Tigray, and The War on the Ethiopia

Sumber: dw.com

Starting Point

This conflict started on November 4, precisely when the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, made an order to carry out a military attack on regional troops in Tigray. This attack was not necessarily without reason. The reason the Prime Minister of Ethiopia carried out the attack was as an attack on military housing for government troops in Tigray. This escalation comes after the government of Abiy Ahmed, as well as some of the dominant political leaders in Tigray, have been in conflict for months. But there are some of those who say that this war started from the government system in Ethiopia. In 1994, Ethiopia had a federal system in which different ethnic groups controlled ten territories (BBC News Indonesia, 2020).

The Tigray People’s Liberation Front or commonly known as TPLF, one of the most potent political parties in Tigray, created a federal system so that different ethnic groups controlled ten regions. The TPLF leads the four-party coalition that had ruled Ethiopia since 1991, when the military regime was overthrown. With this coalition, Ethiopia is increasingly prosperous and far more stable, but there are concerns about human rights and democracy in the country will continue to emerge and this dissatisfaction has led to protests that ended in a government reshuffle which eventually made Abiy prime minister (BBC News Indonesia, 2020).

Abiy Ahmed is a liberal who founded a new party called the “Prosperity Party” which resulted in Abiy firing the government leader from Tigray who, according to Abiy, committed corruption and oppression. The Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 made Abiy’s name famous and made people who criticized Abiy nervous because the Tigray leader saw Abiy’s reforms as an attempt to centralize power and destroy the federal system in Ethiopia. Finally, this dispute arose in September because Tigray rejected the government’s decision. As a result, they make regional elections themselves (BBC News Indonesia, 2020).

This split began to escalate in October when the central government suspended funding and also cut ties with Tigray, which led the Tigray government to criticize the central government by saying that they were declaring war. Thousands of civilians have been displaced since November 4, when Abiy ordered military forces to attack Tigray. Hundreds more were reported killed, and information about the killing of civilians surfaced. The Ethiopian government declared a six-month state of national emergency in Tigray but the civil war that erupted there could last much longer (BBC News Indonesia, 2020).

The Continuation of the Conflict

The military action began on November 4, 2020 when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered a response to what he called a treason attack on federal army camps in Tigray. He blamed the region’s ruling party, the TPLF, which dominated Ethiopian politics for nearly three decades before he took office in 2018. After ten days of fighting, the United Nations warned of possible war crimes in Tigray. Ethiopia’s neighbor Eritrea, where Abiy signed the peace deal in 2018 that helped him win the Nobel Peace Prize, has reportedly deployed troops to help Ethiopians troops in Tigray. Two weeks later, government forces captured Tigray’s capital, Mekele. On November 28, 2020, Abiy declared the military operation complete, but the fighting continued.

This conflict continued until February 2021, when Amnesty International said Eritrean soldiers killed hundreds of civilians in the holy city of Axum in November. This caused so much debate that on March 23, 2021, Abiy acknowledged the presence of Eritrean troops and the parties concerned said that they massacred more than 100 civilians in Axum. Elections were then held in most of Ethiopia in June 2021, but not in Tigray. However, it didn’t stop Abiy as rebel leader until the rebels staged a surprise counterattack, recaptured Mekele in late June 2021, and then pushed into the neighboring Amhara and Afar regions. On July 2, 2021, the United Nations said that 400,000 people were on the verge of starvation in Tigray. The rebels rejected US calls to withdraw and on August 10, 2021, Abiy urged civilians to join the Ethiopian army.

The situation was further exacerbated by Abiy’s inauguration for another five-year term on October 4, 2021. Two weeks later, Ethiopian planes launched deadly strikes at Mekele and elsewhere in Tigray. In late October 2021, the Tigrayans, now joined by rebel groups from other areas, claimed control of two main towns in Amhara, just a few hundred kilometers north of Addis Ababa. A state of national emergency was declared on November 2, 2021. The following day a joint UN-Ethiopian report said all parties could commit crimes against humanity.

This culminated with Abiy arriving on the front lines on November 24, 2021, to personally direct the counterattack, official media said. In the first weeks of December 2021, the government said it had reclaimed a series of cities, including the UNESCO World Heritage site Lalibela. But this self-respect made a very fatal mistake were on December 20, 2021, the rebels said that they withdrew from Amhara and Afar and then retreated to Tigray. Two days later, the government said its troops would not advance further into the Tigray region, raising hopes of a possible cooling of the conflict. As 2021 draws to a close, the United Nations says dozens of civilians were killed in Tigray between December 19-24 in the most intense series of airstrikes in months.

Then on January 7, 2022, Addis Ababa announced an amnesty for several detained TPLF figures and prominent opposition leaders to promote national reconciliation. On the same day, 56 people were killed in a drone strike on a refugee camp in Dedebit, northwest of Tigray, according to rebels. Aid agencies suspended operations in the area. The United Nations says the intensification of air strikes is worrying.

