Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on January 25, 2022
🤯 In this video, at 6:09, Mrs. Merit Reiss-Anderesen named the evil monster first as ‘Prime Minister’ Abiy and then as ‘President’ Abiy Ahmed. She obviously gave another Nobel to him!
💭 When asked the Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, if giving Abiy Ahmed a Nobel Peace Prize, was a mistake, Merit Reiss-Anderesen answered:
“It’s an unprecedented situation that a Nobel Peace Prize laureate is involved in warfare.”
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on September 7, 2021
This video reflects the severe humanitarian situation in Tigray with supplies of food aid running out and the United Nations warning that a de facto blockade is bringing millions to the brink of famine. Video by WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME via REUTERS
💭 Ethiopia’s Tigray Crisis: Tplf Says 150 Have Died of Starvation
About 150 people died of starvation in Ethiopia’s war-hit Tigray region in August, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) has said.
These are the first hunger-related deaths that the TPLF has reported since its fighters recaptured most of the region from federal forces in June.
There is no independent confirmation of its statement.
The UN previously said that about 400,000 were already living in famine-like conditions in Tigray.
The government has not responded the to the TPLF statement.
About 5.2 million people – or 90% of Tigray’s population – urgently needed aid “to avert the world’s worst famine situation in decades”, the UN said last week.
The TPLF and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed were once allies in the government, but fell out over his political reforms, triggering the war that has killed thousands and displaced millions since November.
TPLF recaptured most of the region, including the capital, Mekelle, in June after losing control of most of it early in the war.
The TPLF says it is the legitimate government of Tigray, having won regional elections in 2020. The Ethiopian government denounced the poll as illegal. It regards the TPLF as a terrorist organisation.
Dying ‘in front of our eyes’
In a statement on Monday, the TPLF said there was a “complete depletion of food stocks” in Tigray.
People living in camps after being displaced by conflict were receiving “no aid” and host communities were running out of food, it said.
The TPLF said the 150 deaths were recorded in the central, southern and eastern zones of Tigray, as well in camps in the city of Shire – the birthplace of the group’s leader Debretsion Gebremichael.
“One million people are at risk of fatal famine if they are prohibited from receiving life-saving aid within the next few days,” it added.
In a BBC Tigrinya interview, TPLF agriculture chief Atinkut Mezgebo said that people were dying “in front of our eyes”.
“In the villages and towns, there is a shortage of food and medicine, and the crisis might be bigger than what we know,” he said.
Dr Atinkut said that women and children were the main victims of hunger.
“Previously, people shared what they had, but now they don’t have anything to eat,” he added.
It is hard to confirm details of what is happening in Tigray as telephone and internet communications have been cut.
The BBC has asked the federal government for a reaction to the TPLF statement but has so far not got a response. But in a statement on Monday, the foreign ministry said the TPLF had exacerbated the humanitarian problems by invading neighbouring regions and looting aid supplies.
Last week, the UN’s acting humanitarian coordinator for Ethiopia, Grant Leaity, called on the Ethiopian government to allow the unimpeded entry of aid to Tigray.
On Sunday, the World Food Programme said that more than 100 trucks of its aid had reached Mekelle for the first time in a fortnight.
In the past, the government has denied that it is blocking aid but has said it is concerned about security.
On Saturday, it announced that 500 trucks carrying supplies had entered the region, with 152 arriving in the last two days.
“When Kidanemariam, who is from Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, approached the dais to introduce his longtime friend and colleague to the crowd, he said he was greeted with heckles from members of the audience: “Get out of the podium Tigrayan, get out of the podium Woyane,” and other ethnic slurs. He expected Abiy, who preached a political philosophy of inclusion, to chide the crowd, but he said nothing. Later, over lunch, when Kidanemariam asked why, he said Abiy told him: “There was nothing to correct.“”
“Abiy’s early advocates and supporters say he not only misled the world, but his own people — and they are now paying a steep price.
In his open letter announcing he was leaving his post, Kidanemariam wrote of Abiy: “Instead of fulfilling his initial promise, he has led Ethiopia down a dark path toward destruction and disintegration.””
“Abiy, Abiy,” the crowd chanted, waving Ethiopia’s tricolor flag and cheering as the country’s new prime minister, dressed in a white blazer with gold trim and smiling broadly, waved to a packed basketball arena at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, part of a whirlwind three-city tour of the United States to woo the diaspora.
