Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what recent assessment his Department has made of (a) trends in the level of security in the Oromia region of Ethiopia and (b) the risk of increased insecurity in that region.

Violence in Oromia, and elsewhere in Ethiopia is killing and displacing civilians and contributing to instability. Violence against civilians is unacceptable and perpetrators from all parties must be held to account. Following the reports of civilian killings in Oromia and Gambella earlier this year we endorsed the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission's call for the protection of civilians. The UK's Human Rights and Peacebuilding programme is providing support to build the capacity of the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, including enhanced investigative capacity, and to establish a national conflict research facility through Conciliation Resources and the Rift Valley Institute.