Current:Home > MarketsUN-backed probe into Ethiopia’s abuses is set to end. No one has asked for it to continue -Blueprint Wealth Network
UN-backed probe into Ethiopia’s abuses is set to end. No one has asked for it to continue
View
Date:2025-04-14 22:14:17
GENEVA (AP) — A U.N.-backed probe of human rights abuses in Ethiopia is set to expire after no country stepped forward to seek an extension, despite repeated warnings that serious violations continue almost a year since a cease-fire ended a bloody civil war in the East African country.
While the European Union led talks on the issue, in the end, no resolution was submitted to extend the mandate of the independent International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia before a deadline expired Wednesday at the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The probe will therefore be disbanded when its mandate expires this month.
The commission’s experts all but pleaded on Tuesday with the council to extend the investigation, warning that atrocities continue in Tigray, Ethiopia’s war-battered northernmost province.
The experts say Eritrean troops allied with Ethiopia’s military are still raping women and subjecting them to sexual slavery in parts of Tigray. They also cited reports of extrajudicial killings and mass detentions amid new fighting in Amhara, Ethiopia’s second-most populous state,
“There is a very real and imminent risk that the situation will deteriorate further, and it is incumbent upon the international community to ensure that investigations persist so human rights violations can be addressed, and the worst tragedies averted,” said commission member Steven Ratner.
European countries had previously supported the probe as a means of ensuring accountability for war crimes committed during the two-year civil war in Tigray.
Ethiopia has long opposed the commission, preventing its experts from conducting investigations in Ethiopia and criticizing it as politically motivated. As a result, it was forced to work remotely, from an office in Uganda.
The commission was established in December 2021 after a joint report by the U.N. and Ethiopia’s state human rights commission recommended further independent investigations into abuses. Since then it has published two full-length reports.
It concluded that all sides committed abuses during the Tigray war, some of them amounting to war crimes. Its first report accused Ethiopia’s government of using hunger as a weapon of war by restricting aid access to the region while rebels held it.
In their second report, published last month, the commission experts said a national transitional justice process launched by Ethiopia “falls well short” of African and international standards.
On Tuesday, the European Union announced a 650-million-euro ($680 million) aid package for Ethiopia, the bloc’s first step toward normalizing relations with the country despite previous demands for accountability first.
A diplomat from a EU country acknowledged that the bloc had agreed not to present a resolution, and called on the Ethiopian government to set up “robust, independent, impartial and transparent” mechanisms to foster transitional justice in light of the “extreme gravity of crimes” and rights violations in Ethiopia.
“We expect quick and tangible progress in the coming months,” the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the subject. “Lack of progress could jeopardize the ongoing gradual normalization of relations between the EU and Ethiopia.”
Critics decried the inaction at the 47-member-country council.
Laetitia Bader, Horn of Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said the failure to renew the mandate in essence allows Ethiopia to drop off the council’s agenda, and amounts to “a scathing indictment of the EU’s stated commitment to justice.”
“It’s yet another blow to countless victims of heinous crimes who placed their trust in these processes,” she added.
The U.N. probe was the last major independent investigation into the Tigray war, which killed hundreds of thousands and was marked by massacres, mass rape and torture.
In June, the African Union quietly dropped its own probe into the war’s atrocities, after extensive lobbying by Ethiopia — which has played up its own domestic efforts at transitional justice after the cease-fire.
___
Muhumuza reported from Kampala, Uganda.
veryGood! (6618)
Related
- John Galliano out at Maison Margiela, capping year of fashion designer musical chairs
- Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise's Daughter Bella Celebrates the End of Summer With Rare Selfie
- Is Below Deck Down Under's Luka Breaking Up a Boatmance? See Him Flirt With a Co-Worker's Girl
- Is avocado oil good for you? Everything you need to know about this trendy oil.
- Tree trimmer dead after getting caught in wood chipper at Florida town hall
- A new breed of leaders are atop the largest US unions today. Here are some faces to know
- $6 billion in Iranian assets once frozen in South Korea now in Qatar, key for prisoner swap with US
- UN warns disease outbreak in Libya’s flooded east could spark ‘a second devastating crisis’
- The company planning a successor to Concorde makes its first supersonic test
- South Florida debacle pushes Alabama out of top 25 of this week's NCAA 1-133 Re-Rank
Ranking
- DoorDash steps up driver ID checks after traffic safety complaints
- Taiwan says 103 Chinese warplanes flew toward the island in a new daily high in recent times
- Tacoma police investigate death of Washington teen doused in accelerant and set on fire
- Kilogram of Fentanyl found in NYC day care center where 1-year-old boy died of apparent overdose
- Krispy Kreme offers a free dozen Grinch green doughnuts: When to get the deal
- ‘Spring tide’ ocean waves crash into buildings in South Africa, leaving 2 dead and injuring several
- 2 adults, 2 children found shot to death in suburban Chicago home
- Authorities identify 2 California pilots who died in air racing event in Reno, Nevada
Recommendation
Sarah J. Maas books explained: How to read 'ACOTAR,' 'Throne of Glass' in order.
Airstrike on northern Iraq military airport kills 3
How to watch Simone Biles, Shilese Jones and others vie for spots on world gymnastics team
Two arrested in fentanyl-exposure death of 1-year-old at Divino Niño daycare
A Mississippi company is sentenced for mislabeling cheap seafood as premium local fish
Two facing murder charges in death of 1-year-old after possible opioid exposure while in daycare in Bronx
Hearings in $1 billion lawsuit filed by auto tycoon Carlos Ghosn against Nissan starts in Beirut
The Red Cross: Badly needed food, medicine shipped to Azerbaijan’s breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region