Ethiopia

Residents of Ethiopia’s Amhara region say government troops went door-to-door in the town of Merawi and murdered dozens of civilians.

The anti-American BRICS economic and security coalition will welcome five new members on January 1: a country in a severe economic crisis, another openly defaulting on its sovereign debt, and two countries embroiled in a proxy war against each other.

Ethiopia on Tuesday became the third African nation in three years to default on its sovereign debt, following Zambia and Ghana.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report on Monday accusing Saudi Arabian border guards of systematically murdering hundreds of Ethiopian migrants between March 2022 and June 2023. HRW noted that if the allegations are proven, they would constitute a “crime against humanity.”

The international aid news outlet the New Humanitarian reported on Monday that the top World Food Program (WFP) officials in Ethiopia resigned last week following an investigation into the disappearance of critical food aid in that country, believed to later resurface on the black market.

Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang vowed on Friday that his country would invest heavily in the “post-war reconstruction” of Ethiopia, which recently exited a two-year war between its government, supported by neighboring Eritrea, and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

Internally-displaced persons (IDPs) in Ethiopia’s Tigray region staged massive demonstrations on Tuesday to protest delays in returning to their homes, the continued presence of hostile tribal militia forces on their lands, and the suspension of humanitarian aid.

Ethiopia issued an incensed and lengthy statement on Tuesday condemning the U.S. State Department and Secretary of State Antony Blinken in particular for determining that it had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during its recent civil war.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken lamented in remarks to Ethiopian press this week that America was “insufficiently vocal” about past human rights abuses in the country, appearing to apologize for the events that preceded the 2020 civil war in that country.

The 52nd session of the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) convened this week — with 70 percent of the membership consisting of autocracies, dictatorships, and other non-democratic nations.

Ethiopia’s Addis Standard on Wednesday reported that dozens of civilians have been killed in clashes in the Oromo Special Zone of the Amhara region.

World Health Organization (W.H.O.) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus revealed on Wednesday that he had received notice that his uncle in Ethiopia had been “murdered” in a massacre that resulted in the deaths of at least 50 other people in his village.

The White House on Monday announced $55 billion in economic aid, health care, and security support for Africa. President Joe Biden hosted a meeting for African leaders that began on Tuesday, during which the White House promised more details of the massive benefits package would be divulged.

President Joe Biden’s advisers have granted temporary legal status to roughly 30,000 Ethiopians now living in the United States.

A bizarre opinion column published by the New York Times on Monday lamented that the American government is currently not funding abortions in Ethiopia – a country ravaged by a genocidal civil war where basic health care is increasingly difficult to access, the World Health Organization (W.H.O) warned this week.

Civilians in Ethiopia — both within the blockaded northern region of Tigray and throughout the country — are facing rape, executions, torture, beatings, and the abduction of their children to be used as child soldiers, harrowing reports out of the country revealed this week.

The New York Times (NYT) reported on Saturday that the Biden administration secretly sent a team of diplomats to the Tigray region of Ethiopia last month in an unsuccessful attempt to negotiate a halt to a devastating civil war that threatens to destabilize the entire Horn of Africa.

Ethiopian Deputy Prime Minister Demeke Mekonnen, who also serves as foreign minister, devoted very little of his address to the U.N. General Assembly on Saturday to discussing the brutal two-year civil war that heated up again over the past few weeks. He spent no time at all responding to the allegations of war crimes and human rights atrocities against both his government and its adversaries.

The Cabinet Ministry of Ukraine announced recently that it would reimburse the government of Ethiopia, and neighboring Somalia, for about $11.4 million worth of wheat, Mogadishu’s Shabelle Media reported on Tuesday.

A spokesman for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) – the Marxist political party and armed militia that has been fighting an insurgency against the Ethiopian central government since November 2020 – claimed on Tuesday that neighboring Eritrea launched a “full-scale offensive” across the Ethiopian border into the Tigray region.

Ethiopia’s civil war between the federal government and the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) is not the only deadly ethnic conflict raging in that turbulent country. On Friday, residents of the Oromiya region reported digging mass graves for at least 42 villagers slaughtered by a rival tribal militia.

The Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), an Ethiopian insurgent militant group, claimed on Thursday that Ethiopian federal forces and allied Eritrean troops launched a “massive four-pronged offensive” against the northwestern part of the Tigray region.

World Health Organization (W.H.O.) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters Thursday that the government of his native Ethiopia is blocking him from sending money to or even communicating with family in the blockaded Tigray region, lamenting, “I don’t even know who is dead or who is alive.”

The government of Ethiopia and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the nation’s former ruling party now functioning as a rebel militia, confirmed that a truce that began in March had broken with major hostilities erupting on Tuesday.

The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) said on Sunday it received $41 million in funding from the U.S. government for emergency aid in Mozambique.

The director-general of the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, accused heads of state on Wednesday of racism for failing to address the ongoing “manmade” humanitarian disaster in his native Ethiopia, saying that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is getting more attention due to the skin color of Ethiopians.

America celebrates its independence on the Fourth of July, while captive people around the world hope they might one day celebrate their own.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The heavily armed men appeared around the small farming village in Ethiopia’s Oromia region, frightening residents already on edge after recent clashes between government troops and rebels.

A former U.N. employee alleged on Tuesday that the Ethiopian government intentionally prevented its representatives from declaring an official famine last year in the country’s northern Tigray region, which has been devastated by Ethiopia’s ongoing civil war, the media platform Devex reported.

The latest Ethiopian civil war has caused unexpected casualties since it started in November 2020, including the destruction or damage of several ancient Christian churches built into rock walls in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region, the Conversation, a non-profit media outlet, reported on Tuesday.

The Russian Embassy in Ethiopia’s official Twitter page issued a statement on Tuesday thanking Ethiopia’s government and its citizens for their “solidarity and support” of Russia’s latest war with Ukraine.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a joint report on Wednesday in which they alleged Ethiopia’s federal government has perpetrated “ethnic cleansing … crimes against humanity and war crimes” in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region as part of a civil war between Addis Ababa and the separatist militia known as the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

No food from international aid groups has entered northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region since Addis Ababa and Tigrayan separatists announced a truce — specifically to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid to Tigray — in their civil war on March 25, World Health Organization (W.H.O.) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday.

Ethiopia’s 16-month-long civil war observed a ceasefire on Friday after separatist militants from Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region agreed to a “cessation of hostilities” proposed by Addis Ababa 24 hours earlier to allow humanitarian aid delivery to Ethiopia, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Daniel Bekele, chief of the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, said on Friday that a string of highly unusual and little-discussed police raids this month took at least eight Ethiopian government officials into custody, implicity for human rights violations.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) sent a letter to President Joe Biden on Thursday demanding his administration issue an assessment of  accusations of genocide against the government of Ethiopia and demanding Biden do more to address the brutal civil war in that country.