After five months of a fragile truce, fighting resumed between the army of the Ethiopian government of Abiy Ahmed and Tigray rebels. Both sides blame each other for the resurgence of fighting last week, which prompted UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and other world leaders to call for a ceasefire and the need to start negotiations to restore peace and tackle the humanitarian crisis in Tigray.
Tigray crisis erupted in November 2020 when forces of the Federal government launched a fierce military attack against the northern province to punish Tigray’s ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), for conducting local elections in violation to Addis Ababa’s restrictions.
The fighting caused the death of an untold number of people and the displacement of around 2 million civilians before turning into ethnic fighting, which spread to many other provinces in Ethiopia. However, a truce was reached last March with the hope of starting negotiation and allowing the resumption of international aid to the impoverished province, which suffers a lack of basic services such as electricity, communications, and banking.
The World Food Programme (WFP) said last week that nearly half of the population in Tigray was suffering from a severe lack of food. “Hunger has deepened, rates of malnutrition have skyrocketed, and the situation is set to worsen as people enter peak hunger season until this year’s harvest in October,” it said.
Instead of starting negotiation to put an end to the people’s suffering, the two parties; Abiy Ahmed’s government and the TPLE differed over the mediator with full absence of the UN from the conflict that might engulf the country into fresh infighting if international efforts failed to stop the ongoing clashes.
Unfortunately, the international community, represented by the UN, has been satisfied by issuing some statements urging all parties to resort to negotiation to settle the dispute and allow entry of humanitarian aid to the besieged civilians.
Director of the World Health Organisation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has recently lashed out at the international community for neglecting the Tigray crisis, which he described as “the worst disaster on Earth”, wondering if the reason global leaders have not firmly responded to the crisis was for the “colour of the skin of the people of Tigray.” Ghebreyesus, a Tigrayan citizen himself, might make such remarks with the great sympathy the Western world has shown to the Ukrainian people in mind.
However, the international laxity in tackling the Tigray tragedy started in the very beginning of the crisis, i.e, long before the outbreak of the Ukrainian war. In its session held last year over the crisis, the UN Security Council failed to reach a consensus over taking firm action against Addis Ababa even with international allegations of its army committing war crimes in Tigray. At the time some United Nations Security Council members such as Russia and China refused to take action with the excuse of not interfering in the Tigray dispute considering it an internal Ethiopian affair.
The resumption of fighting between forces of the Nobel-peace laureate Ahmed and the TPLE forces proves that the March truce was a mere interval to arrange lines and resume fighting. This may be due to the absence of a clear effective political project to summon all parties around the negotiating table. Hence, the UN should send an envoy to Ethiopia in an attempt to end the ongoing hostilities and bring the two parties to unconditioned face-to-face negotiations as soon as possible.
