Tag Archive for: Crisis in Ethiopia

UN: Situation in Ethiopia’s Tigray now ‘extremely alarming

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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Life for civilians in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region has become “extremely alarming” as hunger grows and fighting remains an obstacle to reaching millions of people with aid, the United Nations says in a new report.

The conflict that has shaken one of Africa’s most powerful and populous countries — a key U.S. security ally in the Horn of Africa — has killed thousands of people and is now in its fourth month. But little is known about the situation for most of Tigray’s 6 million people, as journalists are blocked from entering, communications are patchy and many aid workers struggle to obtain permission to enter.

One challenge is that Ethiopia may no longer control up to 40% of the Tigray region, the U.N. Security Council was told in a closed-door session this week. Ethiopia and allied fighters have been pursuing the now-fugitive Tigray regional government that once dominated Ethiopia’s government for nearly three decades.

Now soldiers from Eritrea are deeply involved on the side of Ethiopia, even as Addis Ababa denies their presence. Eritrea on Friday rejected “false and presumptive allegations” after the U.S. Embassy there posted a statement online about the need for Eritrean forces to leave.

On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was the latest to pressure Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed directly, urging the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize winner in a phone call to allow “immediate, full and unhindered” aid access to Tigray before more people die.

Abiy’s brief statement on the call didn’t mention Tigray. Neither did his statements on calls this week with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel as European countries also express concern over one of the world’s newest crisis zones. Neighboring Sudan and Somalia could be sucked in, experts have warned.

The new U.N. humanitarian report released late Thursday includes a map showing most of the Tigray region marked as “inaccessible” for humanitarian workers. It says the security situation remains “volatile and unpredictable” more than two months after Abiy’s government declared victory.

The aid response remains “drastically inadequate” with little access to the vast rural population off the main roads, the report says, even as Ethiopia’s government has said well over 1 million people in Tigray have been reached with assistance. Some aid workers have reported having to negotiate access with a range of armed actors, even Eritrean ones.

Civilians have suffered. “Reports from aid workers on the ground indicate a rising in acute malnutrition across the region,” the new report says. “Only 1 percent of the nearly 920 nutrition treatment facilities in Tigray are reachable.”

Starvation has become a major concern. “Many households are expected to have already depleted their food stocks, or are expected to deplete their food stocks in the next two months,” according to a new report posted Thursday by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, which is funded and managed by the U.S.

The report said more parts of central and eastern Tigray likely will enter Emergency Phase 4, a step below famine, in the coming weeks.

Health care in the region is “alarmingly limited,” with just three of Tigray’s 11 hospitals functioning and nearly 80% of health centers not functional or accessible, the U.N. report says. Aid workers have said many health centers have been looted, hit by artillery fire or destroyed.

Large parts of two camps that once hosted thousands of refugees from nearby Eritrea have been systematically destroyed, according to analysis of satellite images by the U.K.-based DX Open Network nonprofit. Now some 5,000 of the refugees who have made their way to the community of Shire “are living in dire conditions, many sleeping in an open field on the outskirts of the town, with no water and no food,” the U.N. report says.

Visiting U.N. refugee chief Filippo Grandi this week urged Ethiopia to allow access for independent investigators to probe alleged widespread human rights abuses, calling the overall situation in Tigray “extremely grave.”

US urges Ethiopia’s PM to allow ‘immediate’ help to Tigray

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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a call with Ethiopia’s prime minister on Thursday expressed “grave concern” about the crisis in the embattled Tigray region and urged “immediate, full and unhindered humanitarian access to prevent further loss of life,” a U.S. spokesman said.

There was no immediate comment from Ethiopian officials.

The call is the latest this week that world leaders have held with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed as Ethiopia faces growing pressure to open Tigray to journalists, independent investigators and far more humanitarian aid.

The Tigray conflict, which has entered its fourth month, remains largely in the shadows. Thousands of people have been killed as Ethiopian and allied forces fight those of the now-fugitive Tigray government that once dominated the country’s government for nearly three decades. Most of the population of 6 million need emergency aid.

Abiy also has spoken this week with the French president and German chancellor, whose governments have expressed similar wishes on opening up Tigray.

Starvation has become a major concern in Tigray. “Many households are expected to have already depleted their food stocks, or are expected to deplete their food stocks in the next two months,” according to a new report by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, which is funded and managed by the U.S.

The report posted Thursday says more parts of central and eastern Tigray likely will enter Emergency Phase 4, a step below famine, in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, the United Nations humanitarian chief has privately told the U.N. Security Council that Ethiopia may not have control of up to 40% of the territory in Tigray and does not have full command of forces from neighboring Eritrea operating there.

Details of the briefing by Mark Lowcock were shared by diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity because Wednesday’s meeting was a closed-door one.