It was July 2018, just three months after Abiy Ahmed had been appointed leader of Africa’s second-most populous country, and his star was rising both at home and abroad. Excitement was surging into an almost religious fervor around the young politician, who promised to bring peace, prosperity and reconciliation to a troubled corner of Africa and a nation on the brink of crisis.
But even in those early, optimistic days of Abiy’s premiership, as he kickstarted a flurry of ambitious reforms — freeing thousands of political prisoners, lifting restrictions on the press, welcoming back exiles and banned opposition parties, appointing women to positions in his cabinet, opening up the country’s tightly-controlled economy to new investment and negotiating peace with neighboring Eritrea — Berhane Kidanemariam had his doubts.
The Ethiopian diplomat has known the prime minister for almost 20 years, forging a friendship when he worked for the governing coalition’s communications team and, later, as CEO of two state-run news organizations, while Abiy was in military intelligence and then heading Ethiopia’s cybersecurity agency, INSA. Before working for Ethiopia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kidanemariam ran the country’s national broadcaster, the EBC, and he said Abiy sat on its board of directors.
In a recent phone interview, Kidanemariam said he, like many Ethiopians, had hoped Abiy could transform the nation’s fractious politics and usher in genuine democratic change. But he struggled to square his understanding of the man he’d first met in 2004 — who he described as power-hungry intelligence officer obsessed by fame and fortune — with the portrait emerging of a visionary peacemaker from humble beginnings.
In 2018, Kidanemariam was serving as Ethiopia’s consul general in Los Angeles and said he helped organize Abiy’s visit.
When Kidanemariam, who is from Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, approached the dais to introduce his longtime friend and colleague to the crowd, he said he was greeted with heckles from members of the audience: “Get out of the podium Tigrayan, get out of the podium Woyane,” and other ethnic slurs. He expected Abiy, who preached a political philosophy of inclusion, to chide the crowd, but he said nothing. Later, over lunch, when Kidanemariam asked why, he said Abiy told him: “There was nothing to correct.”
“One of the ironies of a prime minister who came to office promising unity is that he has deliberately exacerbated hatred between different groups,” Kidanemariam wrote in an open letter in March, announcing that he was quitting his post as the deputy chief of mission at the Ethiopian embassy in Washington, DC, in protest over Abiy’s monthslong war in Tigray, which has spurred a refugee crisis, atrocities and famine.
Kidanemariam said to CNN he believed Abiy’s focus had never been about “reform or democracy or human rights or freedom of the press. It is simply consolidating power for himself, and getting money out of it … We may call it authoritarianism or dictatorship, but he is really getting to be a king.”
“By the way,” he added, “the problem is not only for Tigrayans. It’s for all Ethiopians. Everybody is suffering everywhere.”
In an email to CNN, Abiy’s spokeswoman, Billene Seyoum, described Kidanemariam’s characterization of the prime minister as “baseless” and a “reflection.”
‘The epitome of hell’
Much has changed since Abiy accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in November 2019, telling an audience in Oslo, Norway, that “war is the epitome of hell.”
In less than two years, Abiy has gone from darling of the international community to pariah, condemned for his role in presiding over a protracted civil war that, by many accounts, bears the hallmarks of genocide and has the potential to destabilize the wider Horn of Africa region.
The 45-year-old’s fall from grace has confounded many observers, who wonder how they could have gotten him so wrong. But diplomats, analysts, independent Ethiopian journalists, acquaintances and others who have followed his career closely say that even at the height of “Abiymania,” there were warning signs.
Critics say that by blessing Abiy with an array of international endorsements, the West not only failed to see — or willfully ignored — those signals, but gave him a blank check and then turned a blind eye.
“Soon after Abiy was crowned with that Nobel Peace Prize, he lost an appetite in pursuing domestic reform,” Tsedale Lemma, founder and editor-in-chief of Addis Standard, an independent monthly news magazine based in Ethiopia, told CNN on a Skype call. “He considered it a blanket pass to do as he wishes.”
The war in Tigray is not the first time he’s used that pass, she said, adding that since Abiy came to power on the platform of unifying Ethiopia’s people and in its state, he has ruthlessly consolidated control and alienated critical regional players.
