UN deputy chief sees hope after Ethiopia visit
UNITED NATIONS – The highestranking U.N. official to visit Ethiopia since war began in the Tigray region in 2020 said Friday she thinks Tigrayan fighters are hopeful of ending the conflict and she senses that top government officials are not just more hopeful but making a greater effort to find peace.
But Deputy Secretary-general Amina Mohammed said the most important thing now is how to put pressure on the momentum for peace and not have it unravel, “which it could – it’s very fragile.”
During her talks with both sides, she said, her message was “with the conflict and the tragedies – horrendous at that – that no one wins and that peace really is indispensable.”
Months of political tensions between Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government and the Tigray leaders who once dominated Ethiopia’s government erupted into war in November 2020.
Following some of the fiercest fighting of the conflict, Ethiopia soldiers fled the Tigray capital, Mekele, in June 2021 and the government declared a national state of emergency with sweeping powers.
A drone-assisted government military offensive halted the Tigrayans’ approach to Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. In December, the Tigrayans retreated back to Tigray.
Last June, Ethiopia’s government cut off almost all access to food aid, medical supplies, cash and fuel in Tigray, and Mohammed said only “a trickle” is getting through, which is “absolutely insufficient and inadequate.”
The U.N. World Food Program said in late January that three-quarters of Tigray’s population of about 6 million are “using extreme coping strategies to survive” and more than a third “are suffering an extreme lack of food,”
During her five-day visit to Ethiopia, Mohammed represented Secretary General Antonio Guterres at the recent
African Union summit and then visited four Ethiopian regions – Tigray and neighboring Amhara and Afar, as well as Somali. She met with Tigray’s leaders and Ethiopia’s prime minister, traveled with Ethiopian President Sahlework Zewde to Afar and Somali, and talked to local leaders, civil society members and many women.
Mohamed said her talks focused on “how to get to that path to peace – the humanitarian access, the cessation of hostilities, in some cases, the lifting of the siege in Tigray – but, most importantly, the efforts they were making now at the national dialogue, and how to get to that with the parties that were concerned.” She said she also asked about three U.N. staff members detained by the government, though she didn’t ask to see them.
She said the message to her from all of Tigray’s leaders “was that this was going to be done the Ethiopian way, and they were going to find an Ethiopian solution to it.”
Mohammed said she saw famine and was asked in all the regions what was the worst outcome of the hostilities.
“Ethiopian women, writ large, were affected in a way that is unimaginable,” she said. “In your worst nightmares, you cannot imagine what has happened to the women in Ethiopia.”