19/01/2021 News and Commentaries

1. ‘Swift action’ needed in Tigray to save thousands at risk, UNHCR warns. UN News
2. Starvation crisis looms as aid groups seek urgent Tigray access. Al Jazeera
3. Can Ethiopia heal after the TPLF killings? The African Report
4. ‘No Somali soldier killed in Ethiopia-Tigray conflict’ Anadolu Agency
5. Anthony Blinken | Actions of the Ethiopian federal government could destabilize the Horn Of Africa. YouTube
6. Somali mothers protest in Galkayo demanding answers to whereabouts of their missing children.
7. China at the heart of rising Nile River conflict Asian Times
8. Podcast: Red Sea rivalries: The Gulf, the Horn, and the new geopolitics of the Red Sea. Brookings | Transcript

1. ‘Swift action’ needed in Tigray to save thousands at risk, UNHCR warns. UN News

” … help is urgently needed for the tens of thousands of Eritrean refugees in northern Ethiopia”

UNHCR @Refugees reiterates the UN-wide call for full and unimpeded access to all refugees in the #Tigray region, #Ethiopia.

Swift action is needed now to restore safe access and save thousands of lives at risk.

➡️https://t.co/pKYAtohgMI pic.twitter.com/ddqEmUSCJq

— UN Geneva (@UNGeneva) January 19, 2021

2. Starvation crisis looms as aid groups seek urgent Tigray access. Al Jazeera

Humanitarians sound alarm for millions of people in need of emergency assistance in Ethiopia’s conflict-hit northern region.

“People are dying of starvation. In Adwa, people are dying while they are sleeping. [It’s] also the same in other zones in the region,” said Berhane Gebretsadik, interim

“Deliberate obstruction of humanitarian access is a classic method of systematic starvation of people,” Mehari told Al Jazeera. “Ethiopian government and Eritrean troops continue to obstruct access to humanitarian aid. The blanket continues and thus first-hand information is almost impossible to get. The restriction of information is in itself a crime of the state to hide other crimes.”

3. Can Ethiopia heal after the TPLF killings? The African Report

“It is difficult, the defence force is in a very remote region. We cannot bury everyone, if we could we would. Their families can ask for their bodies.” ENDF’s Brigadier General Tesfaye Ayaylew says.

4. Anthony Blinken | Actions of the Ethiopian federal government could destabilize the Horn Of Africa. YouTube

Joe Biden’s candidate for the US State Department, Anthony Blinken, said before the Senate, “We are concerned about the actions of the #Ethiopia|n federal government and what is happening there could destabilize the #HornOfAfrica.”

5. ‘No Somali soldier killed in Ethiopia-Tigray conflict’ Anadolu Agency 

• Mogadishu denies claims that hundreds of Somali soldiers killed while fighting against Tigray rebels

6. Somali mothers protest in Galkayo demanding answers to whereabouts of their missing children.  

Bereaved mothers in Galkayo, central #Somalia react during a protest demanding the government to bring back their boys covertly sent to #Eritrea in 2020, training and subsequently thrown into Tigray War, fought along Eritrean & Ethiopian forces numbering 700-1,100. Mostly dead. pic.twitter.com/O3oCFGvrla

— Garowe Online (@GaroweOnline) January 18, 2021

7. China at the heart of rising Nile River conflict. Asian Times

China-financed Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is Africa’s largest and most divisive development project.

The Chinese-financed Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), despite a recent breakdown in talks on Africa’s largest development project, risks powering up a range of downstream tensions and rivalries.

These run from rising rivalry between Egypt and Ethiopia to a festering border war between Ethiopia and neighboring Sudan. At stake, too, is the future of almost 90% of the water in the Nile River, the world’s longest waterway.

8. Red Sea rivalries: The Gulf, the Horn, and the new geopolitics of the Red Sea. Brookings | Transcript

The emergence of the Red Sea as a common political and economic arena offers opportunities for development and integration, but it also poses considerable risks. As Gulf countries seek to expand their influence in the Horn of Africa, they risk exporting Middle Eastern rivalries to a region that has plenty of its own; and they aren’t the only outside powers now paying attention. China recently established its first-ever overseas military base in Djibouti, just six miles from the only U.S. base in Africa. Amid historic changes in the Horn and a rapidly-changing landscape in the Red Sea, states with different cultures, models of government, and styles of diplomacy are shaping a new frontier where the rules of the game are yet to be written.