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Citing "gross violations of internationally recognized human rights," the United States on Tuesday said it suspended Ethiopia’s duty-free access to the U.S. market.

Mali and Guinea will also lose access under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).

"Today, President Biden announced three countries will be terminated from the AGOA trade preference program as of January 1, 2022, absent urgent action to meet statutory eligibility criteria," said U.S. top trade negotiator Ambassador Katherine Tai in a statement.

"Our Administration is deeply concerned by the unconstitutional change in governments in both Guinea and Mali, and by the gross violations of internationally recognized human rights being perpetrated by the Government of Ethiopia and other parties amid the widening conflict in northern Ethiopia."

The move against Ethiopia comes as a result of a yearlong civil war in the northern Tigray region, which has caused a humanitarian crisis.

Already under the strain of war and the COVID-19 pandemic, the loss of access to the U.S. market will further weaken Ethiopia’s economy. According to Bloomberg, Ethiopia exported $245 million worth of goods to the U.S. under AGOA. That accounted for half the country’s exports to the U.S.

In addition to suspended access via AGOA, the Biden administration recently authorized sanctions against Ethiopian individuals it said are prolonging the war in the northern part of the country.

On Wednesday, the United Nations and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission are releasing a report with the results of their investigation into alleged human rights violations in the Tigray war.

Without a renewal, AGOA is set to expire in 2025.

Source: Voice of America

A U.S. envoy said Tuesday the Sudanese military exercised restraint during Saturday’s anti-military coup demonstrations and that the restraint raised the possibility of the country’s return to a power sharing agreement.

Jeffrey Feltman, U.S. special envoy for the Horn of Africa, made the assessment during a telephone briefing with reporters from Washington, despite the Sudanese military’s fatal shootings of three protestors.

He said the death toll was “far too many” but added “by and large ... security services exercised restraint and upheld their obligations to respect human rights.” He noted the death toll was not higher because demonstrators did not approach sensitive military locations.

“You saw the evidence … of the Sudanese understanding that they need to get themselves out of this crisis by the conduct of the demonstrations,” Feltman said.

“I think that demonstrated an understanding by the Sudanese people themselves that they have to be careful and find a way back to the civilian-military partnership this transition requires,” Feltman said.

The U.S urged the military leaders of Sudan’s Oct. 25 coup to refrain from “any and all violence” against peaceful protesters one day before their “march of millions” demonstrations demanding a return to civilian rule.

The Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors said security forces fatally shot three protesters in the city of Omdurman and that 38 people were injured, some by gunfire.

Sudanese military chief General Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan said the army’s overthrow of the country’s transitional government was necessary to avoid a civil war.

Feltman again urged the general to restore the civilian government and release Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok from house arrest, contending the military cannot maintain power without foreign assistance such as the $700 million the U.S. has suspended.

“I think that the military will recognize that they need the type of international support that was being given to the transitional authorities,” Feltman said.

The military takeover occurred weeks of escalating tensions between military and civilian leaders over Sudan’s transition to democracy. The coup threatened to derail the process, which had slowly progressed since the ouster of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir in a popular uprising in 2019.

Source: Voice of America

Hundreds of people in Malawi held protests Tuesday in the commercial capital Blantyre against the high cost of living and unemployment saying both have become unbearable during the current administration.

The civil society group known as Human Rights Ambassadors led the protests that attracted a heavy police presence.

Among other issues, the protesters accused current President Lazarus Chakwera of failing to fulfill promises he made during the campaign period last year.

Steve Chimwaza led the protests.

“They promised a lot; they promised rule of law, they promised democracy, they promised 1 million jobs," Chimwaza said. "They promised cheap driving licenses and passports, nothing is there.”

People in Malawi have been extremely frustrated because of the skyrocketing prices of basic goods and services.

Last month, the government increased the price of fuel by more than 20%, which then caused price hikes for other commodities.

The government blamed the price hikes on the impact of COVID-19 and also the global increase in fuel prices.

But Chimwaza says Malawians will not accept any excuses.

“I would like to take you back. It is Mr. President himself who told Malawians in vernacular language [during the campaign period] that if he fails in two years he will resign," Chimwaza said. "He gave a time frame, but [to this] date, even 100,000 people have not even [been] employed.”