Lemma has covered Abiy’s rise for the Addis Standard — which was briefly suspended by Ethiopia’s media regulator in July — and was an early critic of his government when few were sounding the alarm. Days after Abiy was awarded the Nobel Prize, she wrote an editorial warning that the initiatives he had been recognized for — the peace process with Eritrea and political reforms in Ethiopia — had sidelined a key stakeholder, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, and were in serious jeopardy.
The TPLF had governed Ethiopia with an iron grip for decades, overseeing a period of stability and economic growth at the cost of basic civil and political rights. The party’s authoritarian rule provoked a popular uprising that ultimately forced Abiy’s predecessor, Hailemariam Desalegn, to resign. Abiy was appointed by the ruling class to bring change, without upending the old political order. But almost as soon as he came to power, Abiy announced the rearrangement of the ruling coalition that the TPLF had founded — the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Front, or EPRDF, which was composed of four parties — into a single, new Prosperity Party, ostracizing the TPLF in the process.
Abiy’s appointment had been intended to quell tensions. Instead, his drive for a new pan-Ethiopian political party sparked fears in some regions that the country’s federal system, which guarantees significant autonomy to ethnically-defined states, such as Tigray, was under threat.
The Tigrayans weren’t the only ones who were worried. In Abiy’s home region, Oromia, and other administrative zones, people began to demand self-rule. Soon, the government began backsliding into the authoritarian practices Abiy had once renounced: Violent crackdowns on protesters, the jailing of journalists and opposition politicians, and twice postponing elections.
Ahmed Soliman, a research fellow at Chatham House and an expert on the Horn of Africa, said Abiy’s reform plan also increased expectations among constituencies with conflicting agendas, further heightening tensions.
“Abiy and his government have rightly been blamed for implementing uneven reforms and for insecurity increasing throughout the country, but to an extent, some of that was inherited. These simmering ethnic and political divisions that exist in the country have very deep roots,” he said.
Tensions reached a boiling point last September, when the Tigrayans defied Abiy by holding a vote which had been delayed due to the pandemic, setting off a tit-for-tat series of recriminations that spilled into open conflict in November 2020.
This July, in the midst of the war, Abiy and his party won a landslide victory in a general election that was boycotted by opposition parties, marred by logistical issues and excluded many voters, including all those in Tigray — a crushing disappointment to many who had high hopes that the democratic transition Abiy promised three years ago would be realized.
“He sees himself as a Messiah, as chosen, as someone who’s destined to ‘Make Ethiopia Great Again,’ but this country is collapsing,” Lemma said, adding that the international community’s folly was falling for the picture Abiy painted of himself — “a post-ethnic, contemporary capitalist” — in their desperation for a dazzling success story.
‘A monumental failure of analysis’
Still, many Ethiopians are reluctant to lay the blame for the country’s unravelling at Abiy’s feet. Ahead of the election in June, residents in Addis Ababa told CNN they felt Abiy had inherited a mess from the previous regime and had always faced an uphill battle pushing reforms forward — an assessment shared by some regional experts.
“Lots of people were hopeful that the liberalizing changes, after those years of anti-government protests and all of the state violence in response, […] marked a moment where Ethiopia would start to conduct its politics more peacefully. But that thinking glossed over some of the major problems and contradictions in Ethiopia,” said William Davidson, senior Ethiopia analyst with the International Crisis Group.
“There was always a massive challenge ahead for Abiy, and for everyone. Just the promise of a more pluralistic political system did nothing necessarily to resolve the clashing nationalisms, opposing visions, and bitter political rivalries.”
In recent months, Abiy has tried to dodge international condemnation by pledging to protect civilians, open up humanitarian access to stave off famine and kick out Eritrean troops, who have supported Ethiopian forces in the conflict and stand accused of some of the most horrifying of the many atrocities in Tigray — pledges that American officials say he has not delivered on. After the United States issued sanctions in May, Ethiopia’s foreign ministry accused it of meddling in the country’s internal affairs and misunderstanding the significant challenges on the ground.
