Ethiopia, the conflict and the forgotten humanitarian catastrophe

(To Antonino Lombardi)
21/02/22

It is now a far-reaching humanitarian emergency that is gripping the Tigray region, the most populous portion of Africa.

On February 9, 2022, UN Deputy Secretary General Amina J. Mohammed gave a lecture to local journalists at Addis Ababa Bole International Airport. After concluding your visit to Ethiopia, which began on February 5, you urged the sending of humanitarian aid for the peoples of the Tigray region, victims of health and economic damage.

The war destroyed fields, schools and homes; health care is in trouble because there is a lack of simple sterile tools and keeping HIV under control is becoming increasingly difficult.

Women were victims of sexual and gender-based violence and children lost limbs to the bombs. For this Amina J. Mohammed also asked for psychological support for them and made a strong appeal to all warring parties to end the fighting immediately.

Gianfranco Rotigliano, UNICEF representative, also carefully observed the serious humanitarian situation and said that "Children and their families are struggling to survive the loss of livelihoods and livestock". It is estimated that, precisely because of these causes and the lack of electricity and drinking water, 850.000 children in the country will be severely malnourished in the current year.

The conflict in the Tigray Region has now been going on since 4 November 2020 and has now reached "disastrous proportions", as declared on Monday by the political leader of the United Nations to the Security Council, considering, with good reason, the country's future seriously uncertain.

It all began when the political and military representation of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) won unauthorized elections in the Tigray region. The central government, in fact, had postponed them due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but following this political victory carried out independently by the region, Ahmed established that the Tigray government was illegal, thus deciding to punish them with a military attack, carried out by the troops of Addis Ababa, with the support of the Ahmara militias.

This caused the reaction of young civilians who took up arms and enlisted in the Tigray Liberation Front army, believing that only in this way could the conflict be ended.

Following these riots, Abiy Ahmed himself proclaimed a state of emergency, but in January of this year he left a glimmer of hope for peace, trying to put an end to the conflict and releasing the 8th of that month. , including political prisoners and senior members of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF).

Cooperation with the President of the United States Joe Biden was also discussed by the Prime Minister, but, even if there seems to be a lowering of the climate of tension, the attacks on civilians, especially women and children, continue by means of drones, which Ethiopia would have bought from the Turks. It appears that this very purchase contributed to the change of course of the war and further angered the United States which threatened trade repercussions.

Tigray for about thirty years was an important center of power for the whole of Ethiopia. The Derg military government of Addis Ababa was overthrown in 1991 by the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), against which it had started a war in 1975. Since that time the TPLF has greatly influenced party decisions, until Abiy Ahmed, member of the Oromo ethnic group, he became prime minister in 2018. The TPLF did not tolerate the political route of the government, which did not want to take ethnic orientations into account and reached its maximum expression in the new party created by Ahmed, opposing himself by done, to the TPLF and creating the substrate for the subsequent stresses.

The country's economy could benefit greatly from the end of hostilities, at least returning to the pre-war period, when some investors had appeared on the country's economic landscape and subsequently fled at the first signs of belligerence, thus causing the drying up of grants and loans.

In general, some analysts, including Zemedeneh Negatu, president of the Fairfax Africa Fund, believe that 2022 could be the decisive year for the recovery of the economy of this country that has had to face a conflict and the pandemic from Covid-19. The same hopes that the government will allow the resumption of normal life and take action to rebuild everything that was destroyed by the bombing, as well as to resume the campaign of economic reforms that the war left in. stand-by, in fact, if all this happens, the first Ethiopian stock exchange could also be launched in 2023 theEthiopian Securities Exchange (ESE).

Few countries in the world are classified as emerging economies and Ethiopia is one of these and, with the increase of investors and capital, it could take the same turn as the Asian economies, which are increasingly imposing themselves on the world scene.

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