US Horn of Africa envoy Satterfield concludes visit to Ethiopia as Congress prepares to pass sanction legislation
Source: Globe News Net
The US envoy for the Horn of Africa completed a two-day trip to Ethiopia this week to discuss with Ethiopian officials and representatives of the AU, UN and aid organizations in a bid to break the diplomatic deadlock in the country and end the humanitarian blockade on Tigray.
Special envoy David Satterfield met with African Union (AU) Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security, Bankole Adeoye, and AU High Representative for the Horn of Africa, Olusegun Obasanjo, and Ethiopian officials.
US department announced on Monday that the Special Envoy will be heading to Ethiopia from March 21-22 to meet Ethiopian government, African Union (AU), and United Nations officials, as well as representatives of humanitarian organizations.
Mr. Satterfield’s trip is concluded a day before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee discusses over a sanctions bill on Ethiopia which partially mirrors a similar bill that theHouse Foreign Affairs Committee advanced last month.
No news have been heard both from the Ethiopian government and the US state department regarding how well the meeting between the country’s officials and the special envoy went.
The senior US diplomat also met in Addis Ababa with representatives from the United Nations and humanitarian organisations “to discuss the need for urgent and sustained delivery of humanitarian aid to those in need in Tigray”.
In its latest report, the United Nations estimated nearly half a million children are lacking food in the Tigray region, and more than 115,000 are severely malnourished.
Last week, the head of the World Health Organisation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said “nowhere on earth” is suffering more food insecurity than Tigray.
In its January report, the World Food Programme estimated 80 % of Tigray’s population is food insecure.
This is his third trip to Ethiopia since taking the position in January, and experts say the new envoy has pursued a quieter US approach in handling the conflict and US relations with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
The draft sanctions legislation in both the Senate and the House would impose sanctions on anyone who undermines a negotiated settlement to Ethiopia’s civil war or has committed human rights abuses in the conflict. Additionally, it would sanction anyone who provides arms to any party in the war.
It would also require the Joe Biden administration to use Washington’s influence at organisations such as the International Monetary Fund to block loans to Addis Ababa, and stop the US International Development Finance Corporation from funding projects in Ethiopia.
The State Department last year paused a legal review considering whether the Ethiopian government’s actions in Tigray amount to genocide as part of a bid to draw Mr. Abiy to the negotiating table.
But the sanctions legislation advanced by the House last month would require Secretary of State Antony Blinken to determine whether actions by the Ethiopian government or TPLF constitute a genocide within three months after the bill becomes law.
Mr. Biden issued an executive order last year paving the way for sanctions against Ethiopian and Eritrean officials backing Addis Ababa against the TPLF.
The Biden administration has also removed Ethiopia from the African Growth and Opportunity Act – a key trade pact granting eligible participants in Sub-Saharan Africa duty-free access to the US market for thousands of products – over human rights breaches in Tigray.
Ethiopia has cut internet, phone and media access in Tigray since the conflict erupted in 2020, while reportedly complicating or halting the delivery of humanitarian aid to the war-torn region.
Witnesses have described widespread human rights abuses in Tigray, including the displacement and murder of civilians, gang rapes, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and the burning of crops.
Amnesty International has documented sexual violence and civilian casualties in Tigray at the hands of Ethiopian forces and their allies.
The war began in November 2020 when Ethiopia’s army, backed by Eritrean and Somalia national armies and troops from Ethiopian regional states, moved to oust a TPLF-led regional government in Tigray after a long-standing political hostilities between Abiy’s ruling party and the TPLF. The other dimension of the war was a genocidal campaign that has been brewing by elites from Amhara and Eritrean government. The trio combined their forces to unleash the November 2020 ‘war-of-annihilation’ on Tigrayans.
The more than 16-month-old war was marked by extreme brutality, including the use of rape and hunger as weapons of war, massacres and ethnic cleansing against Tigrayans. As a result, the conflict has left thousands dead and forced many others to flee their homes with hundreds of thousands driven to the brink of starvation, according to the United Nations.
Since June, Tigray has been put under a total humanitarian blockade by the Ethiopian government, with only less than 10 %of the needed essential aid allowed to enter the region and no aid reached the region since December 15, 2021. This has resulted in man-made famine to more than 900,000 people in the region and more than 5400 deaths as a result.
The World Health Organization last month called for “unfettered access” into war-wracked Tigray, saying its first delivery of life-saving medical supplies since July last year had stalled due to lack of fuel.
Nearly 40 percent of people in Tigray, a region of six million people, face “an extreme lack of food”, the UN said last month. The dire assessment published by the World Food Programme (WFP) came as humanitarian groups increasingly curtail activities because of fuel and supply shortages.
The UN rights office last week reported that at least 304 civilians had been killed in air strikes in the north, particularly Tigray, since November. The UH Rights office also said that it has received reports of “306 rape incidents by Tigrayan forces in the Amhara region” between November 1 and Dec. 5, 2021.
A recent study by Mekelle University and the Regional Health Bureau showed that 120,000 women in a conservative Tigray came forward to report rape by either Ethiopian, Eritrean, or Amhara. Researchers say that the figure was only a tip of the iceberg, considering the sexual conservativism in Tigray into account. Tigray regional health bureau announced today that 7.3 % of the women who have been raped have been contracted with various sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and 5 % have been infected with HIV.
An estimated 9.4 million people in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray, Amhara, and Afar regions are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. Millions more are also suffering from severe food shortages, acute malnutrition is rising, disease and chronic illnesses are going untreated.