As the tide of international opinion has turned against Abiy, the prime minister’s office has maintained he is not concerned about his deteriorating reputation; his supporters have increasingly blamed the West for the crisis unfolding in the country. “The prime minister need not be a darling of the west, east, south or north,” Abiy’s spokeswoman Billene Seyoum told reporters in June. “It is sufficient that he stands for the people of Ethiopia and the development of the nation.”
But it is difficult to reconcile the government’s narrative with reality. Setting to one side the staggering loss of life and destruction inside Tigray, the war has eroded Abiy’s aggressive development plans and derailed the country’s economic trajectory, experts say. Ethiopia’s economy had grown at nearly 10% for the last decade, before slowing in 2020, dragged down by a combination of the Covid-19 pandemic, debt and conflict. The war has also drained national coffers, decimated a large slice of the country’s industry and eroded its reputation among foreign investors and financial institutions.
“From where I sit, I think there was a monumental failure of analysis, internationally,” Rashid Abdi, a Kenya-based analyst and researcher who specializes in the Horn of Africa, said, including himself in that group. “I think people failed to apprehend the complex nature of Ethiopia’s transition, especially they failed to appreciate also the complex side of Abiy, that he was not all this sunny, smiling guy. That beneath was a much more calculating, and even Machiavellian figure, who eventually will I think push the country towards a much more dangerous path.”
“We should have begun to take notice of some of the red flags quite quickly. A lot of complacency is what got us here,” he added.
The seventh king of Ethiopia
During his inaugural address to parliament in 2018, Abiy made a point of thanking his mother, a Christian from the Amhara region, who he said had told him at the age of seven that, despite his modest background, he would one day be the seventh king of Ethiopia. The remark was met with a round of laughter from his cabinet members, but Abiy’s belief in his mother’s prophecy was no joke.
“In the initial stages of the war, actually, he spoke openly about how this was God’s plan, and that this was a kind of divine mission for him. This is a man who early in the morning, instead of meeting his top advisors, would meet with some of his spiritual advisers, these are pastors who are very powerful now in a sort of ‘kitchen cabinet,'” Abdi said.
But the most glaring of warning signs, by many accounts, was Abiy’s surprise allegiance with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, for which he ultimately won the Nobel Prize.
Abiy’s critics say that what cemented his status as a peacemaker on the world stage was based on a farce, and that the alignment with Eritrea was yet another effort to consolidate his power, paving the way for the two sides to wage war against their mutual enemy, the TPLF. Soon after the Eritrea-Ethiopia border reopened in 2018, reuniting families after 20 years, it closed again. Three years on, Eritrean troops are operating with impunity in Tigray, and there is little sign of a durable peace.
In response, Abiy’s spokeswoman rejected this assertion, calling it a “toxic narrative.”
Mehari Taddele Maru, a professor of governance and migration at the European University Institute, who was skeptical of the peace deal early on — a deeply unpopular view at the time — believes the Nobel Committee’s endorsement of Abiy has contributed to the current conflict.
“I am of the strongest opinion that the Nobel Prize Committee is responsible for what is happening in Ethiopia, at least partially. They had reliable information; many experts sounded their early warning,” Mehari, who is from Tigray, told CNN.
“The Committee was basing its decision on a peace deal that we flagged for a false start, a peace that is not only achieved but perhaps unachievable and an agreement that was not meant for peace but actually for war. What he [Abiy] did with Isaias was not meant to bring peace. He knew that, Isaias knew that. They were working, basically, to execute a war, to sandwich Tigray from South and North carefully by ostracizing one political party first.”
The most palpable and lasting impact of the award, according to several analysts and observers, was a chilling effect on any criticism of Abiy.
The persona he cultivated, cemented in part through his many early accolades — being named African of the Year in 2018, one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People, and one of Foreign Policy’s 100 Global Thinkers in 2019 — captivated the imagination of Ethiopians, the country’s large diaspora and the world. Many now feel betrayed, having lost any optimism about the future of the country, but others are still intent on retaining that glittering image of Abiy, reluctant to see the writing on the wall.
“By the time the war started in November, the international community was extremely committed to the idea of Abiy Ahmed as a reformer still, and they didn’t want to give up on that,” said Goitom Gebreluel, a Horn of Africa researcher from Tigray, who was in Addis Ababa at the start of the conflict.
