Ethiopia: Humanitarian and Political Situation

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Europe (Chris Heaton-Harris)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone; I think it is the first time for me, making it the first time for you too. As the hon. Member for Wellingborough, you are my near neighbour and I often walk in your shadow locally, so it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir.

[Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)]

Minister, flattery will get you nowhere.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I was hoping that flattery would get me somewhere—but anyway.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) for securing this debate and I pay tribute to him for all his work as the long-standing chair of the all-party parliamentary group for Ethiopia and Djibouti. I thank him for his level-headed speech and his wise counsel on this matter. Like the hon. Member for Dundee West (Chris Law), I remember—I might have been following him around, probably on a different track—running for the world at a certain point in the mid-1980s, when passions were aroused. It is a pleasure that this debate has been sponsored by the Bob Geldof of Westminster and, as I say, I thank my hon. Friend for his leadership on this issue.

I am also grateful to other right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions today. I will try to respond to as many of the points that have been raised as possible. Although the hon. Members for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq), for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) and for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) are no longer present, I will try to answer their questions too. I thank everyone who has taken part in the debate.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned ongoing conversations this week on matters that normally fall without my portfolio. He is correct that I am the Minister for Europe. The Minister for Africa would have very much liked to participate in this debate, but she is currently travelling in the region on ministerial duties, so it is my pleasure to respond to the hon. Gentleman and others on behalf of the Government.

The situation in Ethiopia remains of great concern. As a couple of hon. Members have said, there have been some welcome signs of progress over recent weeks, including the December withdrawal of Tigrayan forces back to their own region, and Prime Minister Abiy’s recent decision to release high-profile political prisoners and begin a process of national dialogue. There is a window of opportunity to begin peace talks and bring about a peaceful end to this conflict, which I know my hon. Friend the Minister for Africa is stressing during her visit to the region this week. I hope that visit will demonstrate the UK Government’s commitment to ending this crisis and working hard with our partners in the region.

Although the developments that I have mentioned are tentative steps towards de-escalation, they are still encouraging. However, we know that, as right hon. and hon. Members have said, fighting and atrocities continue to take place, and the conflict continues to take its toll on civilians.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

During her visit, will the Minister for Africa be able to speak directly to the Ethiopian Government to press for them to allow unfettered access to the UN, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, so they can examine the human rights abuses that have been so widely reported in this awful conflict?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question. I honestly do not know the answer, but I assume that, if we are able to, we will be using every conversation that we have to raise those concerns. This is the first opportunity I have had to debate with the right hon. Gentleman. His presentation was salient and sensible; I very much appreciated the points he made in his speech. I know he is very committed to this issue and led a debate on it last November, which I read with great interest. I promise him I have taken all his points very seriously indeed.

As the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) mentioned, on 8 January an airstrike near a camp for internally displaced persons in Tigray reportedly killed 56 people. It goes without saying that we believe that all sides of the conflict must respect international human rights and humanitarian law, and prioritise the protection of civilians—a point that we have made repeatedly. I am quite certain that the Minister for Africa will reinforce that point during her visit to the region in the coming days.

We also reiterate our call for Eritrea to withdraw its forces from Ethiopia immediately. They are a source of instability, a threat to Ethiopia’s territorial integrity and a barrier to achieving the lasting peace that everyone here has talked about, which we all want to see, and which I am absolutely sure the people on the ground want to see.

Right now, 7 million people in Tigray and the neighbouring regions need humanitarian assistance. At least 400,000 people are living in famine-like conditions, more than in the rest of the world combined. The risk of widespread loss of life is high, with young children, as many hon. Members have pointed out, likely to bear the brunt.

The response to the humanitarian crisis continues to be hampered by the lack of security. Shockingly, 24 humanitarian workers have been killed in Tigray since the start of the conflict, including staff working on UK-funded programmes. It is right that we take a moment to remember them and honour the sacrifice they made in support of the innocent victims of this conflict. Tragically, humanitarian access to Tigray has been at a standstill since 14 December and hospitals in the region report that they are out of medicine. I repeat the Government’s call to all sides to provide unfettered humanitarian access.

