In Parliament I highlighted the Genocide in Tigray and the continuing failure to bring to justice the men who used food as a weapon of war and have inflicted such suffering.
House of Lords
17th October 2024
Lord Alton of Liverpool
The House is indebted to Baroness Featherstone for initiating this important debate.
40 years ago, in November 1984, in the House of Commons, I challenged the Government’s policy on Ethiopia – which was still paying back more in debt than it was receiving in aid.
The catastrophe in Ethiopia was brought into our homes by the BBC’s Michael Buerk whose devastating firsthand accounts roused our consciences and indignation.
But now role the clock forward to 2020 and Ethiopia’s two years of war in Tigray and the situation today.
Professor Jan Nyssen of Ghent University –a leading European authority on the War – has put the number of war fatalities at 300,000 to 500,000, including 50,000 to 100,000 from fighting, 150,000 to 200,000 due to famine, and 100,000 from lack of medical attention.
Prof Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation says the current situation in Tigray has echoes of the catastrophic famine of 1984 in which as many as a million people died of starvation: “In 1984, the Ethiopian government wanted the world to believe that its revolution heralded a bright new era of prosperity, and foreign donors refused to believe warnings of starvation until they saw pictures of dying children on the BBC news.”
On Tuesday evening,while speaking at a meeting held here in the Palace I was struck, by the intervention of a Tigrayan, who believed it was a complete denial of media access to the region which enabled the regime to commit unspeakable atrocities. The meeting was held to discuss the report of the New Lines Institute –undertaken over two years and comprising 100,000 words. It concludes that the crime of genocide has occurred in Tigray.
This too has echoes from 1984.
Ethiopia was then ruled by the Marxist-Leninist pro Soviet Derg, ending in 1991 when its leader, Mengistu fled to Zimbabwe.
The House should note that an Ethiopian court found him guilty of genocide in absentia.
His regime was estimated to be responsible for the deaths of 500,000 to 2,000,000 Ethiopians, mostly during the famine.
He has never been brough to justice – a role model for others who commit atrocities with impunity.
In September 2023 I chaired a cross party Inquiry which published a report entitled ‘The Three Horsemen of the War in Tigray: Mass Killings, Sexual Violence and Starvation’. It called upon the UK and other actors to provide a response commensurate with the gravity and scale of what had occurred.
It made clear that starvation in Tigray is not an unintended consequence of the conflict but a method of war.
This finding is underlined in the New Lines Inquiry which concluded that there was an “intent to destroy Tigrayans as an ethnic group, in whole or in part.” That is one of the criteria for the crime of genocide – fuelled by torture, rape, mutilation, sexual violence. Another criterion is the prevention or birth graphically illustrated by the slogan that “A Tigrayan womb should never give birth.”
In October 2021, Mark Lowcock, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, commented on starvation in Tigray, including the attempts to block aid from the region: ‘There’s not just an attempt to starve six million people but an attempt to cover up what’s going on. What we’re seeing play out, I think, is potentially the worst famine the world has seen in the 21st century. (…) What’s happening is that Ethiopian authorities are running a sophisticated campaign to stop aid from getting in by, for example, making it impossible for truck drivers to operate by setting up checkpoints with officials and militia people, by preventing fuel from getting in. And what they are trying to do is starve the population of Tigray into subjugation or out of existence, but to avoid the opprobrium that would still be associated with a deliberate, successful attempt to create a famine taking the lives of millions of people.’
And in 2021 Pekka Haavisto, Finland’s Foreign Minister and a European Union Special Envoy to Ethiopia said that following his talks with prime Minister Abiy and other Ministers he believed that they were “going to wipe out the Tigrayans for 100 years”.
In response to our cross-party Inquiry, Tigrayan Advocacy and Development Association told us that: ‘The Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Amhara forces left a trail of scorched earth policy in which they deliberately burned houses, forests, and field crops ready for harvest; cut mango orchards, papaya trees, and plant nurseries; mixed grains with soil; looted and slaughtered livestock; and killed hundreds of protected wild animals. To ensure no harvest for the next season, ENDF, EDF, ASF, and Fano militia worked in tandem to block vital agricultural supplies, including seeds, destroyed, and looted farm tools and prevented farmers from tilling their land during the most crucial period.’
Martin Griffiths, the UN Under-Secretary-General for humanitarian affairs reported that at the height of the crisis 100 trucks a day of aid needed to get to Tigray, but only 10% had gained access in the past three months. The New Lines report highlights the shooting of truck drivers and the arrest and detention of drivers before they reached Tigray – as another way of preventing food from getting through.
ML, the restrictions of aid continued after the ceasefire and during informal truces. Although WFP and OCHA reported a resumption of aid deliveries at the beginning of April 2022, in reality, while they estimated that 115 food trucks would be needed every day throughout May, convoys were able to bring supplies into Tigray on only six occasions.
Which brings us to today.
In February 2024, Tigray officials warned of an unfolding famine that could equal or eclipse the 1984 famine. Ethiopia’s ombudsman said it had confirmed the starvation deaths of at least 351 people in Tigray and another 21 in the neighbouring Amhara region- as a result of drought and instability.
And once again the scale of this tragedy – lie that in Sudan -has been massively unreported.
In February, the Guardian reported that “humanitarians have mostly kept quiet, fearful of losing their operating licences.”
They went on to report that “In private, however, their language is stark. A recent memo circulated among aid agencies warns that ‘starvation and death are inevitable … in considerable numbers’ from March onwards in some areas of Tigray if aid does not reach them soon. Another says child malnutrition rates are as high as 47% in parts of Oromia, Ethiopia’s biggest region. Both documents were reviewed by the Guardian.”
On July 30th I asked the Minister to comment on reports that more than 2 million were reported to be at risk of starvation in Tigray and he responded that the “humanitarian community is targeting 3.8 million people in Tigray with food assistance over the July-September lean season to stave off hunger.” I was pleased to hear that the UK is leading a pledging conference and wonder how much of the $610 million has actually been raised and deployed.
But I end by asking once more what is being done to bring those responsible to justice?
The 1948 Convention on the Crime of Genocide places on us a duty to predict, prevent, protect and to punish this crime above all crimes. It and other atrocity crimes happen because we fail over and over again to do any of those things.
The UN mechanism to monitor the situation in Ethiopia ceased to exist last year, along with other regional mechanisms established to report on human rights violations in the Tigray war.
The Tigray War never ceased, despite the cessation of hostilities agreement. The weapons may have been silenced. However, the war on the people of Tigray continues by other means. And justice has not been done.
Tigray represents a humanitarian disaster, but it also represents an abject failure by the international community.
I hope and pray that in another 40 years there will not be a similar parliamentary debate asking why those with political power in 2024 did no better than those who went before them.