“I had meetings with various diplomats before the war and it was obvious that the war was coming, and what they were saying was, ‘you know, he still has this project, we have to let him realize his political vision,'” he said. “To this day, I think not everyone is convinced that this is an autocrat.”
Now, with Ethiopia facing a “man-made” famine and a war apparently without end, Abiy stands alone, largely isolated from the international community and with a shrinking cadre of allies.
Abiy’s early advocates and supporters say he not only misled the world, but his own people — and they are now paying a steep price.
In his open letter announcing he was leaving his post, Kidanemariam wrote of Abiy: “Instead of fulfilling his initial promise, he has led Ethiopia down a dark path toward destruction and disintegration.”
“Like so many others who thought the prime minister had the potential to lead Ethiopia to a bright future, I am filled with despair and anguish at the direction he is taking our country.”
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on June 8, 2021
🔥 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for Pact of War
🔥 2020 Nobel Peace Prize for Pacte de Famine?
😈 The demon possessed traitor & anti-Ethiopia PM Abiy Ahmed Ali has been able to make a lot of embarrassing, awkward and bad luck stories – and to bring trouble on many – this involve or lead to acts that damaged the reputation and interests of the following entities:
❖ Ethiopia / Tigray
❖ The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church
❖ Relationships between Tigrayans & Amahra; between Tigray & Eritrea
❖ Ethiopia’s ethnic groups & tribes
❖ The Horn of Africa: Kenya + South Sudan
❖ The sane & humane International Community
❖ The African Union
❖ The United Nations
❖ The Nobel Prize Committee
😈 While this cruel monster helped the following entities to substantially push their satanic agendas at every turn:
☆ The Oromos
☆ The Muslims
☆ The Arabs
☆ Egypt
☆ North Sudan
☆ Somalia
☆ Djibouti
☆ The Protestants
☆ The Sodomites
👉 Do I’ve anything else to say? A vicious sociopath, Antichrist! 😈
[Isaiah 33:1] “Woe to you, O destroyer, While you were not destroyed; And he who is treacherous, while others did not deal treacherously with him. As soon as you finish destroying, you will be destroyed; As soon as you cease to deal treacherously, others will deal treacherously with you.”
The war on Tigray in Ethiopia has been going on for months. Thousands of people have been killed and wounded, women and girls have been raped by military forces, and more than 2 million citizens have been forced out of their homes. Prime minister and Nobel peace prize laureate Abiy Ahmed stated that a nation on its way to “prosperity” would experience a few “rough patches” that would create “blisters”. This is how he rationalised what is alleged to be a genocide.
Nobel committee members have individual responsibility for awarding the 2019 peace prize to Abiy Ahmed, accused of waging the war in Tigray. The members should thus collectively resign their honourable positions at the Nobel committee in protest and defiance.
The committee justified awarding the Nobel to Ethiopia’s premier for his “efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, and in particular for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea”. Today, Eritrean forces, along with Ethiopia’s federal and Amhara regional state forces are accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity in what Abiy characterises as a “law enforcement operation” in Tigray.
Numerous massacres of civilians have been revealed, and rape of women and girls has been systematically carried out
The war began last November, when federal soldiers entered Tigray alongside Eritrean forces, claiming the objective was to arrest the elected regional government and leaders of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front party (TPLF) for rebellion. The Tigray leadership withdrew from the regional capital, Mekelle, into the mountains, with thousands of combat-ready troops. It was clear from the outset that war was inevitable, as Tigrayans would not submit to the centralising policies of Abiy, which they believe undermine their constitutionally enshrined autonomy.
The campaign has become increasingly repugnant. The US has criticised Abiy for ethnic cleansing. Numerous massacres of civilians have been revealed, and rape of women and girls has been systematically carried out to “cleanse the blood line”, as soldiers have reportedly said, and break spirits. Civil infrastructure, such as hospitals, water facilities, schools and universities have been direct targets of bombings and looting, with the aim to destroy capacity to govern.
Even worse is the humanitarian consequence. Today, 5.2 million Tigrayans, about 85% of the region’s population, need aid to survive, but it is not reaching them. Food and emergency assistance from the UN and international organisations is obstructed by federal red tape and Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers. Hundreds of thousands are in danger of dying from starvation this summer. We may soon again see images of mass death in Tigray, similar to those from the famine that took place during the Ethiopian civil war and inspired the Live Aid concert in 1985.
