in 2017. More than 7 million children are acutely malnourished across the three countries.

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Food aid convoys enter Tigray for first time since ceasefire

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Doctors and aid workers describe race against time to keep patients alive in northern Ethiopian region

Convoys carrying desperately needed food aid have entered Tigray, as humanitarian groups gained access to the war-torn northern Ethiopian region for the first time since a ceasefire agreement was signed two-week ago.

Doctors and aid workers in Tigray have described a race against time to keep sick or malnourished patients alive as they wait for humanitarian assistance.

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Ethiopian rivals agree on humanitarian access for war-ravaged Tigray

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Region is in the grip of a severe crisis due to a lack of food and medicine after a two-year conflict

Ethiopia’s government and Tigrayan rebels have agreed to facilitate immediate humanitarian access to “all in need” in war-ravaged Tigray and neighbouring regions.

The agreement followed talks in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi this week on the full implementation of a deal signed between the warring sides 10 days ago to end the brutal two-year conflict in northern Ethiopia.

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Race against time for sick patients after Ethiopia peace deal

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Restart of aid imminent after surprise deal earlier this week brought prospect of end to blockade and one of Africa’s deadliest conflicts

Doctors and aid workers in Tigray are racing against time to keep desperately sick or malnourished patients alive as they wait for humanitarian assistance after a surprise peace deal potentially ended the conflict in northern Ethiopia.

In the deal, signed on Wednesday in South Africa, the federal government pledged to end the blockade on Tigray imposed at the beginning of the war two years ago, while the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the political movement in power in the region, agreed to disarm its forces.

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Stop Eritrea’s ‘war-funding diaspora tax’, say MPs and lords

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UK parliamentarians call for inquiry into 2% levy on Eritreans abroad, amid fears that it fuels Tigray war

A group of UK parliamentarians is calling for an urgent investigation into the collection of a “diaspora tax” by the Eritrean authorities, which they say could have helped fund war in neighbouring Ethiopia.

MPs and members of the House of Lords want the government to launch a “full, formal, and fully funded” public inquiry into the collection of the 2% tax in the UK, and take “robust action to stop the practice”.

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Invasive mosquito could disrupt Africa’s ‘landscape of malaria’ after cases rise

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Insecticide-resistant newcomer caused unprecedented urban outbreak in Ethiopia and can survive the dry season, scientists say

Scientists are warning that the invasion of an insecticide-resistant mosquito could change Africa’s “landscape of malaria” after research showed it caused an unprecedented urban outbreak in Ethiopia.

An investigation into a steep rise in cases in the Ethiopian city of Dire Dawa during a dry season this year identified the mosquito as the cause of the outbreak. Scientists say it is the strongest evidence to date that it could prompt surges of malaria in areas typically less affected by the disease.

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Ethiopian civil war: parties agree on end to hostilities

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Breakthrough ‘monumental’ says prime minister after two-year conflict between north Tigray and federal forces that displaced millions

Ethiopia’s warring sides have formally agreed to a permanent cessation of hostilities, an African Union special envoy said on Wednesday, bringing hope of an imminent end to a two-year war that has displaced millions and threatened to destabilise a swath of the continent.

Nigeria’s former president Olusegun Obasanjo, in the first briefing on the peace talks in Pretoria, South Africa’s administrative capital, also said Ethiopia’s government and Tigray authorities had agreed on an “orderly, smooth and coordinated disarmament”.

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Ethiopians found in Malawi mass grave thought to have suffocated

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Bodies tentatively identified as adults being secretly transported to South Africa on perilous ‘southern route’

Dozens of Ethiopian people whose remains were found in mass graves in northern Malawi last month most likely suffocated to death while being secretly transported, investigators and campaigners believe.

The tragedy came amid a spate of incidents underlining the dangers faced by tens of thousands of people who entrust their lives to criminal networks that promise passage to South Africa, the most developed country on the continent.

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Tigray peace talks begin in South Africa but hopes low for halt to fighting

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Violence has intensified recently as Ethiopia and TPLF seek to bolster their negotiating position

Peace talks aiming to end the nearly two-year-old war in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia have started in South Africa, although the chances of bringing the conflict to an immediate stop are believed to be low.

Representatives of the Ethiopian government and a team sent by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a political organisation that has ruled the northern region for decades, are to spend five days together in the most serious effort yet to find a negotiated solution to the conflict.

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More bodies, thought to be of Ethiopian migrants, found in mass grave in Malawi

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Bodies of four men, believed to be en route to South Africa, found less than a mile from where 25 bodies were exhumed in Mzimba

Authorities in Malawi have discovered four bodies in a forest close to where dozens more were found in a mass grave on Wednesday.

Police say the bodies were found yesterday morning, less than a mile from where 25 others were exhumed in Mtangatanga Forest Reserve in the northern district of Mzimba.

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Malawi police discover mass grave of 25 Ethiopian migrants

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Authorities alerted by villagers in Mzimba area, 250km north of capital, to site believed less than a month old

Authorities in Malawi have discovered a mass grave in the north of the country containing the remains of 25 people suspected to be migrants from Ethiopia.

“The grave was discovered late on Tuesday but we cordoned it off and started exhuming today. So far, we have discovered 25 bodies,” said a police spokesperson, Peter Kalaya.

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‘Overlapping shocks’ are undoing efforts to end hunger in Africa, UN warns

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Urgent aid response needed as climate crisis, Covid, local conflicts and soaring fuel prices push millions more into hunger

• ‘We need urgent help’: Somalis displaced by drought and famine fight to survive

Decades of work to reduce hunger in Africa are being reversed as the continent struggles to cope with conflict, climate crisis and the global economic downturn, the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) has warned.

About 278 million people in Africa – approximately one-fifth of the total population – went hungry in 2021, an increase of 50 million people since 2019, according to UN figures. Based on current trends, this is projected to rise to 310 million by 2030.

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Tigray rebels tortured and killed civilians in renewed fighting, survivors claim

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Witnesses claim the attacks in Amhara region last month were carried out on those the TPLF suspected of supporting Ethiopian federal forces

Tigrayan rebel forces have killed dozens of civilians during their latest occupation of a town in the Amhara region, survivors claim, after fighting resumed last month in the northern area of Ethiopia.

The alleged killings took place in the town of Kobo, located along the highway to the capital, Addis Ababa. Between 13-15 September, Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) fighters shot dead unarmed civilians they suspected of supporting federal forces and local militias, survivors have told the Guardian.

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‘Humanitarian crime’: fighting cuts off insulin supply in Tigray

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International Diabetic Federation decries reports ongoing war has led to shortages of life-saving drug at Ethiopian region’s biggest hospital

Doctors at the biggest hospital in Tigray say they have just days supply left of insulin, as the resumption of fighting between rebels and Ethiopian government troops once again cuts off supplies to the region.

In what the head of the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) has branded “a humanitarian crime,” medics at Ayder specialist referral hospital warn they have already run out of one kind of the life-saving medicine and have only a week’s supply of another.

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Horn of Africa drought puts 3.6m children at risk of dropping out of school

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Experts warn that girls’ education will be worst hit, as many families are forced to move away from schools

More than 3.5 million children are at risk of dropping out of school due to the drought in the Horn of Africa, the United Nations has said, amid warnings the crisis could lead to “a lost generation” that misses out on education.

According to new figures shared with the Guardian, Unicef now estimates that 3.6 million children in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia are in danger of leaving school as a result of the cumulative pressure on households caused by the unrelenting drought.

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