Available information indicates that Ethiopia’s government now controls 60% to 80% of the territory in Tigray, Lowcock told diplomats. And some of the forces that sided with Ethiopian ones earlier in the conflict are reportedly now pursuing their own goals, he said.

Ethiopia’s government has denied the presence of soldiers from Eritrea, a bitter enemy of the former Tigray leaders, but witnesses have described widespread looting, killing and other abuses.

“Eritrean forces are almost everywhere in Tigray,” one man who managed to travel from northern Tigray to the regional capital, Mekele, told The Associated Press this week. He described widespread looting of health centers and people dying from lack of care, with little to no communication or transport links to rural areas. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of concerns for family members.

A senior official in the interim Tigray government, Mesfin Desalegn, in an interview with the pro-government Abbay Media outlet this week said Eritrean soldiers had entered the conflict “to destroy” the Tigray forces, “but it should have been managed. It should have been controlled.”

People have been “massacred,” he said, describing an atmosphere of “complete vengefulness.” He called for the Eritrean forces to “cease what they are doing.”

The U.S. last month told the AP it had pressed senior Eritrean officials for the immediate withdrawal of their forces from Tigray. The U.S. did not say how Eritrea, one of the world’s most secretive nations, responded. Eritrea’s information minister in recent days has denounced “frenzied defamation campaigns.”

The fighting in Tigray has the potential to destabilize other parts of Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous country and the anchor of the Horn of Africa, as security forces are deployed to the region, the U.N. humanitarian chief told the Security Council.

Lowcock also said the U.N. has received reports that food is scarce in markets mainly because it was harvest time when the conflict began. Main supply routes remain cut, cash is scarce and some people are reportedly eating leaves to survive.

Ethiopia’s government has said it is reaching more and more people with aid, and it has privately told Biden administration officials that life is returning to “normalcy.”

There Is a Grave Humanitarian Need.’ U.N. Presses for Access to Ethiopia’s Embattled Tigray Region

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TIME — The U.N. Security Council discussed the grave humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region on Wednesday as senior U.N. officials pressed the government for access to deliver aid to hundreds of thousands of people that humanitarian workers have been blocked from reaching.

Diplomats said U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock called the situation “dire” and said it will get worse if aid and measures to protect civilians aren’t rapidly increased.

Lowcock said the U.N. has received reports that food is scarce in markets mainly because it was harvest time when the conflict between Ethiopian and allied forces and those of the Tigray region that dominated the government for almost three decades before Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office in 2018, according to the diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity because the council meeting was closed. Each side in the conflict, which began in November, now views the other as illegitimate.

The humanitarian chief told the council that crops were not only left unharvested but main supply routes remain cut and in addition cash is scarce, malnutrition is reportedly rising, and some people are reportedly eating leaves to survive — and all of this is taking place during the COVID-19 pandemic, the diplomats said.

Before the conflict erupted, the U.N. said 1.6 million of Tigray’s 6 million people needed food aid, and it hosted tens of thousands of refugees who fled from neighboring Eritrea in four camps.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Wednesday “there is a grave humanitarian need in Tigray, and at this point, we’re not able to reach the people that need to be reached.”

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday underlined “the need for continued urgent steps to alleviate the humanitarian situation and extend protection to all those at risk in Tigray,” Dujarric said.

Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Barbara Woodward told reporters after Wednesday’s council meeting that all 15 council members “shared the view that the incremental progress we’ve seen so far is not enough.”

She noted that several senior U.N. officials including World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley and High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi and senior humanitarian were just in Ethiopia meeting with government officials, which diplomats said was a sign of the urgency in gaining access to all areas of Tigray.

The diplomats said Lowcock told the council that Beasley, Grandi and U.N. security chief Gilles Michaud had “positive” meetings and emphasized the need for unimpeded access, protecting civilians and refugees and urgently restoring basic services including banking, communications, health services and paying salaries for civil servants.

Britain’s Woodward said the United Kingdom has condemned the destruction of the two northern refugee camps, Hitsats and Shimelba, “and we called for urgent assistance to those refugees displaced as a result.”

Diplomats said Lowcock told the council there are reports of some Eritrean refugees caught in the conflict being attacked, killed, abducted and taken back to Eritrea.

U.N. warns Tigray conflict could spark broader destablization in Ethiopia

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – A conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region could trigger broader destablization in the country, U.N. aid chief Mark Lowcock told the Security Council on Wednesday as he warned that a dire humanitarian situation in the north was set to worsen.

Hundreds of thousands of people in Tigray have not received help and the United Nations has been unable to completely assess the situation because it does not have full and unimpeded access, according to Lowcock’s notes for the closed virtual briefing of the 15-member Security Council.