Human Rights Violations

In the event of this war we can call it armed conflict in which there are frequent violations of human rights and in international humanitarian law, genocide, crimes against humanity, criminal acts, and crimes of aggression are included in gross violations of human rights. In the Tigray war conflict, there were several serious human rights violations, such as the killing of civilians, sexual crimes against women, many children starving, and also the detention of several people of certain ethnicities. This act violates human rights and is regulated in the 1949 Geneva Conventions and additional protocols I and II 1977 which stipulate that civilians should not be targeted by the military and are prohibited from sexually abusing women. (Univ. Bung Hatta Repository, n.d.)  

The Role of International Organizations

With this war, many people left and fled to other countries, many of them crossed the Sudanese border through the Kassala border, Hamdayet, but too many refugees came and crossed the Hamdayet transit center’s capacity. UNHCR also un created a new refugee camp in the state of Tunaydbah-Gedaref in January 2021 and more than 18,000 Ethiopians are now housed in the settlement of Tunaydbah, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is working with government agencies and local partners to provide rescue assistance lives to the thousands of women, children and men from Tigray who arrived in other parts of Ethiopia and neighboring countries in search of safety. Shelters, food, and water as well as other relief items – including blankets, sleeping mats, solar lamps, mosquito nets, and tarpaulins. During the COVID-19 pandemic, information campaigns on COVID-19 prevention, health checks for migrants, and distribution of soap and face masks were carried out. 

One of the efforts made by UNCHR is to cooperate with A protection from sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA), providing a workshop that was held in the Tunaydbah settlement and targeting 40 network-based protection Public. The aim is to raise refugees’ awareness about sexual exploitation and abuse, where and how to report the incident, and also to reaffirm the zero-tolerance policy of UNCHR. The verification exercise for “Persons with Special Needs” (PSN) begins in Tunaydbah. To date, household-level verification has been completed for more than 1,350 individuals in Tunaydbah using partner offline data lists. Similar exercises were also planned for Um Hakuba. A series of awareness-raising on violence gender-based activities (GBV) are also held in refugee camps with the aim to raise awareness of refugees on gender-based violence and are also available services for poor people, and to encourage them to be more active in protecting fellow human beings from gender violence. UNHCR protection team brings in social workers from HIS partners to provide counseling, protection, needs assessment, and others from the results obtained, there are around 37% of refugees people with special needs and most of them are women and children, so UNHCR with its partners established a safe room for children and women. HIS and EECMY partners will work with community members to form committees on child protection and protection/GBV, besides that, UNHCR also provides a workshop for refugees to know the risks of forced transfer of children to the extent necessary there is an intervention in response to this risk but it is also necessary to investigate family and reunification.

Continuous efforts are taken to improve protection in all sectors. Granting refugee status, UNHCR also issued- identity cards for refugees who are still refugees and have not returned to their countries of origin. Status granting For refugees, this is done by conducting interviews, which are then determined by UNHCR whether it is appropriate or not as a refugee, accepted it will be given refugee status by UNHCR the function of granting status to refugees is to refugees have the right to work as well as part of the socio-economic status of refugees in the receiving community and in line with the UNHCR commitments under the Global Compact on refugees, with individual registration and documentation, can strengthen its status towards the government of the refugee camps.

Conclusion

In the Middle East, war is some kind of unavoidable event. Be it cyber war, or even civil war. In this case, the conflict which started by Abiy Ahmed which resulted into an ongoing civil war. Many Civilians have died in this battle which creates anger in most people by imposing that it’s violating the humanitarian law. Many people including its natives are already leaving its country, seeking refugees among other countries. The world organizations, such as UNHCR was already taking actions, such as creating camps for the refugees themselves while still holding the defense lines against the rebels. In the end, the war still continued up until this point and many casualties are still coming until the rebels will stop their movements.

Author: M. Nur Wajih Rafi’i & Angela Irene (IRB News – Peace & Conflict)

Editor: Sarah Putri Haryadi, Hafsyah Azzahra, Jennifer Clara Aprilia & Viranty Yulia Putri

Reference 

A, A. (2021, September 16). HRW: Serangan terhadap Pengungsi Eritrea di Tigray adalah ‘Kejahatan Perang.’ VOA Indonesia. Retrieved September 15, 2022, from https://www.voaindonesia.com/a/hrw-serangan-terhadap-pengungsi-eritrea-di-tigray-adalah-kejahatan-perang-/6230932.html

A, V. (2020, November 17). UNHCR: Lebih dari 25.000 Orang Ethiopia Mengungsi ke Sudan. VOA Indonesia. Retrieved September 15, 2022, from https://www.voaindonesia.com/a/unhcr-lebih-dari-25-000-orang-ethiopia-mengungsi-ke-sudan/5665686.html

BBC News Indonesia. (2020, November 20). Krisis Tigray di Ethiopia: Apa yang terjadi? – penjelasan dalam versi pendek, sedang, dan panjang. Retrieved September 15, 2022, from https://www.bbc.com/indonesia/dunia-54996885

KAJIAN YURIDIS PELANGGARAN HAK ASASI MANUSIA (HAM) TERHADAP KORBAN KONFLIK BERSENJATA NON INTERNASIONAL DI TIGRAY, ETHIOPIA DITINJAU DARI HUKUM HUMANITER INTERNASIONAL – Univ. Bung Hatta Repository. (n.d.). Retrieved September 15, 2022, from http://repo.bunghatta.ac.id/8097/