Reducing global heating could save millions of people from mosquito-borne diseases, study finds
More than 8 billion people could be at risk of malaria and dengue fever by 2080 if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise unabated, a new study says.
Malaria and dengue fever will spread to reach billions of people, according to new projections.
Continue reading...Another 1.8 million people are on the brink, officials say, and 33,000 children are severely malnourished
Top UN officials have warned the Security Council that more than 400,000 people in Ethiopia’s Tigray are now in famine and that there was a risk of more clashes in the region despite a unilateral ceasefire by the federal government.
After six private discussions on Friday, the Security Council held its first public meeting since fighting broke out in November between government forces, backed by troops from neighbouring Eritrea, and TPLF fighters with Tigray’s former ruling party.
Continue reading...Rights chief calls for concerted global action, citing recent violations in China, Russia and Ethiopia
The UN rights chief has called for concerted action to recover from the worst global deterioration of rights she had seen, highlighting the situation in China, Russia and Ethiopia among others.
“To recover from the most wide-reaching and severe cascade of human rights setbacks in our lifetimes, we need a life-changing vision, and concerted action,” Michelle Bachelet told the opening of the UN Human Rights Council’s 47th session.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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”.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Coroner rules seriousness of Mulubrhane Medhane Kfleyosus’s illness went unrecognised
A teenage refugee killed himself after the serious nature of his mental illness was not recognised, a coroner has concluded.
Mulubrhane Medhane Kfleyosus, 19, was the fourth from his friendship group of Eritrean refugees to take his own life within a 16-month period after arriving in the UK.
Continue reading...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...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...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...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...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...Abiy Ahmed’s war against Tigrayan rebels endangers a fragile union whose collapse would destabilise the Horn of Africa
Ethiopia’s prime minister Abiy Ahmed has promised military victory in Tigray. He says he will capture the capital, Mekelle, and the leadership of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which he calls a criminal junta. If he succeeds, it will be a pyrrhic victory – prospects for peace, democracy and protection from famine in Ethiopia will be set back a generation.
There are artillery barrages, airstrikes, armoured assaults. The Ethiopian army announces a Tigrayan town captured every other day and this week it plans to surround Mekelle. But there’s something missing. We’re not seeing pictures of prisoners of war, recovered military equipment, or newly-captured towns with local people welcoming their liberators. Perhaps the TPLF evacuated the towns and retreated to the mountains. Or maybe there are things that Ethiopian TV doesn’t want the world to see.
Continue reading...As conflicts rapidly unfold in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia and Yemen, the US, UK and European states are being sidelined
The Ethiopian army’s assault on Tigray province marks a serious backwards step by the country’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, who has been feted internationally as a moderniser and Nobel peace prize winner. Abiy calls it a “law enforcement operation” – but he risks being blamed for an expanding refugee emergency and a burgeoning region-wide crisis.
An even bigger fear is the break-up of Ethiopia itself in a Libyan or Yugoslav-type implosion. The country comprises more than 80 ethnic groups, of which Abiy’s Oromo is the largest, followed by the Amhara. Ethnic Somalis and Tigrayans represent about 6% each in a population of about 110 million. Ethiopia’s federal governance structure was already under strain before this latest explosion.
Continue reading...Hundreds have been killed and tens of thousands forced to flee their homes in Ethiopia, Africa's second most populous country, as federal troops battle rebels in the northern Tigray region.
The Guardian's Jason Burke explains what sparked the conflict, why it threatens to destabilise the Horn of Africa – and examines how the prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, the continent's youngest leader, has gone from winning a Nobel peace prize to presiding over a bloody conflict against the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF)
Continue reading...Leader of Ethiopia’s Tigray region claims responsibility for strike on capital city Asmara
Risks of the increasingly bloody war in northern Ethiopia turning into a chaotic regional conflict rose sharply this weekend after rocket strikes on the airport in neighbouring Eritrea’s capital, Asmara.
Multiple rockets struck Asmara on Saturday night, diplomats and informed regional observers said, though communication restrictions in Tigray and Eritrea made the reports difficult to verify.
Continue reading...The government’s military operation against leaders of the Tigray region could have devastating consequences across the Horn of Africa
What a difference a year makes. Just over 12 months ago, Abiy Ahmed won the Nobel peace prize. The Ethiopian prime minister had overseen extraordinary change in his brief tenure: though the committee singled out the peace deal he had signed with Eritrea, ending an apparently intractable dispute, he had also embarked upon sweeping domestic reforms. Yet while the relaxation of intense political repression brought real hope, there was also fear that the improvements were precarious at best, with too much expected of one man.
Now Africa’s second most populous nation is on the brink of civil war. In the early hours of 4 November – as the world’s attention was fixed on the United States – Mr Abiy 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 by the region’s ruling party on an army base, which they have denied; the Ethiopian parliament has now voted to replace them with a centrally-imposed administration.
Continue reading...There is a schism between older African migrants – who think Australia is ‘the greatest country in the world’ – and those who came here young or grew up here
This is the fourth in a six-part series on life inside Melbourne’s high-rise public housing. Read the third part here.
Nor Shanino would get into big debates with his father, Idris, an Eritrean refugee, about the police and the country.
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