The UN’s Purblind Human Rights Reporting in Ethiopia
Posted: 19 Jan 2022, 20:46
The UN’s Purblind Human Rights Reporting in Ethiopia
By partnering with a state-funded watchdog, the global body has deferred to a party to the vicious war in Tigray
More than a year after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent Ethiopian troops backed by allied soldiers from neighboring Eritrea to oust the Tigray regional government of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in November 2020, thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people are believed to have lost their lives.
The devastating conflict, described by an Ethiopian general as a “very dirty war,” has seen all of the warring factions commit gruesome atrocities, largely targeting civilian populations.
Rampant gang rapes of women have been confirmed, and scores of massacres, in some cases with as many as hundreds of civilians murdered, have been reported. Ethnic cleansing by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces has contributed to the displacement of over 2.2 million people.
For months the war was fought under a communications blackout, making it impossible for journalists and aid workers, who were barred from the Tigray region, to verify chilling accounts of atrocities.
Emboldened by this, Ahmed told the Ethiopian Parliament that in their drive to capture the Tigrayan capital city of Mekelle, Ethiopian troops had not killed a single civilian.
However, it wasn’t long before evidence mounted and international media investigations lifted the lid on the brutal nature of a conflict that has also seen the breakout of a famine, leaving millions on the brink of starvation. Fighting continues while drone and airstrikes regularly target civilian inhabited areas. The war has since expanded beyond Tigray’s frontiers, to the neighboring Afar and Amhara regions.
The multitude of allegations led to widespread condemnation and calls for accountability. Under pressure, the Ethiopian government relented, on one condition: It would allow a United Nations investigative team to probe alleged abuses in the Tigray region as long as it was a joint effort involving the Ethiopian state-funded rights watchdog, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC). The joint initiative began its fieldwork in March 2021.
The UN-EHRC team published their final report in November, concluding that all sides had committed atrocities. The report appeared to appropriate blame equally, despite multiple media reports that found Eritrean soldiers had carried out the worst of the killings since the outbreak of war.
Critics of the report accuse its authors of downplaying possible war crimes committed by Ethiopian and Eritrean troops.
“[The report] did not even come close to exposing the full extent of the devastation experienced by the Tigrayans at the hands of the Ethiopian government forces and their allies since last November [2020],” wrote Mehari Taddele, professor of transnational governance and migration policy at Florence’s European University Institute.
Others state that the mandate should have been extended since the report provides minimal data on atrocities carried out in areas of the Amhara region currently occupied by Tigrayan forces.
But for survivors of the onslaught in Tigray, the report was always going to be flawed. Most Tigrayans have vehemently opposed the idea of the EHRC investigating abuses in Tigray.
“You can’t expect [the EHRC] to investigate the crimes of their bosses,” said Gebre, whose name has been changed for security reasons. A trader in his mid-20s, Gebre spoke to New Lines in June before the government shut down communications, after which it became difficult to contact residents in Tigray. “I have no trust in them and I don’t expect them to produce anything truthful,” he said from the regional capital of Mekelle.
Continue reading https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/the-u ... -ethiopia/
By partnering with a state-funded watchdog, the global body has deferred to a party to the vicious war in Tigray
More than a year after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent Ethiopian troops backed by allied soldiers from neighboring Eritrea to oust the Tigray regional government of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in November 2020, thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people are believed to have lost their lives.
The devastating conflict, described by an Ethiopian general as a “very dirty war,” has seen all of the warring factions commit gruesome atrocities, largely targeting civilian populations.
Rampant gang rapes of women have been confirmed, and scores of massacres, in some cases with as many as hundreds of civilians murdered, have been reported. Ethnic cleansing by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces has contributed to the displacement of over 2.2 million people.
For months the war was fought under a communications blackout, making it impossible for journalists and aid workers, who were barred from the Tigray region, to verify chilling accounts of atrocities.
Emboldened by this, Ahmed told the Ethiopian Parliament that in their drive to capture the Tigrayan capital city of Mekelle, Ethiopian troops had not killed a single civilian.
However, it wasn’t long before evidence mounted and international media investigations lifted the lid on the brutal nature of a conflict that has also seen the breakout of a famine, leaving millions on the brink of starvation. Fighting continues while drone and airstrikes regularly target civilian inhabited areas. The war has since expanded beyond Tigray’s frontiers, to the neighboring Afar and Amhara regions.
The multitude of allegations led to widespread condemnation and calls for accountability. Under pressure, the Ethiopian government relented, on one condition: It would allow a United Nations investigative team to probe alleged abuses in the Tigray region as long as it was a joint effort involving the Ethiopian state-funded rights watchdog, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC). The joint initiative began its fieldwork in March 2021.
The UN-EHRC team published their final report in November, concluding that all sides had committed atrocities. The report appeared to appropriate blame equally, despite multiple media reports that found Eritrean soldiers had carried out the worst of the killings since the outbreak of war.
Critics of the report accuse its authors of downplaying possible war crimes committed by Ethiopian and Eritrean troops.
“[The report] did not even come close to exposing the full extent of the devastation experienced by the Tigrayans at the hands of the Ethiopian government forces and their allies since last November [2020],” wrote Mehari Taddele, professor of transnational governance and migration policy at Florence’s European University Institute.
Others state that the mandate should have been extended since the report provides minimal data on atrocities carried out in areas of the Amhara region currently occupied by Tigrayan forces.
But for survivors of the onslaught in Tigray, the report was always going to be flawed. Most Tigrayans have vehemently opposed the idea of the EHRC investigating abuses in Tigray.
“You can’t expect [the EHRC] to investigate the crimes of their bosses,” said Gebre, whose name has been changed for security reasons. A trader in his mid-20s, Gebre spoke to New Lines in June before the government shut down communications, after which it became difficult to contact residents in Tigray. “I have no trust in them and I don’t expect them to produce anything truthful,” he said from the regional capital of Mekelle.
Continue reading https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/the-u ... -ethiopia/