A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Colombia to China
Continue reading...Category Archives: Ethiopia
Act now to prevent oxygen shortage in Covid-hit countries, say campaigners
Focus on vaccines and tests has been obscuring the need for oxygen in low- and middle-income countries
The scenes in India of families desperately searching for oxygen for critically ill Covid patients will be repeated in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and other countries in Africa and around the world unless a significant international effort is made to ensure all countries have good oxygen supplies, campaigners have said.
The focus on vaccines and tests, while important, has been obscuring the need for oxygen, which is cheap and readily available in high-income countries but in short supply elsewhere, they say. Before India, there was similarly shocking footage from Manaus in Brazil where distressed relatives pleaded for oxygen to keep a family member alive.
Continue reading...‘Out of Trump playbook’: UK accused of ‘abandoning’ women with cuts to aid
Charity warns of 22,000 additional deaths in poorest countries if Wish reproductive health programme ends
The director of a leading sexual and reproductive health charity has accused the government of “abandoning” women and girls it promised to help, as aid cuts derail a leading Tory programme to reduce maternal deaths and prevent unsafe abortions in poor countries.
The threat to the women’s integrated sexual health (Wish) programme could mean 7.5m additional unintended pregnancies, 2.7m unsafe abortions and 22,000 maternal deaths over the next year, said Dr Alvaro Bermejo, director general of International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).
Continue reading...‘Kill the bill’ and trans visibility: human rights this fortnight in pictures
A round-up of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to China
Continue reading...Ethiopia is fighting ‘difficult and tiresome’ guerrilla war in Tigray, says PM
Abiy Ahmed had previously declared operations against insurgents a rapid and decisive success
Ethiopian military forces are now fighting a “difficult and tiresome” guerrilla war in the northern Tigray region, prime minister Abiy Ahmed has admitted.
His comments mark a sharp break with previous insistence that military operations launched in November had been a rapid and decisive success.
Continue reading...Ethiopia: 1,900 people killed in massacres in Tigray identified
List compiled by researchers of victims of mass killings includes infants and people in their 90s
Almost 2,000 people killed in more than 150 massacres by soldiers, paramilitaries and insurgents in Tigray have been identified by researchers studying the conflict. The oldest victims were in their 90s and the youngest were infants.
The identifications are based on reports from a network of informants in the northern Ethiopian province run by a team at the University of Ghent in Belgium. The team, which has been studying the conflict in Tigray since it broke out last year, has crosschecked reports with testimony from family members and friends, media reports and other sources.
Continue reading...Gurrumul, Omar Souleyman, 9Bach and DakhaBrakha: the best global artists the Grammys forgot
From the Godfathers of Arabic rap to the father of Ethio-jazz, Grammy-winning producer Ian Brennan guides a tour through global music’s greatest
This week I wrote about the glaring lack of international inclusivity in the Grammys’ newly redubbed global music (formerly world music) category.
In the category’s 38-year history, almost 80% of African nations have never had an artist nominated; no Middle Eastern or eastern European musician has ever won; every winner in the past eight years has been a repeat winner; and nearly two-thirds of the nominations have come from just six countries (the US, the UK, Brazil, Mali, South Africa, India). The situation shows little signs of improving.
Continue reading...What can we learn from Africa’s experience of Covid?
Though a hundred thousand people have died, initial predictions were far worse, giving rise to many theories on ‘the African paradox’
As Africa emerges from its second wave of Covid-19, one thing is clear: having officially clocked up more than 3.8m cases and more than 100,000 deaths, it hasn’t been spared. But the death toll is still lower than experts predicted when the first cases were reported in Egypt just over a year ago. The relative youth of African populations compared with those in the global north – while a major contributing factor – may not entirely explain the discrepancy. So what is really going on in Africa, and what does that continent’s experience of Covid-19 teach us about the disease and ourselves?
“If anyone had told me one year ago that we would have 100,000 deaths from a new infection by now, I would not have believed them,” says John Nkengasong, the Cameroonian virologist who directs the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Incidentally, he deplores the shocking normalisation of death that this pandemic has driven: “One hundred thousand deaths is a lot of deaths,” he says.
Continue reading...Hundreds died in Axum massacre during Tigray war, says Amnesty
Group says soldiers killed hundreds of unarmed civilians in northern Ethiopian city
Hundreds of unarmed civilians were massacred in less than 48 hours by Eritrean troops during the war in the restive northern Ethiopian province of Tigray last year, Amnesty International has said.
The soldiers systematically killed hundreds of civilians in the northern city of Axum, opening fire in the streets and conducting house-to-house raids in a massacre that may amount to a crime against humanity, it said in a report.
Continue reading...‘No way they’ll back out’: tensions rise amid Ethiopia opposition hunger strike
Supporters say the politicians are prepared to die as government stands firm, with human rights lawyers warning consequences ‘could be huge’
For two hours the doctors had waited outside the gates of Kaliti prison in Addis Ababa. Bekele Gerba, a leading Ethiopian opposition figure from the Oromo ethnic group, was very ill and due to be taken to hospital for treatment. The 60-year-old is one of 20 senior political detainees, including the most prominent, Jawar Mohammed, who have been on hunger strike for the past three weeks.
After a flurry of phone calls, the prison authorities informed the waiting medical team that the prisoner, who has hypertension, would not be going to hospital on Friday. “They wouldn’t let us provide the emergency medical care he needs,” said Dr Illili Jamal, who alleged that the order to keep him in his cell came from senior government officials.
Continue reading...Margaret Snyder obituary
Founding director of Unifem, the United Nations development fund for women
When Margaret Snyder first started working for the UN in Addis Ababa in 1971, programmes for African women centred around healthcare and support for children. Snyder, who has died aged 91, established the first UN regional women’s programme to change that perception. She went on to launch the UN’s development fund for women (Unifem) and became affectionately known as the “UN’s first feminist”.
