Ethiopia, Sudan and Tigray: Humanitarian Situation

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Bardell, and to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady). I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) for securing this debate. It was only a couple of months ago that we last talked about this region and it is timely to talk about it again. Every day the news is getting worse, and the situation is extremely worrying. We need to give as much airtime as possible to what is happening in the region, because it is truly shocking.

I agree with the hon. Member for Glasgow North that Ethiopia is a beautiful country. I have been to Addis Ababa and enjoyed great hospitality there. While it is already a beautiful country, it also has potential. We want it to have a better future—that is our hope for the people of Ethiopia, Tigray and Sudan.

I speak as a member of the all-party parliamentary groups on Ethiopia and Djibouti and on Sudan and South Sudan, and I am also chair of the APPG on the prevention of genocide and crimes against humanity. I am delighted that there have been two advertisements for our meeting tomorrow, at which Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide, will speak. What she will have to say will be very pertinent to the current situation.

The eyes of the world are not on Ethiopia, Tigray and Sudan, but they should be. It is an important time to put on the record what is happening right now, and to hear from the Minister what the Government are doing about it. I welcome her to her new role and look forward to hearing about the meetings she has been holding and what has resulted from them; what visits she has planned to the region and what she hopes to get out of them; and her plans for aid. We have been talking about aid cuts and the false economy they create. There are different decisions to be made about aid to the region.

As a country, we were so proud at the time of Live Aid to stand up together to support the people of Ethiopia in their time of crisis. We want to do the same again. We want to know what is happening in the region, with which we have a great bond. Like other Members, I have constituents with family members in the region. On Monday I spoke to a Tigrayan constituent who is very concerned about her family. She has not been able to hear any news for so long because of the blackout, which must be very worrying. As we stand here today, we know that many people in this country are concerned about their relatives in the region.

The UN Secretary-General has said of Tigray:

“A humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding before our eyes.”

It could be argued that the previous Foreign Secretary took his eye off Afghanistan, but I hope to hear from the Minister today that that is not the case with Tigray. More than 5 million people in Tigray require immediate humanitarian assistance. At least 54 organisations are providing aid and services. I join other Members in paying tribute to the brave humanitarian workers on the ground right now, in very difficult circumstances, at great risk to themselves.

However, there are significant gaps in assistance, which disproportionately affect Ethiopian women and girls. I echo what we have heard in today’s debate: it is women and girls who are disproportionately the victims of war. Rape is being used as a weapon of war and we need to know more about that. They have virtually no access to livelihoods, often living in insecure environments.

We are also witnessing a refugee crisis because of the violence. In December 2020, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported that 46,000 Ethiopian refugees had arrived in Sudan since the start of November and they were continuing to arrive in their hundreds. It is hard to imagine what that is like. If we could see it more clearly, if we knew more about the situation, I am sure there would be more demand for more action to be taken.

The numbers are now estimated to be more than 60,000, including Eritrean refugees. More worrying still, a famine is looming. According to the Tigray external affairs office, 150 people died of hunger in August. The UN believes that around 400,000 people are facing famine-like conditions. Millions are also on the brink of hunger in the Afar and Amhara regions, which share a border with Tigray. UNICEF recently alerted that more than 100,000 children in Tigray could suffer from life-threatening severe acute malnutrition in the next 12 months, which will affect them for the rest of their lives. That constitutes a tenfold increase to the annual average.

Deaths are also occurring due to sickness that could previously have been treated or prevented. Prior to retreating, Eritrean forces had looted Tigrayan infrastructure extensively and destroyed clinics, equipment, medicines and medical records, putting years of development back instead of forward. In March, Médecins Sans Frontières reported that 70% of the 106 medical facilities that its teams had been allowed to visit had been looted and only 13% of them were functioning fully, undermining medical treatment for those in need. That is truly frightening and it is happening on our watch.

As mentioned earlier, Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, reported that

“all parties to the conflict in Tigray have…committed violations of international human rights…and refugee law, some of which may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Those crimes need to be investigated. We need to know we have the strong evidence to bring to justice those who are committing these crimes. We cannot let this go untried. The justice we need means that we need to get the evidence, so independent investigators need to be there on the ground.

Turning to Sudan, I am distressed at the graphic reports of the use of excessive and lethal force against protestors, the arbitrary detentions, their enforced disappearance and torture, and other forms of ill treatment. Those patterns of violations are consistent with Sudan’s long and extensively documented history of abuses against protestors, human rights defenders and perceived political opponents. Sudanese forces have regularly used excessive force, including beatings, tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition against protestors, including during the transitional period.

When the new country of South Sudan was formed, the world cheered. It was exciting to have a new country with a proud future looking forward to peace. That long conflict had been put to one side; the peace process had won out. I want to put on the record that it had been led by a lot of local women, who were successful in winning that peace. The joy at which South Sudan was welcomed was amazing to see, but it is so disheartening and worrying that the instability in the region is now threatening that peace.