Mary Nkhata was among the women who joined the protests.

She said she already receives a low monthly salary and the recent price hikes in goods and services have led to her failing to pay school fees for her children. She said even buying soap now is becoming a problem.

However, President Chakwera said recently that it is not realistic to expect his administration to fulfill all campaign promises within one year.

Mustapha Hussein is a political science lecturer at the University of Malawi.

He says the protesters’ grievances are justified.

“There is a limit to which the situation can be blamed to COVID, because COVID is a global pandemic," Hussein said. "And there are some countries that seem to be progressing amidst COVID. So, government must take the responsibility on unfulfilled promises.”

In their petition, the protesters are calling for the resignation of President Chakwera, his Vice President Saulos Chilima, National Assembly Speaker Gotani Hara, and leader of opposition, Kondwani Nankhumwa, if they fail to address their grievances.

Blantyre City Authorities received the petition from the protesters and promised to deliver it to the authorities for feedback.

Source: Voice of America

The Ethiopian federal government declared a nationwide state of emergency Tuesday, as its battle with Tigrayan forces reaches the one-year mark and fighting has escalated in northern Ethiopia.

“The Council of Ministers has a declared nationwide state of emergency effective Tuesday, November 2, 2021,” read a statement posted by state-affiliated Fana Broadcasting Corporate S.C. on its Twitter account.

The statement says the House of Peoples Representatives is expected to approve the state of emergency within 24 hours.

Reuters quoted the government Tuesday saying the Tigray People’s Liberation Front is gaining territory and considering marching on the country’s capital, Addis Ababa. Residents of the capital were told to register their weapons and prepare to defend the city.

The federal government of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has been fighting TPLF forces in Tigray for the past year. The fighters were able to take control of the province when government forces withdrew in June, and since then fighting has expanded to the neighboring regions of Amhara and Afar, displacing thousands of people and worsening a severe hunger crisis.

Speaking Tuesday at Washington-based think tank U.S. Institute for Peace, U.S. Horn of Africa special envoy Jeffrey Feltman said as many as 900,000 people in Tigray are facing famine-like conditions, while 90% of the population is in need of aid.

He said the most serious obstacle to getting food, medicine and other critical assistance to them is the federal government, which imposes bureaucratic obstacles and last month expelled seven senior U.N. humanitarian and human rights officials.

“This unfortunately suggests an intentional effort by the authorities to deprive Ethiopians who are suffering of receiving lifesaving assistance,” said Feltman.

Using food as a weapon of war can rise to the level of a war crime.

The special envoy said the government’s airstrikes and TPLF’s alliances with other disaffected armed groups are “alarming,” and warned that the country is at risk of sliding into a bigger conflagration.

“A multidecade civil war in Ethiopia would be disastrous for its future and for its people,” he said. “We urge the government of Ethiopia, the TPLF, and the other belligerents to give peace a chance; to choose a different path and engage in dialogue without preconditions.”

Feltman responded to some critics who say the United States is biased toward the TPLF, saying “this could not be further from the truth” and that the Biden administration has consistently condemned the Tigrayan forces’ expansion of the war, including reports it could move on the capital.

“Let me clear, we oppose any TPLF move to Addis or any attempt by the TPLF to besiege Addis,” Feltman said. “This is a message we have also underscored in our engagement with TPLF leaders.”

He also said it is not true that Washington seeks to replace Abiy with a TPLF-dominated regime.

But he warned that Washington cannot “continue business as usual” with the federal government and noted the announcement Tuesday from the administration that puts Ethiopia’s special trade benefits with the United States at risk over human rights violations.

On Wednesday, the U.N. Human Rights Council and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission are releasing a report on their joint investigation into alleged human rights violations by all parties in the Tigray conflict.

There have been widespread credible reports throughout the conflict of brutal atrocities including rape, torture and executions. The report is expected to contain a set of recommendations, which Feltman said the parties need to demonstrate they are immediately implementing.

Source: Voice of America

The findings of the only human rights investigation allowed in Ethiopia's blockaded Tigray region will be released Wednesday, a year after war began there. But people with knowledge of the probe say it has been limited by authorities who recently expelled a United Nations staffer helping to lead it.