Her job in Ethiopia was to help establish a women’s programme at the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) to support women in their roles as farmers, entrepreneurs and often family breadwinners. The programme evolved into the African Training and Research Centre for Women (ATRCW).
Continue reading...Can Addis Ababa stop its architectural gems being hidden under high-rises?
While Ethiopia’s ancient sites are valued, urban heritage is an afterthought in a city forced to expand ever upwards
Only rubble remains of the former home of Dejazmatch Asfaw Kebede, a member of Emperor Haile Selassie’s government. Built in the early 1900s, and inspired by Indian as well as Ethiopian architecture, the building was demolished in early January without the knowledge of Addis Ababa’s conservation agency, the Culture and Tourism Bureau.
Demolition and reconstruction are now the most common sights along Addis Ababa’s unrecognisably altered skeleton skyline. The collateral damage is the city’s heritage.
Continue reading...Tributes paid to Ethiopian refugee farmer who championed integration in Italy
Agitu Ideo Gudeta, who was killed on Wednesday, used abandoned land to start a goat farming project employing migrants and refugees
Tributes have been paid to a 42-year-old Ethiopian refugee and farmer who became a symbol of integration in Italy, her adopted home.
Agitu Ideo Gudeta was attacked and killed, allegedly by a former employee, on her farm in Trentino on Wednesday.
Continue reading...At least 102 killed in massacre in western Ethiopia after Abiy visit
Witnesses report knife and gun attacks and children shot by armed men after PM warning over continuing ethnic conflicts
More than 100 people have been killed in Ethiopia’s western region of Benishangul-Gumuz, in the latest massacre along ethnic lines in the country.
Witnesses and officials said that at least 102 people were killed in the attack early on Wednesday in the Metekel zone.
Continue reading...‘Slaughtered like chickens’: Eritrea heavily involved in Tigray conflict, say eyewitnesses
Despite denials by Ethiopia, multiple reports confirm killings, looting and forcible return of refugees by Asmara’s forces
In early December, Ethiopian state television broadcast something unexpected: a fiery exchange between civilians in Shire, in the northern Tigray region, and Ethiopian soldiers, who had recently arrived in the area.
To the surprise of viewers used to wartime propaganda, the Tigrayan elders spoke in vivid detail of the horrors that had befallen the town since the outbreak of war between the federal government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the region’s longstanding ruling party, which was ousted from the state capital of Mekelle in late November.
Continue reading...They risked all to cross the Red Sea. Now a cruel fate awaits in Yemen
Fleeing Ethiopia and Somalia, refugees made their way across the world’s busiest migration route, only to be left in the hands of smugglers in a lawless land
Saudi Arabia was Tigrit’s dream: a place where she could find work as a cleaner or maid, and send money back to her husband and young daughter in Ethiopia. Now, like hundreds of thousands of East Africans who have left home and travelled across the Red Sea in search of a better life, she finds herself stranded in Yemen instead.
“We’re stuck. I don’t have food or money for phone credit to call home. I don’t have anything,” she said, sitting on the floor in a building site with no electricity or running water on the edge of the desert.
Continue reading...Diplomats back claims Eritrean troops have joined Ethiopia conflict
US official among sources saying soldiers from Eritrea are fighting in operations against Tigray People’s Liberation Front
A US official and other diplomatic sources have backed accusations that Eritrean soldiers are fighting alongside Ethiopian troops to help Abiy Ahmed’s government in the war on the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), complicating an already dangerous conflict.
The claims made to Reuters, which interviewed several unidentified diplomats in the region and a US official, follow mounting allegations by Tigrayan leaders that Eritrea, long a rival of Ethiopia, had joined with Ethiopian forces against a common enemy despite denials from both nations.
Continue reading...‘I saw people dying on the road’: Tigray’s traumatised war refugees
People who fled fighting in northern Ethiopia tell of atrocities and gruelling journey to Sudan
When Ethiopia’s army shelled Humera, a small agricultural city in Tigray, in mid-November, 54-year-old Gush Tela rushed his wife and three children to safety in a nearby town.
A few days later, he felt compelled to find out what had become of his home. As he approached the city on his motorbike, riding through the arid countryside, he said the stench of countless dead bodies filled the air.
Continue reading...The Nobel peace prize winner fighting a war in Ethiopia
Ethiopia’s prime minister was feted by the international community as a reformer and a peacemaker. Now, as the Guardian’s Jason Burke explains, he has launched a major military campaign in the north of his country that threatens the stability of the region
Just over a year ago, Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, was the toast of the international community. His peacemaking efforts with neighbouring Eritrea had been recognised with a Nobel peace prize and his domestic reforms were winning plaudits. This month, however, it is a different story.
The Guardian’s Africa correspondent Jason Burke tells Rachel Humphreys that Abiy Ahmed has launched a major military operation in the northern region of Tigray and imposed a state of emergency. He said he was responding to an attack on an army base by the region’s ruling party, the TPLF, which it has denied. On Saturday, government forces declared victory in the offensive after claiming to have entered the regional capital, Mekelle.
Continue reading...Manhunt launched for Tigray leaders, say Ethiopian officials
Humanitarian workers say hospitals struggling to treat hundreds wounded in Mekelle
Ethiopian officials say police and soldiers have launched a manhunt for the leaders of the ruling party in Tigray, a day after announcing federal troops had taken over the capital of the restive northern region and military operations were complete.
Humanitarian workers said the city of Mekelle, which fell to federal forces with almost no resistance on Saturday, was quiet but that hospitals were struggling to treat hundreds of injured.
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