Category Archives: Ethiopia

He pledged unity. But now PM hopes to tighten grip on war-torn Ethiopia

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Elections this week could give PM even greater power, despite a regional conflict and a ‘man-made’ humanitarian crisis

Tens of millions of Ethiopians are expected to vote on Monday in crucial elections that could provide a launchpad for controversial prime minister Abiy Ahmed to consolidate his increasingly authoritarian rule.

Abiy, who won the Nobel peace prize two years ago after concluding a peace deal with neighbouring Eritrea, will face voters at the ballot box for the first time in Africa’s second most populous nation.

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‘Don’t betray women of Tigray’: calls grow for international action against rape in war

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Politicians among signatories of two open letters urging investigation into reports of sexual violence in Ethiopian conflict

The former prime minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark, and Zimbabwean author and 2020 Booker prize nominee Tsitsi Dangarembga are among the signatories of two separate letters demanding international action after shocking reports of sexual violence in Tigray.

In one, more than 50 women of African descent call for an immediate ceasefire and express horror at reports that African women and girls are “once again the victims” of violence and rape in war.

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More than 350,000 suffering from famine conditions in Ethiopia’s Tigray, says UN

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Aid chief says situation is worst since the 2011 famine in Somalia that led to the deaths of an estimated 250,000 people

More than 350,000 people in Ethiopia’s Tigray region are suffering famine conditions, with millions more at risk, according to an analysis by UN agencies and aid groups that blamed conflict for the worst food crisis in a decade.

“There is famine now in Tigray,” the UN aid chief, Mark Lowcock, said on Thursday after the release of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis.

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The Nobel committee should resign over the atrocities in Tigray

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Members of the body that awarded the 2019 peace prize to Ethiopia’s premier, Abiy Ahmed, should all depart in protest

The war on Tigray in Ethiopia has been going on for months. Thousands of people have been killed and wounded, women and girls have been raped by military forces, and more than 2 million citizens have been forced out of their homes. Prime minister and Nobel peace prize laureate Abiy Ahmed stated that a nation on its way to “prosperity” would experience a few “rough patches” that would create “blisters”. This is how he rationalised what is alleged to be a genocide.

Nobel committee members have individual responsibility for awarding the 2019 peace prize to Abiy Ahmed, accused of waging the war in Tigray. The members should thus collectively resign their honourable positions at the Nobel committee in protest and defiance.

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Myanmar school strikes and a plane diverted to Minsk: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Colombia to China

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Ethiopia rejects calls for ceasefire in Tigray, claiming victory is near

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UN says pause in fight against rebels would enable aid to reach province where 90% of people risk starvation

The Ethiopian government has defiantly brushed aside international calls for a ceasefire in the northern province of Tigray, saying its forces are close to “finalising operations” and will soon eliminate all armed opposition.

In recent days the US, United Nations, UK and many European states have called for a pause in hostilities to allow humanitarian organisations to reach millions of people who observers say face famine.

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Ethiopia’s human rights chief as war rages in Tigray: ‘we get accused by all ethnic groups’

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Former political prisoner Daniel Bekele has made the commission more autonomous but critics claim he is biased on current conflict

There was a time when a report by Ethiopia’s human rights commission was a staid affair, its findings offering window-dressing for hand-wringing donors and legal cover to the government.

Between 2013 and 2017 the commission systematically “whitewashed human rights violations through compromised methodologies, dismissing credible allegations”, according to a 2019 Amnesty International study that accused it of “brazen bias against victims”.

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Eritrean soldiers killed 19 civilians in latest Tigray atrocity, locals claim

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Killings took place near Ethiopia’s Abuna Yemata church on 8 May, according to multiple testimonies

Eritrean soldiers killed 19 civilians in a village at the foot of an internationally celebrated rock-hewn church in Tigray three weeks ago, witnesses, relatives and local residents have claimed, the latest alleged atrocity in the war-torn Ethiopian region.

Most of the victims in the alleged attack were women and young children.

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Washington toughens stance to fight atrocities in Ethiopia

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Joe Biden’s administration increases pressure on government of prime minister Abiy Ahmed to end human rights abuses

Senior Ethiopian officials may face restrictions on their travel to the US, as Washington increases pressure on the government of prime minister Abiy Ahmed amid growing global concern about atrocities and famine caused by conflict in the northern region of Tigray.

Though visa restrictions are likely to target only a small number of individuals, the move signals President Joe Biden’s administration is shifting to a more direct strategy to force Ahmed to end continuing human rights abuses in Tigray and allow free flow of much-needed humanitarian aid.

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Gaza damage and Glasgow raids: human rights this fortnight in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Peru

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‘Bodies are being eaten by hyenas; girls of eight raped’: inside the Tigray conflict

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A nun working in war-torn Tigray has shared her harrowing testimony of the atrocities taking place

The Ethiopian nun, who has to remain anonymous for her own security, is working in Mekelle, Tigray’s capital, and surrounding areas, helping some of the tens of thousands of people displaced by the fighting who have been streaming into camps in the hope of finding shelter and food. Both are in short supply. Humanitarian aid is being largely blocked and a wholesale crackdown is seeing civilians being picked off in the countryside, either shot or rounded up and taken to overcrowded prisons. She spoke to Tracy McVeigh this week.

“After the last few months I’m happy to be alive. I have to be OK. Mostly we are going out to the IDP [internally displaced people] camps and the community centres where people are. They are in a bad way.

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Rape is being used as weapon of war in Ethiopia, say witnesses

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Ethiopian nun speaks of widespread horror she and colleagues are seeing on a daily basis inside the heavily isolated region of Tigray

Thousands of women and girls are being targeted by the deliberate tactic of using rape as a weapon in the civil war that has erupted in Ethiopia, according to eyewitnesses.

In a rare account from inside the heavily isolated region of Tigray, where communications with the outside world are being deliberately cut off, an Ethiopian nun has spoken of the widespread horror she and her colleagues are seeing on a daily basis since a savage war erupted six months ago.

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Ethiopian patriarch pleads for international help to stop rape and genocide by government troops

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Orthodox priest releases video statement on suppression of Tigray district

Ethiopian government forces and their allies are committing genocide in the country’s war-torn northern province of Tigray, the head of Ethiopia’s Orthodox Church has claimed in a videoed statement demanding urgent international intervention.

The appeal by Abuna [Patriarch] Mathias follows fresh allegations of ethnic cleansing, gang rapes, extrajudicial killings and other atrocities by soldiers loyal to Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, who ordered an invasion of Tigray last November.

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Refugees and the Armenian genocide: human rights this fortnight in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Colombia to China

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Act now to prevent oxygen shortage in Covid-hit countries, say campaigners

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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.

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‘Out of Trump playbook’: UK accused of ‘abandoning’ women with cuts to aid

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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).

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‘Kill the bill’ and trans visibility: human rights this fortnight in pictures

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A round-up of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to China

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Ethiopia is fighting ‘difficult and tiresome’ guerrilla war in Tigray, says PM

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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.

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Ethiopia: 1,900 people killed in massacres in Tigray identified

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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.

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Gurrumul, Omar Souleyman, 9Bach and DakhaBrakha: the best global artists the Grammys forgot

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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.

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