I want to hear from the Minister that the UK is stepping up and leading on Sudan. The Government need unequivocally to call on the Sudanese military to immediately end the arbitrary detention of all detained political leaders, journalists and human rights activists, and refrain from torture and other forms of violence against protestors; to impose targeted sanctions on those responsible for the coup and for ongoing human rights violations; and to demonstrate global leadership at a special session of the UN Human Rights Council by calling for an independent UN fact-finding mission on Sudan.

As I have made clear time and again in this House, the Foreign Secretary and the Minister need to have their eyes firmly fixed on what is unfolding in Ethiopia and Tigray. In particular, I call on the Minister urgently to consider the imposition of sanctions on the leaders of Ethiopia and Eritrea, who bear ultimate responsibility for human rights violations committed with impunity by their respective armed forces. No one come out well form this conflict. Atrocities are definitely being committed by both sides—I want to be clear about that—and we need to make sure that their leaders are investigated and stand trial.

We need to lead international efforts, including at the UN Security Council, to ensure an immediate cessation of hostilities, the complete departure of Eritrean forces, and unimpeded access to Tigray for local and international aid agencies—those lorries must get through.

As was said earlier, we need an atrocity prevention strategy at the heart of our funding for those countries. We need to stop the aid cuts. What meetings has the Minister had with civil society groups working in the region, the African Union and leaders in Sudan, Tigray and Ethiopia? Finally, I urge the UN Human Rights Council to mandate a truly independent inquiry into alleged human rights violations in Tigray and to secure justice.

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North again for securing this debate. I pledge to do all I can to keep what is happening in Ethiopia, Sudan and Tigray on the global agenda. Millions are suffering. We cannot forget them. We must act now.

[Hannah Bardell (in the Chair)]

I thank Members for being so succinct. I am conscious that the temperature has dropped further, so if Members or staff need to don further layers, they have my support. I call the first of our Front-Bench speakers, the Scottish National party spokesperson Brendan O’Hara.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vicky Ford]

I will not take interventions until I clear a few more important lines.

The hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) mentioned our commitment to long-term projects in Africa. This week, right at the outset of COP26, the UK demonstrated our long-term commitment to the continent. We have mobilised international support and finance from donor countries to protect the Congo basin. I remind the hon. Member that many parts of the Congo basin have long suffered from conflict. We are committing new funding to support African countries in rolling out critical projects to adapt to climate change, and in partnership with South Africa, the USA, the EU, Germany and France we announced the ambitious Just Energy Transaction, which is mobilising $8.5 billion to support decarbonisation efforts in South Africa—a big project for South Africa’s stability and the future of our planet.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) mentioned prioritising humanitarian aid. As a result of last week’s Budget, we were pleased to announce that we will be increasing our funding for our highest priorities, including using more bilateral investment. That means spending aid money directly on our priorities, including lifesaving humanitarian aid, and especially prioritising the UK’s world-class organisations and our own frontline work. That is absolutely a focus for the Foreign Secretary.

On 16 October, the Foreign Secretary and I announced a further £29 million of humanitarian aid for northern Ethiopia, taking our commitment to more than £76 million. The UK is the second-largest donor there, and our finances provided water, healthcare and nutrition to hundreds of thousands of people facing famine. It is truly heartbreaking to see the continuation of this terrible conflict, which is also pulling resources away from the long-term development areas that Ethiopia had started to make such impressive progress in.

[Fleur Anderson]

rose—

[Vicky Ford]

I really want to get my important statements out. I will come back to the hon. Lady at the end.

As many hon. Members have mentioned, the conflict has been marked by intolerable levels of sexual violence. They are appalling, and we are appalled and outraged at them. The UK is delivering essential services to survivors of sexual violence and to those at risk of sexual violence in northern Ethiopia. Our programmes provide individuals with critical support and care, including support for emergency mental health services. However, without sustained humanitarian access, these vital programmes for those horrifically abused women and for women at risk of abuse cannot be delivered.

We have strongly supported the joint investigation by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission. Their report was published just a couple of hours ago; we are studying it carefully and will push for justice and accountability as the situation demands.

All sides must protect civilians and put humanitarian needs first. That means prioritising negotiations over military activities. I call again on all parties to allow humanitarian supplies to flow. Without that, we fear that many thousands of people will die. When the UK ambassador spoke to Deputy Prime Minister Demeke and Prime Minister Abiy in recent days, he made it clear that we must see an immediate improvement in humanitarian access and meaningful engagement in peace efforts. The expansion of hostilities by the TPLF and now the Oromo Liberation Army are displacing hundreds of thousands more people and further destabilising the country.

I call on all parties, in particular the TPLF, the Government of Ethiopia and the Oromo Liberation Army to stop fighting. The continued advance of TPLF and OLA forces must stop. They should not enter Addis Ababa.

[Fleur Anderson]

I want to ask the Minister about the Sudanese aid funding. The Department for International Development was a long-term investor in the Sudanese peacebuilding process. That funding was entirely cut. Will she look into that cut and commit to returning to funding peacebuilding in Sudan, given what has happened recently?

[Hannah Bardell (in the Chair)]

Briefly, Minister, so that the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) has an opportunity to sum up.