Over Ethiopia's objections, UN rights body examines conflict

The U.N.’s main human rights body is opening a special session to discuss rights violations in conflict-torn Ethiopia

Switzerland Ethiopia Human Rights

The United Nations' main human rights body is opening a special session Friday to discuss rights violations in conflict-torn Ethiopia with many Western countries trying to set up an international team of experts to boost scrutiny of the situation despite a lack of support from African nations and the Ethiopian government's rejection of it as “politically motivated.”

The largely virtual one-day session of the Human Rights Council which was spearheaded by a request from European Union countries, seeks to ratchet up international attention on a conflict that has left tens of thousands dead since fighting erupted 13 months ago between Ethiopian government forces and fighters from the country's Tigray region.

The push from EU and other Western countries demonstrates their frustration that a joint investigation between Ethiopia's human rights commission and the U.N. human rights office, which culminated with a report last month, didn't go far enough. They have presented a draft resolution at the council that would create a three-person team with a one-year mandate to monitor and report on rights abuses in Ethiopia.

“Credible reports” of abuses continue, and the humanitarian crisis is growing, the U.N. deputy high commissioner for human rights, Nada al-Nashif, told representatives at Friday's council session.

Nearly 10 million people in northern Ethiopia face acute food insecurity, and at least 2 million have been forced to flee their homes. Humanitarian workers have little access and face hostility.

Meanwhile, between 5,000 and 7,000 people swept up under Ethiopia's new state of emergency remain detained, most of them Tigrayans, al-Nashif said: “Many are detained incommunicado or in unknown locations. This is tantamount to enforced disappearance, and a matter of very grave alarm.”

The government-created Ethiopian Human Rights Commission acknowledged in a statement this week that there was “value-added” in encouraging the joint investigation to continue, but said creation of a new body “is repetitive, counterproductive to ongoing implementation processes, and further delays redress for victims and survivors.”

Ethiopia's ambassador in Geneva Zenebe Kebede Korcho, said his government rejects the draft resolution the U.N. Human Rights Council is considering. At Friday’s session, he said his government “will not cooperate with any mechanism imposed on it" and called the resolution a “deliberate destabilization effort." The Africa group of nations at the council backed his position in a separate statement.

“This is a politically motivated and counterproductive move,” Korcho said in a phone interview late Thursday. “We never condone any human rights violation, whoever committed it. Ethiopia is determined to investigate and ensure accountability on the basis of its national and international obligations.”

He said the joint investigation had already sent up recommendations to Ethiopia's government and it had "established a high level inter-ministerial task force” in response to the report issued last month.

The joint report decried the “terrible toll on civilians” in the conflict in the Tigray region, and human rights violations and abuses committed by all sides. The rare collaboration by the U.N. human rights office with the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission was hampered by authorities’ intimidation and restrictions, and didn’t visit some of the war’s worst-affected locations.

The U.N. human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, has said all sides in the war in the Tigray region have committed brutal abuses that could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The investigation broke little new ground and confirmed in general the abuses described by witnesses throughout the war. But it gave little sense of scale, saying for example that the more than 1,300 rapes reported to authorities were likely far fewer than the real number.

The government has insisted the report cleared it of allegations that genocide was happening in Tigray.

The conflict erupted in November 2020 after a political falling-out between the Tigray forces that long dominated the national government and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s current government. Ethnic Tigrayans across the country have reported being targeted with arbitrary detentions, while civilians in Tigray have described gang rapes, human-caused famine and mass expulsions.

The Tigray forces now face a growing number of allegations of abuses after taking the fighting into Ethiopia's neighboring Amhara and Afar regions in recent months. The joint investigation didn't examine that period.

For a special council session to take place, the support of one-third of its 47 member states is required.

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Cara Anna in Nairobi, Kenya, contributed to this report.