He said there were reports of increasing insecurity elsewhere, which could be due to a vacuum created by the redeployment of Ethiopian troops to Tigray, and that the United Nations was concerned about the potential for broader national and regional destablization.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered air strikes and a ground offensive against Tigray’s former ruling party – the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) – after regional forces attacked federal army bases in the region on Nov. 4.

The TPLF withdrew from the regional capital, Mekelle, and major cities, but low-level fighting has continued.

In the region of more than five million people, thousands of people are believed to have died and 950,000 have fled their homes since fighting began.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “seriously concerned” over the situation in Tigray, a U.N. spokesman said late on Tuesday.

Lowcock said Abiy’s government controls between 60% and 80% of the territory in Tigray, but does not have full command of the ethnic Amhara and Eritrean forces also operating in the region.

Dozens of witnesses say Eritrean troops are in Tigray to support Ethiopian forces, though both countries deny that.

The United Nations has received reports that police are operating at a fraction of their previous capacity and Lowcock said he could confidently say that if protection and aid were not quickly increased then the humanitarian situation would deteriorate.

He said there were troubling accusations of sexual and gender-based violence.

Several senior U.N. officials recently visited Ethiopia to push for greater access to Tigray. Lowcock said he was hopeful there would be concrete progress in coming days to allow aid to be scaled up.

Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam generates grand hostility with Egypt

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Daily Maverik 168 | Can SA help to defuse the tensions growing over Ethiopia’s giant project on the Nile? Egypt fears it will cut water flow, on which it depends. But Sudan and Ethiopia need the power. The clock is ticking.

South Africa has been quietly but urgently trying to defuse what many fear is a ticking time bomb: the bitter dispute between Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan over the giant GERD dam that Ethiopia is building on the Blue Nile.

Egypt says GERD – the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam – presents it with an existential threat because it will significantly reduce the flow of the Nile, on which it depends for almost all of its water.

Ethiopia, meanwhile, insists that it needs the vast reservoir, which will eventually hold some 74 billion cubic metres of Nile water, to drive about 6,000 MW of hydroelectric power, which it badly needs for the development of its mostly impoverished people.

Sudan sits somewhere between the other two, literally and figuratively. It hopes to benefit from the electricity GERD – which is just across its border – will provide, but is also concerned by the potential impact on its own water supply.

Negotiations among the three countries, mediated by the US and the World Bank, broke down last year when Ethiopia rejected a US-drafted compromise. Egypt then proposed to take the dispute to the UN Security Council.

At that point President Cyril Ramaphosa, acting as African Union chairperson, intervened and at a meeting on 26 June 2020 of the AU Bureau (heads of state representing the continent’s five regions), the leaders of the three disputing parties agreed to the AU – in effect South Africa – taking over the mediation, in the spirit of “African solutions for African problems”.

The Bureau gave the mediator and negotiators just two weeks to resolve the issue and report back. That proved overly ambitious.

The AU-South Africa mediation got off to a shaky start. At the AU Bureau meeting, Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan had undertaken to refrain from “taking any action that may jeopardise or complicate the AU-led process aimed at finding an acceptable solution on all outstanding matters”.

This was taken by the other parties as a commitment by Ethiopia not to start filling the dam unilaterally, as it had recently threatened to do when the rainy season arrived.

Photo: The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Hellen Natu)
Yet, within a matter of days, Ethiopia did begin filling the dam, justifying this unilateral action on the grounds that filling the dam was an inherent part of the construction process.

For a few tense days, everyone wondered how Egypt, in particular, would respond to Ethiopia’s actions. But Cairo was persuaded to swallow its pride and the negotiations continued. Six months later, though, they remain unresolved.

The issues are undoubtedly intractable because they concern the management and use of a scarce, critical and common resource – water.

The Institute for Security Studies (ISS) PSC Report has noted that Egypt and Sudan would like Ethiopia to guarantee a minimum outflow of water from the GERD’s reservoir, based on historical average discharge.

“This involves compensating for any shortfall in water flow caused by drought or future upstream use,” the ISS said.

Ethiopia believes that this means Egypt and Sudan are demanding, in effect, that it should not use any of the waters of the Blue Nile – which would basically be to continue the guarantee of the “natural and historical right of Egypt to the waters of the Nile”, which Britain, as the colonial power, granted almost a century ago.

“This is untenable, in Ethiopia’s view, as it compromises the ability of the GERD to operate at full capacity, and infringes upon its rights to use the Nile waters and undertake future developments on the Blue Nile,” the ISS says.

As Egyptian foreign minister Sameh Shoukry told the UN Security Council last year, Egypt wants the operations of the dam

to be governed by a legally binding instrument, including an independent dispute resolution mechanism. Ethiopia rejects this as an unacceptable intrusion on its sovereignty, insisting that any disagreements or disputes over the operation of the dam should be resolved by consensus in negotiations with Egypt and Sudan.

