Spanish Médecins Sans Frontières aid worker killed in Ethiopia
On Friday, a vehicle carrying three Médecins Sans Frontières workers was attacked in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. All the aid workers were killed, including Spanish MSF emergency coordinator Maria Hernandez. Along with Hernández were Yohannes Halefom Reda and Tedros Gebremariam, both Ethiopians and members of the organisation.
MSF has assured that they will not stop "until what happened is clarified", recalling that the workers were "helping the population in a region ravaged by the armed conflict".
"We lost contact with them and the car they were travelling in yesterday afternoon, and this morning the vehicle was found empty, and a few metres away, their lifeless bodies," MSF said on Friday afternoon. Due to the conflict in Tigray, many aid workers from different humanitarian organisations have been deployed to the region to help people.
Ethiopia is a hotspot of instability in the Horn of Africa that threatens to become one of the world's biggest humanitarian crises. The wide variety of ethnic groups and their clashes with each other constitute the biggest challenge to peace in the country. At the moment, it is the Tigrins who are suffering the most from this war, which has caused the death and forced displacement of thousands of people. Among these refugees are 720,000 children, according to UNICEF figures. The UN agency also points out the problems they face, such as abuse, exploitation and disease. In the case of girls, they are subjected to sexual violence.
In addition to the exodus of refugees and the killing of civilians, other massacres include widespread rape, looting and blockades of humanitarian aid by national forces. Mark Lowcock, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, told Reuters that government troops were "starving" Trigiri citizens. The Ethiopian government has also banned access to the media, creating a media blackout on the crimes it is committing against the people of Trigay. For all these reasons, many experts point to the possible ethnic cleansing taking place in the Ethiopian region. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warned last March that the acts in Tigray constitute "war crimes and crimes against humanity".
General elections were held in Ethiopia this week amid conflict between the national armed forces and rebel militias in the Tigray region. Although the elections were held on 21 June, the results have not yet been announced. These elections have been postponed twice since August 2020. The first postponement was due to the coronavirus pandemic, and the second due to logistical problems. This is also the first election for Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali, the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
Abiy Ahmed is expected to win the elections due to the situation of the other political parties. The Ethiopian opposition is very divided, and some of its candidates have been banned from running and others have even been imprisoned. Moreover, with its warlike actions in Tigray, it has won the support of many sectors of the country that condemn the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF). On the other hand, it is worth noting the low turnout of citizens. Of Ethiopia's approximately 110 million people, making it the second most populous country in Africa, only 37 million registered to vote, when the electoral board expected 50 million.
As citizens wait for the results, international powers and organisations have spoken out about the elections. Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, said that the electoral process "has not been free and fair for all Ethiopians". Blinken also stressed "the context of serious instability" in the country and the detention of some political leaders.
The EU has been less harsh than Washington, calling for "national dialogue" to seek peaceful solutions. On the other hand, a British government communiqué condemned the imprisonment of opposition members and the "harassment of media representatives". Like Brussels, it supports 'Ethiopia's transition to more democratic governance in which there is full engagement with the country's diverse population'.
In contrast, the African Union has praised Ethiopia's parliamentary elections, saying they were "orderly, peaceful and credible". Recently, the pan-African organisation set up a commission of enquiry into the events in Tigray. However, since the conflict began in November 2020, the AU has backed the government in Addis Ababa, declaring that its military actions were "legitimate".