► Has the security situation improved significantly since the peace agreement?
Signed on 2 November 2022 between the Federal Government of Ethiopia and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the cessation of hostilities was followed by“a noticeable and, so far, lasting reduction in conflict”, says the chairman of the International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia, Mohamed Chande Othman. The latter welcomed, Tuesday, March 21, the commitments made by the actors of the conflict in favor of human rights, the protection of civilians, the free access of humanitarian aid.
However, the situation in the regions affected by the war that began in November 2020 remains very worrying. The conflict has caused nearly 600,000 victims, according to estimates by the African Union mediator, Olusegun Obasanjo.
According to several NGOs, human rights violations in the region of Oromia and Tigray are still significant. There are reports of conflict-related sexual violence, extrajudicial executions, torture and kidnappings by Eritrean forces, allies of the Ethiopian federal army, the UN has warned.
In western Tigray, Amhara regional forces and interim authorities have forcibly evicted hundreds of Tigrayans in recent months. Government forces and armed groups are also committing serious violations in other parts of the country.
► Is the political situation on the way to normalization?
The Ethiopian government has appointed, this Thursday, March 23, a senior TPLF official, Getachew Reda, as head of the interim government of this northern region. The day before, Ethiopian MPs had already removed the TPLF from the list of terrorist entities on which it had appeared since May 6, 2021. Before the war, Getachew Reda was the information minister in the government led by Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn between 2012 and 2018.
These appeasement measures were taken the day after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to Addis Ababa. During his trip, the latter issued as a condition for the relaunch of the economic partnership with Ethiopia, interrupted due to the conflict in Tigray, the implementation of “reconciliation and accountability” in atrocities.
Barely returned to Washington, he went so far as to accuse, on Monday March 20, all the belligerents – government forces as well as rebels – of having committed war crimes, considering that many of these acts were neither “due to chance” in “an indirect consequence of the war”, but good “calculated and deliberate”. If Addis Ababa immediately rejected these accusations, it took note of the request of its American ally by reaching out to the TPLF.