Though the GERD is now only to be used for hydroelectric power, which means that Ethiopia will be using but not consuming the waters of the Blue Nile, Egypt in particular fears that Ethiopia might decide in future to consume the water – for agriculture, say. It, therefore, wants guarantees now that this will not happen, guarantees Ethiopia is not willing to give.

As a result of such deep differences, the negotiations remain stalemated six months after South Africa took over the mediation.

South African officials say Pretoria presented to the three parties a compromise proposal drafted by three AU experts, based on their understanding of the positions of the negotiating countries.

Ethiopia and Sudan accepted this proposal, but Egypt rejected it, based merely on procedural grounds, he said.

In fact, it is clear that Egypt also has a problem with the substance of the proposal, though no one is saying exactly what.

So it’s now likely that Ramaphosa will call another meeting of the AU Bureau to try to plot a way forward. It is unclear if Pretoria will be able to see this mediation through to a solution, because Ramaphosa’s chairing of the AU ends next week, on 6 February, at the annual AU summit. There is some talk, though, of South Africa being asked to continue as mediator of the GERD negotiations anyway.

Meanwhile, the clock keeps ticking on this dispute, with another possible flashpoint looming in mid-2021, when Ethiopia is likely to embark on the next phase of filling the dam as the summer rains fall.

What happens if no agreement has been reached by then is unclear. Back in 2013, at a meeting between then Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and senior officials and party leaders – a meeting that was mistakenly transmitted to the public – the possibility of taking military action against the dam was raised.

Could it come to that? Probably not. The political fallout for Egypt would be immense. But, for a country that has characterised GERD as a life-or-death issue, it’s hard to be sure.

As Ethiopia fills its Nile dam, regional rivalries overflow

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The Christian Monitor | When African Union-mediated talks between Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan over a Nile River dam broke down yet again last month, it didn’t mark a new disagreement over sharing vital water resources.

Rather, it was a case of regional rivalries trumping understandings about science and cooperation that have been laid out by African and Western mediators in multiple draft agreements.

Since then, Egypt’s media have sounded war drums, and a border territory dispute between Sudan and Ethiopia has erupted into violence.

At the center of the dispute is the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), built by successive governments in Addis Ababa with the goal of pulling millions out of poverty.

The turbines of the dam, located near the source of the Blue Nile in northwest Ethiopia, are to generate 6,000 megawatts of hydropower – critical in a country where more than half of the population, some 50 million people, are without access to electricity, and demand for power is increasing by 30% annually.

The solution to Egypt and Sudan’s resulting water-security concerns, observers say, is simple: coordination and data-sharing.

Yet even amid indications that the revival of traditional American diplomacy could help resolve the dam dispute, observers say mediators must also confront currents stronger than the Nile itself: nationalism, territorial disputes, and a struggle over supremacy in the Horn of Africa.

Regional supremacy

For Ethiopia, the dam project promises to fuel the country’s ascendance as a geopolitical player. Even amid the struggle over the future of the country that last November erupted into war in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, the dam remains a cause that unites the diverse nation.

“There has been among the government and broadly the Ethiopian people a sense of unfairness, that as a poor country we have not been able to utilize a natural resource that springs out of Ethiopia,” says Awol Allo, an Ethiopian analyst and lecturer at Britain’s Keele University.

“This dam project signals the revival of the Ethiopian state after the decades of shame, poverty, and famine it has been identified with.”

A sense of personal investment and national unity around the dam solidified after the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and other lenders refused to fund the GERD. Ethiopia in 2010 decided to go it alone, paying for it with government funds and bonds purchased by private citizens, and broke ground on the project in 2011.

“Every Ethiopian sees themselves as a stakeholder in a project that is not just about energy needs, but a statement that Ethiopia is a significant, powerful country that can go at it alone and assert itself on the regional stage,” Mr. Allo says.

Downstream drama

The draft agreements notwithstanding, the water-sharing disputes between Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia have only deepened since construction completed on the GERD in 2020 and Addis Ababa began filling the reservoirs in July.

Downstream countries long used to the unrestricted flow of the Nile for their farming and fresh water are alarmed by the dam’s potential impact on their water and food security.

Egypt, 1,000 miles downstream from the dam, has laid a historic claim on a lion’s share of water from the Nile and views GERD as a national security threat. Egypt currently depends on the Nile for 90% of its fresh water and the vast majority of irrigation water for crops to feed its 105 million citizens. It is also concerned with potential flooding and drought.

Egypt and Sudan decry the lack of technical studies and assessments of the dam’s environmental and social impact downstream.

