Mark Lowcock, former UN humanitarian chief, claimed the system to declare famine is broken and was manipulated by Ethiopia in 2021
The international system for declaring a famine is broken, the former humanitarian chief of the United Nations has warned, implying that the alert system is being manipulated by governments trying to hide their abuses.
Mark Lowcock, who was the UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs until last year, said that Ethiopia had managed to block a declaration of famine in the Tigray region in 2021.
“At the end of my time in the UN, it was clear to me that there was famine in Tigray, and the only reason it wasn’t declared was because the Ethiopian authorities were quite effective in slowing down the whole declaration system,” he said at an online event on Tuesday.
“You have to fight your way through the [IPC’s] Famine Review Committee, and you can be blocked by the authorities of the country that you’re engaging with. And that’s what’s happened in Tigray,” he said, according to the outlet Devex. “The current system is not functional.”
The lack of a formal declaration forced humanitarians to use euphemistic phrases like “famine-like conditions”, which in turn dulled the international outcry to the humanitarian crisis.
At the end of his term at the UN, Mr Lowcock broke ranks and told the Telegraph that starvation was being “used as a weapon of war” in the conflict.
“People need to wake up,” he said in early June 2021. “There is now a risk of a loss of life running into the hundreds of thousands or worse.”
About half a million children are estimated to not have enough food in the region including more than 100,000 who are severely malnourished.
The UN estimates that carrying food and essential supplies need to arrive in the region every day to meet current needs but only a fraction of that is making it through.
The Ethiopian government has consistently denied claims that it is blocking aid. Instead, it blames Tigrayan forces for the humanitarian crisis.
💭 The question now is why didn’t/ doesn’t the TPLF-lead Tigrayan government make a declaration of famine in the Tigray region? What is going on? What are they all hiding?
💭 Starving people based on their ethnicity, covering up atrocities by disinformation and evading accountability have become acceptable norms and values in Ethiopia. I’m not sure we will ever recover from this.
💭 Ethnic Cleansing Documented in Western Tigray – Amnesty and HRW accused Amhara forces and officials of denying humanitarian aid to civilians in western Tigray
Ethiopian paramilitaries have carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Tigray, forcing hundreds of thousands of people from their homes using threats, killings and sexual violence, according to a joint report by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
The rights groups accuse officials and paramilitaries from the neighbouring Amhara region of war crimes and crimes against humanity in western Tigray, in northern Ethiopia.
“Since November 2020, Amhara officials and security forces have engaged in a relentless campaign of ethnic cleansing to force Tigrayans in western Tigray from their homes,” said Kenneth Roth, director of HRW.
According to the report, militias from Amhara joined the Ethiopian armed forces and its allies to seize western Tigray in the first few weeks of the war, using indiscriminate shelling and execution to force people to leave.
The report said these forces also put up signs in towns demanding that people leave and made threats to kill civilians who wanted to stay.
Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general, said the level of abuse of civilians had not been taken seriously enough internationally. “The response of Ethiopia’s international and regional partners has failed to reflect the gravity of the crimes that continue to unfold in western Tigray,” she said.
“Concerned governments must help bring an end to the ethnic-cleansing campaign, ensure that Tigrayans are able to safely and voluntarily return home, and make a concerted effort to obtain justice for these heinous crimes.”
Amnesty and HRW also accused Amhara forces and officials of denying humanitarian aid to civilians in western Tigray, an issue the UN has raised concerns about in recent months.
💭 Abuses “amount to crimes against humanity as well as war crimes,” according to a report from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
Widespread abuses against civilians in the western part of Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have charged in a new report.
The crimes were perpetrated by security officials and civilian authorities from the neighboring Amhara region, sometimes “with the acquiescence and possible participation of Ethiopian federal forces,” the rights groups say in the report released Wednesday.
The abuses are “part of a widespread and systematic attack against the Tigrayan civilian population that amount to crimes against humanity as well as war crimes,” the report says.
