Ethiopia: Humanitarian and Political Situation

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

Thank you for chairing the debate, Mr Bone. I thank the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) for his very good work as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for Ethiopia and Djibouti, which does what all-party groups on different countries should do, making sure that Parliament takes issues seriously, debates them and sees what we can do to assist, if appropriate.

I share the view of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) that it is disappointing that such a small number of Members are here today. This is a major conflict and humanitarian disaster, and there are huge issues at stake, but far too often, when issues relate to African conflicts or anywhere in Africa, there is very little interest across this House. Those of us who are here have to try to make up for that.

I also thank the hon. Member for Strangford for his kind words earlier about intervention in human rights issues. I am pleased he got the text this morning about the dress code that both of us must follow in the debate. He is the most assiduous attender of debates raising issues of human rights and religious freedoms.

There are many histories of Ethiopia, and they are absolutely fascinating. It is the one country in Africa that was never colonised. It is the one country in Africa that is the beacon for African unity, as the centre for the Organisation of African Unity. It is the beacon for so much else about African culture and civilisation. When it was invaded by the fascist Government of Italy in the 1930s, people in this country took up the cause very strongly, and no one more so than Sylvia Pankhurst, the great suffragette. She ended up going to Ethiopia in, I think, 1942 and spent the rest of her life there, extolling the history and culture of Ethiopia. Indeed, there is a street named after her in Addis Ababa. Not only did she spend a lot of time in prison in HMP Holloway in my constituency, but she ended up in Ethiopia with a street named after her. We should be proud of her contribution.

The history of the wars of Ethiopia and the famine and the poverty is absolutely huge. There are obviously huge strategic issues facing Ethiopia—not just food supply and food production, but water supply, energy supplies and so on. I hope an agreement can be reached with Sudan and Egypt so that Ethiopia does not end up with another conflict further down the road about the use of the Nile waters. That has to be resolved. The rivers are for everybody. Water has to be for everybody. The war with Eritrea was brutal, bloody and violent and ended up with greater Ethiopia losing its access to the sea. That war eventually concluded, but with a massive loss of life.

The conflict that is now going on with Tigray, and to some extent with the Oromo people as well, is almost a copy of what went on over Eritrea. It is devastating when a civil war is going on in a country and massive human rights abuses are taking place—probably on all sides in this conflict. I endorse everything that my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) said about rape being used as a weapon of war. Rape is systematically carried out against women in Tigray.

There is also the rise of racism in Addis Ababa against anyone from Tigray or anyone speaking the lingua franca of Tigray. It is absolutely appalling. We have witnessed hurt and horror, and beatings and imprisonments, and the Ethiopian Government have apparently refused to allow international bodies into Tigray and other places to investigate those human rights abuses. I hope that is going to change.

What my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham said is very important. If evidence is not collected very quickly, it will be concealed and will disappear. I am not saying that it will go altogether, but it will be much harder for prosecutions to take place down the line. I hope we in this Chamber today can appeal to the Ethiopian Government to allow the United Nations Human Rights Council, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch unfettered access to all aspects of society there. They have not taken sides in the conflict. They have not issued a view on the conflict. They have issues a demand for peace and the protection of people against systematic sexual violence.

There is a danger that, following the retreat that the Tigrayan forces performed after they could not get completely into Addis and went back to Tigray, there will be a push for the Ethiopian armed forces, which are huge and considerable, to go in and completely occupy Tigray. That is a temptation that I am sure the military commanders are looking at. The danger is that, once they occupy it, they may not want to leave, and that could be the spark that leads to conflict in the future. There has to be a coming together of some sort and an understanding of the federal nature of the country.

As the hon. Member for Tewkesbury pointed out, this is a humanitarian disaster of massive proportions. The figures are horrendous: 9 million people are short of food and at least 400,000 are starving. There is a lack of medical supplies, and trucks are being prevented from getting into Tigray with food, medicine and all the other necessities of daily life for the people of Tigray. Many will die as a result, and children’s growth and development will be stunted. The resentment will be there for all their lives towards those who stopped the necessary aid getting in.

Solving this conflict also helps prevent the conflicts of the future. There has to be an appeal for a ceasefire as soon as one can be arranged. The UN has to perform well on this, because the history of international organisations and Ethiopia is mixed at best. The League of Nations failed to prevent the Italian invasion in the 1930s and that is not forgotten by many people. UN support for problems in Ethiopia has been patchy at various times. If the UN and the African Union are to mean anything, they must be able to promote dialogue, debate and discussion that not only bring about an immediate ceasefire and get urgent aid into all parts of the country that need it as quickly as possible, but lay the ground for a peaceful future where there is not just another war coming down the line.

I am not opposed to the aid going in—I hope we can give more aid—but aid will work only if there is a political settlement on the ground that allows it to be delivered to the people who need it. Otherwise, we will have the ridiculous picture of aid stacks being built up in various places that simply cannot get to people not that far away who desperately need them. I hope we can make that clear.

All conflicts have to be resolved politically in the end. In every war, when it finally exhausts itself and the killing fields become so full that people start to look for an alternative, that alternative has to be found. Can we not do that and find it more quickly?

We should also look at the arms supplies that are getting into Ethiopia. There should be a complete arms embargo on Ethiopia, which should extend to other countries that are supplying the conflict, either through Eritrea or other places. Particular arms sources appear to be Turkey, the United Arab Emirates—to which the UK is a big arms supplier—Russia and other countries. There has to be an arms embargo. It will not stop all the fighting and bring about peace tomorrow, but it will help reduce the levels of conflict in the future. I hope we are able to get that message across in the debate today.

Please let us have a ceasefire and a future for all the people—people in Ethiopia, the Oromo people, and people in Tigray and elsewhere in the region. We should pay far more attention to issues facing people in Africa than we do. If this conflict had been in almost any other continent in the world, this hall would have been full, but it is not. I am sorry about that. Those of us who are interested and who care—including all those here today—will ensure that the issue does not go away and we will keep it at the forefront as best we can.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.