Tensions are now high as Addis Ababa is set to fill the dam’s reservoir with an additional 11 billion cubic meters this year after the initial 4.9 BCM it filled in July 2020. The dam has a total capacity of 74 BCM. “The biggest problem is not knowing how Ethiopia intends to use and operate the dam, what times of year, what quantities, and what will be the impact,” says Amal Kandeel, an environmental and policy consultant and former director of the Climate Change, Environment and Security Program at the Middle East Institute. “Downstream countries can’t plan without knowing; they need clarity.

“Egypt will not benefit from the dam,” she says. “But if there is coordination, facts, evidence, and data shared transparently at the minimum, any potential harm will be reduced.”

For Egypt, a “humiliation”

Egypt’s inability to stop or influence the project has become a symbol of the government’s inward-looking focus the past decade and its withdrawal from the Arab and African stage, which domestic critics say has dramatically reduced Egypt’s geopolitical significance.

Egyptian insiders privately say the prospect of Ethiopian control over the most populous Arab country’s water and food security is viewed as “a humiliation,” driving Cairo’s hard line.

“For 50 or 60 years, Egypt was the biggest geopolitical actor, not only in the Middle East, but the northeast Horn of Africa as well,” says Horn of Africa analyst Rashid Abdi.

“Times have changed, you have new governments that are becoming more assertive on the regional and world stage and acting independently,” he says. “It is a natural progression that Egypt is finding uncomfortable.”

Egypt has pushed for intervention by the United States, its Arab allies, and the U.N. Security Council. In June, Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry warned of conflict should the United Nations fail to intervene.

After the talks’ breakdown last month, Egyptian state-influenced media clamored for the use of “force” against Ethiopia, advocating surgical strikes on the GERD’s electricity infrastructure.

For Sudan, it’s good, but ….

Meanwhile, regional alliances and a century-old border dispute have transformed Ethiopia’s northwest neighbor from a quiet supporter of the dam to a spoiler.

Observers and experts agree: The GERD’s benefits for Sudan are many.

The dam, 20 miles from the Sudan-Ethiopia border, will reduce flooding that has devastated Sudan in the past. Blue Nile flooding destroyed one-third of cultivated farming land in the country last year, destroying 100,000 homes and killing 100 people, deepening Sudan’s economic crisis.

The reduction in flooding and sharing of irrigation water would help Sudan cultivate more than 50 million hectares of arable land abandoned due to flooding and mismanagement, a critical boost to an agricultural sector that is Sudan’s largest employer and accounts for 30% of the country’s gross domestic product.

Ethiopia has also vowed to export cheap electricity to Sudan.

“Honest people in Khartoum will tell you that the dam is a net positive from all logical, logistical, and economic perspectives. Objectively, Sudan would benefit from the dam,” says Jonas Horner, Sudan analyst and deputy director for the Horn of Africa at the International Crisis Group.

“But it is not quite as simple as that,” he says, pointing to Sudan’s need to balance regional alliances.

Khartoum – militarily close to Egypt, diplomatically indebted to Ethiopia, and financially and politically dependent on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who are allied with Egypt – is reluctant both to appear to support the dam, on the one hand, or come down hard on Addis Ababa, on the other.

This complicated balancing act was disrupted in December by the violent reignition of a century-old Sudan-Ethiopia border dispute.

Sudanese patrols have come under shelling allegedly at the hands of Ethiopian militias, and the Sudanese army and Ethiopian federal forces have clashed multiple times this month.

Ethiopian officials blame Cairo for stoking the tensions, alleging an Egyptian plot to prolong conflict and derail the GERD’s completion.

Traditional American diplomacy

Observers agree the dispute provides an opportunity for the Biden administration to demonstrate its vowed return to traditional American diplomacy.

The Trump administration’s few forays into the GERD dispute favored Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a Trump ally. Last July the Trump administration partially suspended American assistance to Ethiopia after Addis Ababa rejected a draft agreement compiled by Washington that it saw as heavily favoring Cairo. President Donald Trump publicly warned that Cairo would “blow up that dam” should talks fail.

In contrast, President Joe Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, vowed in his confirmation hearing last month to conduct “active engagement” to address a rise in tensions that “has the potential to be destabilizing throughout the Horn of Africa,” indicating that he is considering appointing a special U.S. envoy for the Horn of Africa.

But observers caution that the Biden administration must untangle the web of regional politics, nationalist fervor, and power plays in order to get the three states back to the basics: water.

“The war in Tigray has created instability in the Ethiopian state, and now you have the border issue with Sudan that is clearly linked to the GERD issue. You have domestic actors in each of these countries lobbying external actors to advance their interests,” says Mr. Allo.

“It will be difficult for any U.S. administration with all the goodwill in the world to mend things.”