Let me be clear. There is no military solution to the situation in Ethiopia. It is a man-made crisis, caused by human actions and human decisions. The UK Government have been clear from the outset that the fighting must end. All sides must put down their weapons. A political dialogue is the only route to a lasting peace, and with it the return of stability and prosperity to Ethiopia. We have made these points repeatedly to the Ethiopian Government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.

The British Ambassador to Ethiopia reiterated those messages during meetings with the Ethiopian President on 12 November last year. He travelled to the capital of the Tigray region on 25 November to urge the TPLF to stop fighting and engage in peace talks. The Minister for Africa will use her visit to the region to discuss the potential path to peace with various counterparts. It is a principle of the African Union—which, let us not forget, is based in Addis Ababa—that African solutions should be found to African problems. It is absolutely right that African partners are taking the lead in ending this conflict.

[Sarah Champion]

In the last debate we had, in November, I was told that the African nations were not able to get access to gather data and to see exactly what was going on, to try to stabilise the area. Will the Minister be able to get back to see whether that is now happening, or whether there is more that the UK could do to facilitate that?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. I will write to her if I may. I will investigate and probably get the Minister for Africa to write to her with the answer to that question.

[Jim Shannon]

I know this is not in the Minister’s portfolio; none the less, I put it on the record in my contribution. I specifically asked for help in relation to persecution, violence against churches and the destruction of churches, and I mentioned that people do not have the opportunity to worship their God in the way that they wish to. I know that the Government certainly had a policy, which I welcomed and I am pleased to see it in place, but may I gently ask that the Minister responsible—perhaps the Minister here today will pass it on to her—focuses on that area, albeit not taking away from all the things happening elsewhere?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I will happily pass that message on to my hon. Friend the Minister for Africa, who has already spoken to Kenyan partners about Ethiopia during her trip to the region this week. The UK Government actively support those regional efforts to bring peace, particularly the work of the African Union envoy, Obasanjo, and Kenyan President Kenyatta. The Minister for Africa has also discussed the need for dialogue, humanitarian access, and accountability for human rights violations with the UN, the US and all other Security Council members.

Alongside our political work, the UK Government have been at the forefront of the humanitarian response to the conflict. We have provided over £76 million in response to the crisis. That includes life-saving food aid, safe drinking water, medical care, sanitation, and nutritional supplies. The conflict has tragically, as outlined in many speeches this afternoon, been characterised from the outset by appalling human rights abuses and violations, including mass detentions, killings and torture. There have been intolerable levels of sexual violence committed by all sides, and tackling sexual violence in conflicts around the globe is one of the Foreign Secretary’s top priorities.

In November, the Foreign Secretary stepped up the UK’s global leadership on tackling conflict-related sexual violence and violence against women and girls. As part of that, she announced a package of more than £22 million of new funding for initiatives on the frontline to tackle that type of violence.

Last week, the Minister for Africa met representatives from international NGOs to discuss the situation in Ethiopia and the impact of sexual violence there. The reports that she heard, I am told, were harrowing. The UK is delivering essential services to survivors and those at risk of sexual violence in northern Ethiopia. Our programmes provide victims with critical support and care, including support for emergency mental health services. Alongside our partners in Ethiopia, we are taking forward the recommendations made by our preventing sexual violence initiative’s team of experts, a point raised by the Chair of the Select Committee and others, to help to strengthen accountability and hold perpetrators of sexual violence to account.

We have also strongly supported the joint investigation into human rights abuses and violations during the conflict conducted by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission. We welcome the Ethiopian Government’s creation of a ministerial taskforce to take forward recommendations from the joint report, and we call on all parties to the conflict to act decisively to respond to its findings.

At a special session of the Human Rights Council on 17 December, we backed a resolution that created an international commission of experts to investigate allegations of violations in Ethiopia. We urge all parties to engage with the commission. We will continue to press for the justice and accountability that the situation demands.

The Government are under absolutely no illusions about the gravity of the humanitarian and political situation in Ethiopia, but we are hopeful that the progress made over the last few weeks can act as a platform for peace. The Government will use every opportunity to offer the UK’s support for work towards a peaceful solution. In the meantime, we will continue to push for humanitarian access and to provide humanitarian aid to those in need, and we will keep pushing all sides to end this terrible conflict peacefully. We will not turn away from those who need our help.