World Silent as UN's Time Runs Out on Ethiopia's Tigray Probe

A commission ordered by the UN to investigate possible war crimes in the Tigray conflict will halt its work -- with no country calling for it to continue. Thousands died, Tigray and the wider area are still scarred, writes Deutsche Welle.

In July 2023, the African Union's Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights closed the mandate of the Commission of Inquiry on the situation in the Tigray region - the first commission to monitor reports of grave human rights violations in the peak of Ethiopia's war in the region, Addis Standard reported.

Conflict between Ethiopia and Tigray region escalated into a full-scale war in November 2020. Millions of people were displaced and fled to neighbouring countries such as Sudan. Attempts at an AU-led peaceful resolution commenced in October 2022 and ended with the signing of a peace deal in South Africa on November 2, 2022. Since the agreement, the Ethiopian government installed Tigray region's own interim leader Getachew Reda, who was spokesperson for the TPLF.

A report by the interim regional administration of Tigray, investigating the diversion of humanitarian aid in the region, found that Ethiopian federal government entities and Eritrean forces had higher roles in the diversion. The region has since seen the suspension of food aid by organisations such as U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Food Programme, after findings that the food was being diverted from those most in need, largely living in refugee camps.

Human rights violations committed during the war between Ethiopia and Tigray were also exposed and UN-aligned experts named Eritrea as having a hand in the violations, while they were supporting Ethiopian forces in Tigray.