Tigray Province: Ceasefire Agreement

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Browne of Ladyton]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of (1) the 2 November ceasefire agreement between the government of Ethiopia and Tigrayan forces, (2) how ceasefire terms will be monitored and verified, and (3) how likely it is that foreign forces will now leave the Tigray Province in Ethiopia.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, yesterday I met Rita Kashay, a 25 year-old UK citizen of Irob heritage who has been working for the past three months in Tigrayan refugee camps in Sudan, taking and preserving testimony from women affected by conflict-related sexual violence. The Irob people are an ethnic minority group who live in a predominantly highland-mountainous area of the same name in north-eastern Tigray. The testimonies that Rita has taken record the existential threats and catastrophic humanitarian suffering that her people have endured at the hands of Eritrean and Ethiopian forces: the massacres, kidnappings, rapes, lootings and abductions committed against her people since the beginning of the war in Tigray in November 2020. While celebrating Christmas in January 2021, 10 members of her own family were massacred. Two years ago, in the absence of a systemic mechanism to collect and preserve this evidence for a day of reckoning, she gave up her studies to do so. For a while, she has been the only person working on this. Due to the unrest in Sudan, other investigators left.

Rita spoke at the recent AU-EU meeting in the Gambia on human rights in Africa. As a result, she was openly bullied by the Eritrean and Ethiopian delegates. Despite the dangers to her own security and the bullying, this brave young woman continues in her defence of the human rights of her people. In the meantime, she has achieved her master’s degree in chemical engineering. She is a hero and an excellent role model. I note her work and say her name in your Lordships’ House to remind us that, although much of today’s today will centre on the cessation of hostilities agreement reached in South Africa on 2 November between the Government of Ethiopia and the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, and the prospects of its implementation, we must not forget what has happened since November 2020.

The last two years have seen an embarrassing and tragic failure of the international community in its response to the war in Tigray. I say this not to absolve the parties to the conflict of their responsibilities for initiating and prosecuting the war in Tigray: they are responsible and should be held accountable. However, we must look in the mirror and ask how the international community—including countries with influence such as our own, and international organisations such as the African Union, the European Union and the United Nations—could allow such a war to continue without effective steps to end it.

We have heard the mantra “African solutions for African problems” many times over the past two years. These solutions should not have allowed the unfettered prosecution of a suicidal war, while the international community meekly sheathed the tools that it may have to stop the fighting and protect civilians. The losses on all sides of this conflict are staggering—perhaps up to a million if we count combatant and civilian casualties, making this the most deadly and destructive war this century. War crimes on a vast scale have been committed, and ethnic cleansing and genocide inflicted on Tigray by the Ethiopian Government, its allies and Eritrea. All this is confirmed by the only reasonable interpretation of the International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia in its report presented at the UN in September.

That said, we now have an agreement to “silence the guns”, which has been supplemented by the commanders’ agreement of 12 November, signed in Kenya. It is apparent that these agreements will be extremely challenging to implement, and the risks of a renewed conflict are real. Today, we must all ask what we, our Government and other countries and organisations can do to strengthen the framework for peace and accountability, or we will be judged as having utterly failed millions of Tigrayans and the people of Ethiopia.

Accordingly, I ask the Minister what assessment His Majesty’s Government have made of, first, the cessation of hostilities ceasefire agreement between the Government of Ethiopia and the Tigrayan forces, agreed on 2 November, and its supplements. Do the Government share the US State Department’s view of 12 November that

“Work remains, but progress is promising and gives the Ethiopian people reason for hope”,


or is there a more cautious read in the FCDO and No. 10, based on the numerous credible reports of breaches of the terms of the peace deal and the fact that the conflict in Tigray continues, and that no humanitarian aid has yet been delivered? I wrote those words last night, but I saw on Twitter this afternoon from ICRC Ethiopia that two Red Cross trucks had made their way to Mekelle with medical aid in them.

Secondly, how will the ceasefire terms be monitored and verified? This is the issue that worries me most, considering that the stated mechanism for verification includes only 10 individuals without any ability to monitor the situation on the ground in Tigray. Given the scale of this war, is it beyond the international community’s resources to gather and deploy a robust capability to police, monitor and verify observance and breaches of the terms of this peace accord?

Thirdly, what is the likelihood that foreign forces will now leave Tigray province, even though these forces—let us name them: the Eritrean army, which has been responsible for some of the worst atrocities in the war, and the Amhara militia—are not even mentioned explicitly in any of these agreements? We have repeatedly called for Eritrean troops permanently to leave Tigray, but they remain. If Eritrea fails to honour the agreements in this respect, what will be the consequences? US voice are calling for sanctioning President Afwerki and introducing UN Security Council resolutions condemning Eritrea. What do we plan to do in such circumstances?

Considering these assessments, to enhance prospects for implementation of a cessation of hostilities and to ensure that humanitarian aid flows now, that perpetrators of war crimes are held accountable and that reconstruction of Tigray is made possible, I encourage the following steps, which are based on the premise of keeping the leverage we now have and increasing it where possible. Principal among them is withholding economic, military or other assistance to the Government of Ethiopia until implementation is secured.

While I was compiling my own list yesterday, my attention was drawn to Congressman Brad Sherman’s recounting on Twitter of a conversation he had with Jake Sullivan, in which he urged the suspension of the US African Growth and Opportunity Act and the maintenance of opposition to international lending institution loans and the provision of humanitarian aid to Ethiopian until

“commitments are kept to allow unrestricted food and medicine (and the fuel necessary to transport them) into Tigray … there is a full and lasting end to fighting … the Internet is restored so that the world can hear from the people of Tigray … international human rights monitors and journalists are on the ground within Tigray and at all sites across Ethiopia where Tigrayan civilians have been detained en masse”,

and the release of Tigrayans imprisoned solely for their ethnicity. I adopt Congressman Sherman’s approach and add that we must continue to support the UN International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia and subsequent international efforts to investigate and prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Finally, I ask the Government to conduct a thorough review, and to report to Parliament, on what other steps can be encouraged, facilitated or supported to strengthen all aspects of the agreement and encourage its successful implementation. For example, the Minister will be aware that the Halo Trust registered in Ethiopia last year following a request from the Ethiopian Government for assistance in meeting their Ottawa mine ban treaty obligations. Halo is now clearing minefields on the Ethiopian side of the Somaliland-Ethiopia border, employing 90 Ethiopian staff, supported by Germany, Norway and the Netherlands. Funding permitting, it tells me that the programme could ideally field 1,000 staff.

Ethiopia requires a countrywide survey of mine contamination to determine the full extent of its estimated 150 minefields. The peace deal should pave the way for deployment of explosive ordnance disposal teams across the Tigray, Amhara and Afar regions. The United Nations Mine Action Service announced last week that it had secured $2 million of funding from the Government of Japan to deploy a limited EOD capacity in Tigray and has asked Halo for assistance. Linking EOD and mine-clearance support to the wider food security and environmental stabilisation efforts is critical to the reconstruction of Ethiopia. The Halo Trust, with 20 years’ experience in the Horn of Africa, is well placed to assist.

More widely, in the Halo Trust the UK has a robust and deployable capability that already in Ethiopia, as in 30 countries across the globe, does hazardous things in hazardous places with competence. In the context of its developing resilience strategy, and bearing in mind my comments about the absence of deployable capability to monitor or verify implementation of the peace agreement, have the Government thought about how this experienced and trusted NGO could form the basis of a capability needed in times such as these when a conflict moves into the resolution phase?