Two human rights groups have accused armed forces from Ethiopia’s Amhara region of waging a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Tigrayans. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch accused Amhara officials and regional special forces and militias fighting in western Tigray of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. They also accuse Ethiopia’s military of complicity in those acts. For more on the report we are now joined via Zoom by Laetitia Bader, Expert and Senior Researcher in the Africa division at Human Rights Watch.
💭 Abuses “amount to crimes against humanity as well as war crimes,” according to a report from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
Widespread abuses against civilians in the western part of Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have charged in a new report.
The crimes were perpetrated by security officials and civilian authorities from the neighboring Amhara region, sometimes “with the acquiescence and possible participation of Ethiopian federal forces,” the rights groups say in the report released Wednesday.
The abuses are “part of a widespread and systematic attack against the Tigrayan civilian population that amount to crimes against humanity as well as war crimes,” the report says.
Ethiopian federal authorities strongly refute allegations they have deliberately targeted Tigrayans for violent attacks. They said at the outbreak of the war in Nov. 2020 that their objective was to disarm the rebellious leaders of Tigray.
Ethiopian officials in Addis Ababa, the federal capital, and in Amhara didn’t respond to requests for comment on the allegations in the rights groups’ report.
The report, the result of a months-long investigation including more than 400 interviews, charges that hundreds of thousands of Tigrayans have been forced to leave their homes in a violent campaign of unlawful killings, sexual assaults, mass arbitrary detentions, livestock pillaging, and the denial of humanitarian assistance.
Fighters loyal to the party of Tigray’s leaders — the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF — also have been accused of committing abuses as the war spread into neighboring regions. Fighters affiliated with the TPLF deliberately killed dozens of people, gang-raped dozens of women and pillaged property for a period of several weeks last year in Amhara region, Amnesty said in a report released in February.
The new report by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International focuses on attacks targeting Tigrayans in western Tigray and describes them as “ethnic cleansing,” a term that refers to forcing a population from a region through expulsions and other violence, often including killings and rapes.
Publicly displayed signs in several towns across western Tigray urged Tigrayans to leave, and local officials in meetings discussed plans to remove Tigrayans, according to the report. Pamphlets appeared to give Tigrayans urgent ultimatums to leave or be killed, the report says.
“They kept saying every night, ‘We will kill you . Go out of the area,’” said one woman from the town of Baeker, speaking of threats she faced from an Amhara militia group, according to the report.
Western Tigray has long been contested territory. Amhara authorities say the area was under their control until the 1990s when the TPLF-led federal government redrew internal boundaries that put the territory within Tigray’s borders. Amhara officials moved swiftly to take over the region when the war broke out.
The outbreak of the war “brought these longstanding and unaddressed grievances to the fore: Amhara regional forces, along with Ethiopian federal forces, seized these territories and displaced Tigrayan civilians in a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign,” the report says.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken asserted in March 2021 that ethnic cleansing had taken place in western Tigray, marking the first time a top official in the international community openly described the situation as such. That allegation was dismissed by Ethiopian authorities as “a completely unfounded and spurious verdict against the Ethiopian government.”
The new report corroborates reporting by The Associated Press on atrocities in the war, which affects 6 million people in Tigray alone.
In June Ethiopia’s government cut off almost all access to food aid, medical supplies, cash and fuel in Tigray. The war has spilled into Amhara and Afar regions, with Tigrayan leaders saying they are fighting to ease the blockade and to protect themselves from further attacks.
Facing growing international pressure, Ethiopian authorities on March 24 announced a humanitarian truce for Tigray, saying the action was necessary to allow unimpeded relief supplies into the area. Trucks bearing food supplies have since arrived in the region.
The AP last year confirmed the first starvation deaths under the blockade along with the government’s ban on humanitarian workers bringing medicines into Tigray.
Estimated tens of thousands of people have been killed in the war. But there is little hope for peace talks as Ethiopian authorities have outlawed the TPLF, effectively making its leaders fugitives on the run.