Refugee Camps in Ethiopia Appear to Have Been Systematically Destroyed

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VICE | Satellite photos show military actors at the camps right after they were razed; the damage is far more extensive than previously reported.

Two refugee camps in Ethiopia’s Tigray region were deliberately razed to the ground in attacks carried out between November and January, according to researchers who have been analyzing satellite images that highlight extensive destruction caused by the breakout of civil war in Ethiopia last year.

Previous reports of satellite images obtained by the DX Open Network, a UK-based research and analysis organization, appeared to depict scorched earth attacks and the burning of nearby crops at the Hitsats and Shimelba refugee camps, which hosted over 25,000 refugees from neighboring Eritrea prior to the war. But recent analysis of the images indicates that the destruction was systemic, and residential areas, clinics, and schools were targeted in what appears to have been an attempt at preventing future use of the facilities. Further, a significant number of military vehicles and soldiers are visible in and around the camps soon after the time of the destruction, which appears to point to their complicity in the razing. While it is unconfirmed which military was present, signs also indicate it was the Ethiopian military, as the government continues to deny access to the camps. The damage also appears to now be much more extensive than originally reported, with over a thousand structures destroyed.

The damage also appears to now be much more extensive than originally thought, with over a thousand structures destroyed.

“These cumulative damage assessments show a campaign to degrade, destroy both the Hitsats and Shimelba refugee camps from November 24 to January 27,” the DX Open Network said in a statement yesterday. “There are clear and consistent patterns across both camps over a two month period demonstrating that these refugee camps were systematically targeted, despite their protected humanitarian status.”

The breakout of war between the former Tigray regional government and Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers has left thousands dead and internally displaced over 2.3 million people. Widespread destruction, the result of attacks targeting urban city centers, heritage sites, and refugee camps, has also been documented.

The Hitsats and Shimelba camps had come under attack soon after the breakout of war, and fighting at the Hitsats camp between allied Ethiopian and Eritrean troops and forces loyal to the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) was reported in November. Refugees have been reportedly targeted and killed by both Tigrayan and Eritrean forces, while others were abducted and taken back to Eritrea. At least four humanitarian aid workers have been killed at the camps.

The UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, operated a total of four refugee camps hosting almost 100,000 Eritrean refugees in Tigray. Despite this, representatives have been denied access to the two camps despite appealing repeatedly. The camps remain under heavy military guard, with satellite images taken on January 25 appearing to show a heavy concentration of soldiers at a school compound at the Shimelba site.

“I am very worried for the safety and well-being of Eritrean refugees in those camps,” UNHCR head Filippo Grandi said in a January 14th statement. “The [Ethiopian] government has provided assurances that measures are being taken to minimize the impact of the conflict on civilians.”

But the recent findings indicate that despite Ethiopia’s reassurances to the UNHCR, the destruction continued even in the days following Grandi’s statement.

By January 27, the Shimelba camp had a total of 721 structures destroyed, according to satellite imagery obtained on that date, over 300 more than previously thought. As has been reported, fires were set simultaneously across the camp’s residential areas, with clear visible darkening indicating the burning of hundreds of homes between January 13 and January 16. Visible destruction of a compound run by the World Food Program (WFP) and a clinic operated by the Ethiopian government run Administration for Refugee & Returnee Affairs (ARRA), took place in early January.

Two additional WFP structures were completely obliterated by January 5 as well. The landscape outside of an Ethiopian Orthodox Church Development and Inter-Church Aid Commission-run high school was set ablaze, and the aftermath is clearly visible from space.

“99 percent of [Shimelba’s damaged structures] were assessed as catastrophically or extensively damaged,” the organization said in a statement sent to VICE World News.

Prior to the war, the Hitsats camp had schools, colleges, youth recreational centers, and even a beauty salon, funded by a consortium of local and international aid organizations. The DX Open Network told VICE World News that a total of 531 destroyed structures were tallied for Hitsats. Previous reporting put the figure around 400. Extensive damage to facilities run by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), have also been recorded. The surrounding area was set alight, as was the case at similar structures across both camps. Images of smoke billowing into the air over residential dorms appear to indicate arson attacks on those structures too.

Another compound also had the earth around it scorched, with at least eight identified cratering sites, consistent with damage caused by direct artillery rounds dating back to late November. The researchers indicated to VICE World News that this was evidence that the camp was shelled.

“The presence of military actors soon after the widespread razing of both camps raises questions as to whether these military actors are the same as the perpetrators of the fire-based attacks and other violence at and around the camps.”

“Also present in satellite imagery are groups of military-use vehicles, including a mechanised formation bivouacking in an elementary and secondary school compound within Shimelba Refugee Camp,” the DX Open Network told VICE World News. “The presence of military actors soon after the widespread razing of both camps raises questions as to whether these military actors are the same as the perpetrators of the fire-based attacks and other violence at and around the camps.”

