Sub-Saharan Africa (Report from the International Relations and Defence Committee)

Baroness Helic Excerpts

Wednesday 8th September 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Helic (Con)]

My Lords, this was one of the last reports of the International Relations and Defence Committee that I was a part of. It is good to be back in the presence of many of my colleagues and listening to their expertise once again. I add my thanks to the clerks and all who supported us in producing this report.

I intend to focus on one of the major changes that has taken place in the 15 months since the report was published and look at how our conclusions are challenged and confirmed by it. Our report largely described Ethiopia as a success story, whether as a fast-growing economy, a leader on climate change, or even as host of the African Union, including its peace and security department. But since November last year, peace and security have collapsed. Ethiopia is now in the midst of a horrific civil war. Thousands of people have been killed. Hundreds of thousands face famine. More than 5 million are in need. There is a de facto humanitarian blockade: less than 10% of humanitarian aid has got through since July. Press and aid organisations such as Doctors Without Borders have been banned.

The war fits many of the patterns the report outlined as typical of conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. It is a civil war, but one that does not respect borders and has outside interference, in this case from Eritrea. It is based in large part on old political grievances and the historical relationship, or lack of it, between the TPLF and other parts of Ethiopia.

The Ethiopian Government still claim that they are targeting only a small group of TPLF leaders, whom they brand terrorists. It has been clear for months that the violence goes far wider than that. This is an ethnic conflict, and the Tigrayan people face what the UN Secretary-General has called “unspeakable violence”. There are reports of massacres, of Tigrayans rounded up and sent to camps or slaughtered. The famine and hunger in Tigray are not accidental: they are deliberate —an attempt to starve Tigrayans into submission.

The Ethiopian President, sadly, has already used language to dehumanise those whom she described as opponents. When I hear it, I cannot avoid hearing echoes of the language that preceded genocide in the former Yugoslavia. No conflict is the same as another, but ethnic conflicts have features in common. Pramila Patten, the UN special representative on sexual violence in conflict, has described how

“In Tigray, women and girls are being subjected to sexual violence with a level of cruelty beyond comprehension.”


That is the fate of innocent women and girls, whose only crime was to be born of the wrong ethnicity—cruelty beyond comprehension, inflicted deliberately to terrorise and destroy a region and its inhabitants.

Ethnic violence and sexual violence go hand in hand. Ethnic violence and international inaction also seem to be linked. Some of the weaknesses in the African Union that the report identified have been cruelly exposed in Ethiopia: it is proved powerless when its host commits atrocities. Senior UN figures have been vocal in condemning the violence, but there seems little by way of concerted attempts at international mediation or diplomacy to end the conflict.

That includes from our Government. The integrated review identified Ethiopia as a key partner; it is our biggest recipient of aid in sub-Saharan Africa. We ought to be well positioned to influence this conflict positively and help to end it. Yet we seem to be more concerned with preserving relations with the Ethiopian Government and protecting trade than bringing our influence and pressure to bear on ending ethnic conflict. In seeking to become investment partners, we have perhaps forgotten that, as our report warned, partnership must be conditioned on human rights.

The absence of the international community and the proliferation of sexual violence are not separate issues. The Government have deployed one—I repeat, one—expert from the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative to the region. Perhaps my noble friend the Minister can update us on what progress they are making and what the likely next steps are. I fear that a single expert will not make much difference in preventing the horrors of which we have heard.

I know that the Government have decided not to seek to establish an international accountability mechanism for sexual violence. I regret that decision, but I recognise it. They must explain, though, how else impunity can be ended. How can sexual violence be prevented otherwise, in the absence of accountability? What accountability do the Government think there will be for the sexual violence committed in Tigray? If the answer is that some sort of ad hoc mechanism might be set up in the distant future to act, but probably only with the Ethiopian Government’s oversight, then I am afraid that we have totally failed to learn anything from past conflicts and are doomed to see sexual violence recur repeatedly in future.

I desperately want to believe that Ethiopia can be a success story once again. Our report highlighted its importance to the region and to the UK. Escalating conflict and violence, which threaten to draw in more and more of Ethiopia’s people and regions, is terrible news for Ethiopians and for Africa as a whole. One of the main thrusts of our recommendations was that the Government should be clearer about their strategies for sub-Saharan Africa—and make sure that they actually have strategies. I hope that my noble friend the Minister can tell us what the Government’s strategy is for working with allies in Africa and from around the world to end sexual violence and ethnic cleansing in Tigray, bring peace to Ethiopia and help to rebuild that country so that it can be a success and a partner once more.