The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned that “there is little time to prevent genocide” in the province of Tigray, in northern Ethiopia, the scene of an armed conflict for almost two years. years.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who was speaking at a press conference in Geneva, added that nowhere else in the world were six million people subjected to the siege imposed for two years by government troops in that province.
“The world does not pay enough attention” to this conflict, he stressed, recalling that “deliberate attacks against civilians or civilian infrastructure are war crimes.”
Tigray has been the scene of two years of conflict between the government army and the Tigray Popular Liberation Front (TPLF).
“I ask the international community and the press to give this crisis the attention it deserves,” added Tedros, a native of that province and where many of his relatives still live.
“Yes, I’m from Tigray, and yes, it affects me personally, I can’t say no, but my job is to draw the attention of the international community to crises that threaten people’s health, wherever they are,” he insisted. ., her voice choked with emotion.
The director general of the WHO denounced that in Tigray “children die every day of malnutrition”.
“There are no services for tuberculosis, HIV, diabetes, hypertension, all the diseases that can be treated in other parts of the world, but that in Tigray are now synonymous with a death sentence,” he charged.
After a five-month lull that gave hope for peace talks, fighting resumed on August 24.
According to concurring sources, Tigray is currently caught between a joint offensive by the Ethiopian and Eritrean armies in the north and Ethiopian troops aided by forces from neighboring Amhara and Afar regions in the south.
Last Monday, the Secretary General of the United Nations called for a cessation of hostilities, considering that the situation is becoming “uncontrollable” and called in particular for the “immediate withdrawal” of the Eritrean troops.
“The situation in Ethiopia is out of control. The violence and destruction are reaching alarming levels,” António Guterres told reporters.
The secretary general stressed that “there is no military solution” to the conflict, highlighting the “terrible price paid by civilians” and the “nightmare” experienced by the Ethiopian population.
Guterres especially singled out the “random” attacks that kill civilians “every day,” the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the violence, and the “disturbing reports of sexual violence and other brutality against women, children, and men.”
Due to the clashes, humanitarian aid to Tigray was suspended for seven weeks, he stressed, urging all parties to allow the passage of columns with humanitarian aid.
António Guterres also called for the “urgent” resumption of peace negotiations.
The conflict in Ethiopia erupted in November 2020 after an attack by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Tigray on the main army base in Mekele, after which Abiy Ahmed, the Ethiopian prime minister, ordered an offensive against the group after months of tensions. policies. and administrative.
The TPLF has accused Abiy of fueling tensions since he came to power in April 2018, when he became the first Oromo to take office. Until then, the TPLF had been the dominant force within Ethiopia’s ruling coalition since 1991, the ethnically based Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).
The group opposed Abiy’s reforms, which they saw as an attempt to undermine their influence.
Source: TSF