With the camp cut off from the outside world and out of food, survivors reportedly fled into the wilderness. At least 20,000 Eritrean refugees who had been at the two camps remain unaccounted for.

Last week, Grandi himself traveled to Ethiopia. During his four day visit, he met with President Sahlework Zewde and got the chance to tour two of the UNHCR’s camps in Tigray. But he was denied the chance to visit Shimelba and Hitsats.

Perhaps even more worrying, an Ethiopian government representative spoke to state media last week, and seemed to rule out the possibility of the two camps being reopened. According to the unnamed official, the two camps were “substandard,” and “inhospitable,” and had been turned into militia training sites for members of the Eritrean political opposition. No evidence for the claim was included in the report.

“These events progressed in manner, timing, and consistency so similar to one another that it suggests that the same actor conducted the attacks on both camps with the same intent: to degrade both refugee camps’ ability to function, discourage any refugees from remaining, and ultimately prevent their use as refugee camps,” the DX Open Network told VICE World News. “In totality, these acts may constitute violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.”

Last year, the Ethiopian government announced that it intended to close the Hitsats refugee camp citing costs, much to the chagrin of the UNHCR, which has argued the refugees, mostly escapees from unending military conscription in Eritrea, would have nowhere else to go. Eritrea’s President Isaias Afewerki has long criticized the existence of the camps, claiming that western states were using them to lure away potential recruits for his army. With the camps now rendered inhospitable, he appears to have had the last laugh.

Demand full humanitarian access into Tigray

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Amnesty International | According to the United Nations, 2.3 million people in Ethiopia’s Tigray region are in immediate need of life-saving assistance. But humanitarian access has been difficult due to restrictions and slow processes by Ethiopian authorities. Take action now and call on Ethiopia to immediately allow full humanitarian access to Tigray.

The humanitarian crisis is a result of the conflict between the Ethiopian federal government and the Tigray regional government ruling party, Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which began in November 2020. The fighting continues in several parts of the region.

There is strong evidence of massacres of civilians, indiscriminate bombardment, extrajudicial killings, and looting. Girls and women have also been victims of sexual violence. Over 450,000 people have been displaced.

After weeks of blocked access, the UN announced in November that the Ethiopian authorities agreed to allow “unimpeded, sustained and secure access” into the areas under its control in Tigray. However, access remains extremely restricted. Relief agencies need to request approval from the federal government to access the region.

The Ethiopian government has introduced two separate approval processes for relief shipments and personnel. These processes have been slow. Many requests for relief shipments have been denied. The majority of entry requests for relief personnel have also not been approved making it difficult to distribute the aid that has been already allowed in.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis across Tigray is getting worse by the day. There has been no trade with the region since November. Crops and equipment have been destroyed. Farmers have fled from their land. The situation is particularly acute in rural areas where humanitarian access has been even more difficult due to the continued fighting and where banks and markets still are closed. The healthcare system in the region has almost collapsed.

Tigray borders Eritrea and is also home to four refugee camps hosting over 96,000 Eritrean refugees – many of whom are children. Two refugee camps, Hitsats and Shimelba, have not received any humanitarian assistance since the start of the conflict. A refugee who recently fled Hitsats told Amnesty International: “We were eating leaves from the field and drinking water from the nearby well.”

Join our supporters and members in calling on Ethiopian authorities to ease the life-saving work of the humanitarian organizations.

Send an e-mail now asking Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed for immediate full humanitarian access to Tigray.

Ethiopia asks for debt relief as Covid takes toll

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Financial Times | Pandemic adds to pressure on developing economies trying to meet repayments

Ethiopia has asked for debt relief under a G20 programme to help poor countries reeling under the economic impact of coronavirus, making it the second African country to do so in the past week.

Ethiopia has long been seen as one of Africa’s most promising economies but the pressure the pandemic has placed on healthcare systems and economies means many developing nations are struggling to keep up with debt payments.

In a statement on Monday, its finance ministry said that it was “preparing for upcoming discussions with official creditors” as it looks to reduce “debt vulnerabilities and lower the impact of debt distress”.

“We haven’t even inoculated one individual against Covid, so we need to redirect the resources that we have towards that,” a senior official at the ministry of finance told the Financial Times.

Under its state-led development model, Ethiopia’s economy grew at close to 10 per cent a year for much of the past two decades until the arrival of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in 2018. He had promised sweeping liberal reforms, including privatisation of the huge telecoms monopoly, to take the economy towards middle-income status. But ethno-political tensions and a conflict in the northern Tigray region have slowed his plans.