Human rights experts believe there is reason to declare genocide in Tigray, when analysing the political intentions behind the systematic mass murders of civilians, sexual violence and more. The patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox church has said that the government is carrying out a genocide. The final legal conclusion must however be for a future international criminal tribunal.
What then is the responsibility of the Nobel committee towards someone who uses the prize to legitimise genocidal warfare against his own people? Did they undertake a comprehensive risk assessment before giving the prize to an incumbent prime minister who was not democratically elected in a country that has always been an authoritarian state? Or is this, in hindsight, something the committee could not have foreseen?
Last year, the Nobel committee came out in defence of the laureate, reasserting its position on the prize
Already, in early 2019, the reforms in Ethiopia and the peace process with Eritrea were known to have lost momentum. Liberal political reforms in the country were backsliding. Some also warned that the peace prize itself could destabilise rather than consolidate the region.
After the war began, I had a call from a high-ranking Ethiopian official: “I will always hold the Nobel committee responsible for destroying our country,” he said. “After Abiy received the peace prize, he viewed this as a recognition of his politics and would no longer listen to objections or the dangers of recentralised power in Ethiopia.”
There is international criticism of Abiy’s candidature and the committee’s “non-stance” on any crimes against humanity by military forces under the command of a Nobel laureate. But the committee has stayed silent, carrying on a century’s tradition of refusing to discuss the judging process. Last year, in reaction to Abiy’s decision to postpone the 2020 elections indefinitely, the Nobel committee came out in defence of the laureate, reasserting its position on the prize. Now, after the outbreak of war, members of the committee remain disinclined to discuss their original assessment.
Initiatives by Ethiopian diaspora organisations to hold the Nobel committee legally liable for the award’s consequences have further damaged the reputation of the Nobel prize.
On the guidelines enshrined in Nobel rules is that once a prize is awarded, it cannot be withdrawn. So how could the committee express its condemnation of the war and the politics of Abiy should it wish to? All members have an individual responsibility – it is not officially known whether any voted against. They should therefore acknowledge this, collectively resign, and let the Norwegian parliament appoint a new committee.
At the same time, the Nobel Institute should upgrade its expertise, undertake comprehensive risk assessments and analyse relevant conflicts and contexts on which awards are based. It seems clear that procedures failed in awarding Abiy the prize.
In appointing a new committee, Norway’s political parties must drop the tradition to nominate retired politicians. This would provide the much-needed arm’s length between the prize and the Norwegian political elite. International members should be brought in, with expertise in what the prize is actually about: war and peace, international law, human rights. The Nobel name carries international weight and a committee with world-class capabilities should protect it.
Unbelievable! Last year’s Nobel Peace Laureate is blocking this year’s Nobel Peace Laureate from distributing food in Ethiopia. How Does The World Food Program act and React now?
Today, the World Food Program receives the Nobel Peace Prize. It will be a pared-down ceremony, held virtually. The format change is due to Covid-19, but it is appropriate for reasons beyond the pandemic. There isn’t much to celebrate right now.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee gave three reasons for why they are honoring World Food Program: combating hunger, bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and “acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict.”
It’s that third reason that’s most crucial—and controversial.
As head of an international agency that needs the cooperation of governments for its funds and operations, the Director of the World Food Program, David Beasley, will need to choose his words carefully when he accepts the Peace Prize. He will probably make mention of how the global numbers of hungry people are increasing, how most of them are in conflict-affected areas, and how his agency struggles to reach them. He is likely to mention some of the recent progress in affirming that starvation as a weapon of war is prohibited under international law.
United Nations Security Council resolution 2417 of May 2018 reaffirms that “using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare may constitute a war crime.” It requires the Secretary General to “report swiftly to the Council when the risk of conflict-induced famine and wide-spread food insecurity in armed conflict contexts occurs.” An amendment to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, adopted one year ago, extends the prohibition starvation of civilians to non-international armed conflicts. As lawyers pay closer attention to starvation crimes, the jurisprudence is being refined. There’s progress at the level of international norms—and the Nobel ceremony is an occasion to recognize that.