And yet, with groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International barred from Tigray, along with foreign media, the report may be the world's only official source of information on atrocities in the war, which began in November 2020 after a political falling-out between the Tigray forces that long dominated the national government and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's current government. The conflict has been marked by gang rapes, mass expulsions, deliberate starvation and thousands of deaths.

The joint investigation by the U.N. human rights office and the government-created Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, or EHRC, is a rare collaboration that immediately raised concerns among ethnic Tigrayans, human rights groups and other observers about impartiality and government influence.

In response to questions from The Associated Press, the U.N. human rights office in Geneva said it wouldn't have been able to enter Tigray without the partnership with the rights commission. Although past joint investigations occurred in Afghanistan and Uganda, the U.N. said, "the current one is unique in terms of magnitude and context."

Report 'automatically suspect'

But Ethiopia's government has given no basis for expelling U.N. human rights officer Sonny Onyegbula last month, the U.N. added, and without an explanation "we cannot accept the allegation that our staff member ... was 'meddling in the internal affairs' of Ethiopia."

Because of those circumstances, and the fact that the U.N. left the investigation to its less experienced regional office in Ethiopia, the new report is "automatically suspect," said David Crane, founder of the Global Accountability Network and founding chief prosecutor for the Special Court for Sierra Leone, an international tribunal.

"What you need when you go into an atrocity zone is a clean slate so outside investigators can look into it neutrally, dispassionately," Crane said. "You want to do these things where you don't build doubt, distrust from the beginning," including among people interviewed.

The investigation might be the international community's only chance to collect facts on the ground, he said, but because of its setup, it may disappear "in the sands of time."

People close to the investigation, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, asserted that the head of the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, Daniel Bekele, underplayed some allegations that fighters from the country's Amhara region were responsible for abuses in Tigray and pressed instead to highlight abuses by Tigray forces.

That's even though witnesses have said the perpetrators of most abuses were soldiers from neighboring Eritrea, Ethiopian forces and Amhara regional forces.

In response to AP's questions, Bekele asserted his commission's independence, saying it is "primarily accountable to the people it is created to serve." Attempts to influence the investigation, he added, can come from "many directions" in such a polarized environment.

Bekele said he and the commission have consistently cited "serious indications that all parties involved in the conflict have committed atrocities."

Observers note shortcomings

Observers say a major shortcoming of the investigation is its failure to visit the scene of many alleged massacres in Tigray, including the deadliest known one in the city of Axum, where witnesses told the AP that several hundred people were killed.

Bekele said the investigation lacked the support of the Tigray authorities now administering the region after Tigray forces retook much of the area in June, about midway through the joint team's work.

The U.N. human rights office, however, said the government's subsequent severing of flights and communications from Tigray during the planned investigation period made it difficult to access key locations, both "logistically and from a security point of view."

Even the interim Tigray authorities hand-picked by Ethiopia's government to run the region earlier in the war rejected the joint investigation, its former chief of staff, Gebremeskel Kassa, told the AP.

"We informed the international community we wanted an investigation into human rights but not with the EHRC, because we believe this is a tool of the government," he said.

The U.N. has said Ethiopia's government had no say in the report's publication, though it was given the chance to read the report in advance and to point out "anything it believes to be incorrect."

Separate investigations

Late last week, Ethiopia's government and a diaspora group released the results of their own investigations focusing on alleged abuses by Tigray forces after they had entered the neighboring regions of Amhara and Afar four months ago in what they called an effort to pressure the government to end its blockade on Tigray.

The Ministry of Justice said it found 483 noncombatants were killed and 109 raped in parts of Amhara and Afar that had been recaptured by federal forces in recent weeks. It also found "widespread and systematic looting" of schools, clinics, churches, mosques and aid groups' offices.

A separate report by the Amhara Association of America said it found that 112 people had been raped in several districts covered by the ministry's findings. The diaspora group drew on data from offices of women's and children's affairs as well as interviews with witnesses, doctors and officials.

The diaspora group asserted that the Tigray forces "committed the rapes as revenge against ethnic Amharas, whom they blame as responsible for abuses in their home region."

The spokesman for the Tigray forces, Getachew Reda, said the allegations aren't worth "the paper they're written on." Accusations of rapes and killings by Tigray forces are "absolutely untrue, at least on a level these organizations are alleging," he said.

Source: Voice of America