Monday’s statement from Addis Ababa follows a statement by the IMF last Wednesday that Chad had also asked for relief under the G20 programme agreed by the world’s biggest economies. In November, Zambia became the first African country to default on its debt since the start of the pandemic.

The Ethiopian move will be an early test of the G20 debt relief initiative, which requires borrowers to reach agreement on their debt with private creditors as well as official lenders.

Under the initiative, agreed last year by the world’s biggest economies, 73 of the world’s poorest countries can ask for debts to be restructured and, in the most extreme cases, written off. This goes beyond the G20’s debt service suspension initiative (DSSI), which allows the same group of countries to defer debt repayments but does not provide any debt reduction.

The DSSI has been criticised by debt campaigners and others for failing to enlist the participation of private sector creditors. This meant that debt relief secured from official lenders could be used to repay other debts. Several countries benefiting from the DSSI have stressed that they do not want relief from private creditors as this would jeopardise their access to commercial credit markets.

Despite the G20 framework’s requirement to seek a deal with private sector creditors, the finance ministry official sought to play down the impact on private sector lenders. “It would be a fair burden-sharing between all our official bilateral creditors and then, based on that, we will look at whether we need to reach out to private creditors, which is very unlikely,” the official told the FT. The official stressed that the adjustment would be “minor”.

Ethiopia had total public foreign debt of $27.8bn at the end of 2019, according to the World Bank, including $8.5bn owed to official bilateral creditors and $6.8bn to commercial creditors, including $1bn to bondholders. Chad has no outstanding foreign bonds but its total debts of $3.5bn include $1.5bn in commercial debt, about half of which is a loan from Glencore, the commodities trader, and associated banks.

“Ethiopia is trying to explore the options for broader debt relief,” said Kevin Daly, investment director at Aberdeen Standard Investments. “This is their way of saying things are difficult, we need further relief. What we don’t know is how this will work in practice. There is a lack of clarity right now.”

Ethiopia looks to Germany amid EU funding fight

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Devex | With the European Union withholding payments to the Ethiopian government over the conflict in its Tigray region, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed spoke to one of the bloc’s most influential national leaders Tuesday on improving bilateral ties.

“Good phone call with Chancellor Angela Merkel on national and regional issues,” Abiy tweeted, “including #COVID19 as well as strengthening development and economic cooperation between #Ethiopia and Germany.”

According to a German government readout of the call, the pair discussed “the domestic political situation in Ethiopia, regional security issues and questions relating to bilateral cooperation.”

“The Chancellor emphasized the importance of a peaceful solution to the conflict in the Tigray region and the humanitarian care of the people affected in the conflict area,” the readout continued. “Humanitarian aid organizations and the media must be given free access to the Tigray region.”

In December, the European Commission decided to postpone over €88 million in budget support to Ethiopia as a show of opprobrium at the spiraling conflict in the country’s North.

A commission spokesperson told Devex that other kinds of assistance, such as humanitarian aid and development programs through NGOs, are continuing but that payments to the government will only be unblocked once certain conditions are met, in particular “granting full humanitarian access for relief actors to reach people in need in all affected areas, in line with International Humanitarian Law.”

Officials in Brussels were hoping that EU member states would follow suit. But Berlin has taken a different stance.

Devex asked Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, or BMZ, last month whether it agrees with the commission that assistance to the Ethiopian government should be postponed until the situation on the ground improves.

“The Ethiopian government remains committed to its reform process, even since the start of the conflict in Tigray,” a spokesperson responded by email. “To facilitate the structural and sustainable implementation of this process over the medium and long term, Germany is willing to continue supporting Ethiopia. The German government is therefore continuing its ongoing bilateral development cooperation programmes.”

That didn’t elicit much support in Brussels, where officials have been pushing for a “Team Europe” approach to development policy, meaning better coordination between the commission, EU member states, the European Investment Bank, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

“Decisions over budget support are for each Member State,” a commission spokesperson emailed Devex, “but the Team Europe approach in the context of the pandemic will have a much stronger impact on the ground in Ethiopia if there is full alignment with Member States.”

The BMZ spokesperson wrote that Germany is acting in line with the EU and other donors, however, as Berlin has its own conditions to be met before further funds are disbursed, including holding parliamentary elections — expected in June — and beginning a “credible political process” aimed at resolving the conflict in Tigray. The final condition is the conclusion of debt rescheduling negotiations between Ethiopia and China.

“Since funds will, in any event, only be disbursed following parliamentary elections, the German government is taking a long-term view,” the spokesperson wrote. “We will coordinate closely with the EU on all further steps.”

At least one EU official, speaking on condition of anonymity, was more skeptical. “This is the issue with EU foreign policy,” the official told Devex. “If you are unified, you can do something. If you’re not, it’s like a shot in your own foot.”