Among their recommendations, the rights groups call for a “neutral protection force” in western Tigray, possibly with the deployment of an African Union-backed peacekeeping mission, “with a robust civilian protection mandate.”
💭“አዲሱን የዓለም ሥርዓት ለማስጠበቅ ልዩ ቀውስ ያስፈልጋል።…አዲሱን የዓለም ሥርዓት ለመጠበቅ የመንግስት ያልሆኑ ተዋናዮችን እና ስልጣን የተሰጣቸውን ግለሰቦችን ማስወገድ ግድ ነው”። “Extraordinary Crisis Needed to Preserve New World Order….The elimination of non-state actors and empowered individuals “must be done” in order to preserve the new world order.
💭 The Washington Post has analyzed photos of shrapnel and satellite imagery and cross-referenced video to confirm that Ethiopia used a Turkish drone in January in an attack that killed at least 59 civilians sheltering in a school in Tigray, the Stockholm Center for Freedom reported, citing an analysis by the paper published on Monday.
On January 7, a school was struck by a drone-delivered bomb, killing at least 59 people and gravely injuring dozens more, according to aid workers whose organizations worked at the camp for internally displaced people in Dedebit, located in the northern Ethiopian region of Tigray.
According to The Washington Post, more than 300 civilians have been killed by drone and air strikes since September, including more than 100 since the start of this year.
Weapon remnants recovered from the site of the strike by aid workers showed internal components and screw configurations that matched images of Turkish-made MAM-L munitions released by the weapons manufacturer. The MAM-L pairs exclusively with the Turkish-made Bayraktar TB-2 drone.
Military experts from the Dutch nongovernmental organization PAX and Amnesty International also identified the weapon used as a MAM-L bomb that is fitted to a TB2 drone, Politico earlier reported.
The attacks have drawn criticism from US President Joe Biden and a warning from the United Nations that they may constitute a grave violation of international law, Politico said.
Drones are rapidly turning into the decisive weapon of the conflict and have helped Ethiopian government forces turn the tide against rebels from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which governed the country for nearly three decades before 2018.
Turkey has exported Bayraktar armed drones manufactured by defense contractor Baykar Makina Sanayi ve Ticaret Anonim Şirketi (Baykar), which is run by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s son-in-law Selçuk Bayraktar. Ukraine, Poland, Qatar, Libya, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Ethiopia and Azerbaijan have all taken delivery of the armed drones.
According to Turkey’s 2021 export figures announced by the Turkish Exporters Assembly in early December, Turkey’s arms sales reached a record level, with the biggest increase to African countries.
In the first 11 months of 2021, Turkey exported $2.793 billion worth of defense products, an increase of 39.7 percent compared to the same period of the previous year. The Turkish defense industry, which set an export record of $2.7 billion in 2019, is preparing to set a new record by closing this year with exports of more than $3 billion. For the first time the defense sector had a 1.8 percent share of Turkey’s total exports in November 2021.
“All sides to the year-long conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region have committed violations that may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity”
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on January 9, 2022
💭 Another callous drone attack by evil Abiy Ahmed in an IDP [internally displaced persons] camp in Dedebit, Tigray has claimed the lives of 56 Christians so far. The drones are supplied and operated by Turkish, Iranian, UAE and China Mercenaries – and with the permission of the USA, Russia and Europe.
At least 56 people have been killed in an air strike at a camp for internally displaced people in Ethiopia’s northern region of Tigray, according to Reuters.
There were at least 30 others injured, two aid workers told the news agency, citing local authorities and eyewitness accounts.
The workers sent Reuters pictures of people wounded in hospital, including many children,
The government has been accused of targeting civilians in the 14-month conflict with rebellious Tigrayan forces – which it has previously denied.
Military spokesman Colonel Getnet Adane and government spokesman Legesse Tulu did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The aid workers, who asked not to be named because they did not have permission to speak to the press, said the number of casualties was confirmed by local authorities.
The camp that was hit by the strike is in the town of Daedaebeet in the northwest of the region, near the border with Eritrea, they said.