But if Mr. Beasley is unlikely to go one step further and name the leaders who are inflicting starvation on civilians even as he speaks. Beasley cannot risk offending governments that wield power over the hungry. Those who perpetrate starvation are by definition unscrupulous and inhumane, and they are perfectly capable of expelling aid agencies or restricting where aid workers can go and what they can say until they have completed their military goals. And the innocent will suffer. So we can expect that the Executive Director of the World Food Program will be discreet when it comes to identifying the men who make man-made famine.
The World Peace Foundation has also campaigned for accountability for mass starvation. We can be more candid. Let’s name some names—and list seven cases that the UN Secretary General should swiftly report to the Security Council.
One of the countries on the list of shame is led by a Nobel Laureate, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed who won last year’s prize for turning the Ethiopian government’s antagonism with Eritrea into a partnership. Today, Ethiopia, which has a long history of famine, is on the brink of becoming the world’s most urgent humanitarian crisis. The month-old war in Tigray is being fought among a population plagued by food insecurity; the region was the epicenter of the infamous 1984-85 famine that was the occasion for the LiveAid outcry and global effort to feed the world’s hungry.
There are strong indications that all three belligerents in the Ethio-Eritrean war—the Ethiopian army and allied militias, the Eritrean army and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF)—are responsible for starvation crimes, either deliberately or recklessly. With the current near blackout on information from the war zone, firm evidence isn’t yet available, but the urgency of the situation demands action without waiting for proof—especially if that proof arrives in the form of children dead from hunger and disease.
Tigray was already vulnerable before the war. The region has long been beset by chronic food insecurity, dependence on commercial supplies and relief aid brought in from elsewhere—over 600,000 people were receiving emergency food rations from World Food Program in October—and a locust infestation. These made it especially important that the warring parties fight in such a way as to preserve objects indispensable for the survival of the civilian population, and not only permit humanitarian access but take proactive steps to make it happen.
The Federal Army has officially been tasked with a rapid operation aimed at capturing the main towns and apprehending the leadership of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. If that military objective could be achieved rapidly, it might be possible to avoid actions that cause massive displacement and hunger—but the longer the war goes on, the less likely that is likely to be. Air force and drone strikes have hit civilian targets, though it is not yet clear if patterns of attacks would be sufficient to determine war crimes including destroying objects indispensable for people’s survival. Artillery barrages have killed and injured civilians. One clear cause for alarm is reports of troops preventing people fleeing the violence from crossing into Sudan.
There is, however, little doubt that the militia from Amhara state have been looting, displacing people and killing. Even if starvation isn’t their main aim, that’s the obvious outcome.
The Federal Government’s agreement for “humanitarian corridors” is welcome but is at best a partial remedy, because the provision that humanitarian aid is directed only to areas under government control means de facto that those outside its control (or where it can block access( won’t get aid. P.M. Abiy at first refused to acknowledge that he was at war, and has since declared “victory”, but until his government faces the brute fact that it needs to negotiate a humanitarian truce or humanitarian access with the TPLF, it risks becoming party to a famine crime.
The TPLF is de facto the responsible authority for large parts of Tigray’s rural areas, which in addition to local people, currently also host many people who left the towns and cities when Eritrean and Federal forces moved in. Some of those evacuations appear to have been organized by the TPLF itself. To date we have heard nothing from the TPLF about its humanitarian plans. Its leadership undertook extensive military preparations prior to November but, it appears, made no plans for the needs of over 5 million people. Its leaders must be called to account for that reckless and inhumane (in)action.
Eritrea is the third belligerent. For the first weeks of the war, Eritrea’s leading role was an open secret—known to all who had followed the Horn of Africa, but not publicly acknowledged by any government or international organization. Last week, a highly-respected exiled Eritrean general provided an authoritative overview of the extent of the Eritrean Defense Forces’ operations. As well as major combat against the TPLF, there are reliable reports of Eritrean forces shelling hospitals, looting towns (including Adigrat and Mekelle) and overrunning refugee camps inside Tigray that until recently hosted 95,000 Eritreans who had escaped from their country seeking safety, causing a food crisis. President Isseyas Afewerki is a major suspect for starvation crimes committed against Ethiopian and Eritrean civilians.
This food crises marked by starvation crimes—mark a dreadful escalation of man-made hunger in the world today. The least that we can do is name the men who perpetrate starvation crimes.