[Congressional Bills 117th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. Res. 97 Introduced in Senate (IS)]
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117th CONGRESS
1st Session
S. RES. 97
Calling on the Government of Ethiopia, the Tigray People's Liberation
Front, and other belligerents to cease all hostilities, protect human
rights, allow unfettered humanitarian access, and cooperate with
independent investigations of credible atrocity allegations pertaining
to the conflict in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
March 9, 2021
Mr. Risch (for himself, Mr. Cardin, Mr. Rubio, Mr. Coons, Mr. Kaine,
Mr. Young, and Mr. Van Hollen) submitted the following resolution;
which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations
_______________________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION
Calling on the Government of Ethiopia, the Tigray People's Liberation
Front, and other belligerents to cease all hostilities, protect human
rights, allow unfettered humanitarian access, and cooperate with
independent investigations of credible atrocity allegations pertaining
to the conflict in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia.
Whereas the United States and the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia share
an important relationship and more than a century of diplomatic
relations;
Whereas Ethiopia is the second most populous country in Africa and plays a key
role in advancing security and stability across sub-Saharan Africa,
including as a top contributor of uniformed personnel to United Nations
peacekeeping missions;
Whereas tensions between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's Prosperity Party and the
Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which was part of the ruling
coalition in Ethiopia until late 2019, escalated when the TPLF held
elections in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia on September 9, 2020, despite
the decision by the Federal Government of Ethiopia to postpone general
elections due to the COVID-19 pandemic;
Whereas the TPLF rejected the postponement of general elections and considered
the extension of the term of the Federal Government to be
unconstitutional, and the Federal Government subsequently deemed the
Tigray regional elections illegitimate;
Whereas, in the early hours of November 4, 2020, Prime Minister Abiy ordered a
military offensive in response to an attack by the TPLF on the Northern
Command of the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF), which evolved
into an armed conflict between the ENDF and allied forces on one side
and the TPLF on the other side, with thousands of deaths reported;
Whereas the Government of Ethiopia rejected all offers, including one extended
by African Union Chairman Cyril Ramaphosa in November 2020, to mediate
talks with the TPLF;
Whereas, on November 28, 2020, the Government of Ethiopia claimed victory in the
conflict after taking Mekelle, the capital city of the Tigray Region,
with Prime Minister Abiy announcing that his forces had ``completed and
ceased the military operations'' and would shift focus to rebuilding the
region and providing humanitarian assistance while Federal police
attempt to apprehend leaders of the TPLF;
Whereas clashes have continued in the Tigray Region and Ethiopian soldiers and
allied forces have pursued prominent TPLF leaders, notably killing
former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ethiopia Seyoum Mesfin as part of
a ``stabilizing mission . . . to bring to justice perpetrators'';
Whereas, in 2020, prior to the outbreak of fighting in the Tigray Region, there
were more than 1,800,000 people internally displaced in Ethiopia and
approximately 2,000,000 people in the Tigray Region were already in need
of humanitarian assistance;
Whereas the conflict in the Tigray Region has prompted more than 61,000
Ethiopians to seek refuge in Sudan, has displaced as many as 500,000
people internally, and has caused severe shortages of food, water,
medical supplies, and other necessary goods for those who remain in the
region;
Whereas the conflict has disrupted harvests, livelihoods, markets, and supply
chains, food and medical supplies have been looted, and restrictions and
bureaucratic impediments continue to constrain the humanitarian
response, with nearly 4,000,000 people in the Tigray Region estimated to
require urgent food assistance, including 100,000 Eritrean refugees;
Whereas, during the first few weeks of the conflict, there was a complete
shutdown of electricity, banking, internet, and telephone services
throughout the Tigray Region by the Government of Ethiopia, with
government reports of TPLF forces also destroying communications
infrastructure, and subsequent service restorations have been limited;
Whereas, in addition to the shutdown of telephone and internet services, which
has severely limited the flow of information on the conflict and the
humanitarian situation, journalists have been restricted from accessing
much of the Tigray Region, several journalists have been arrested in
connection to their coverage of the conflict, and one journalist working
for the Tigray Mass Media Agency was killed;
Whereas, although the Government of Ethiopia entered into an agreement with the
United Nations on November 29, 2020, to facilitate humanitarian access
to the Tigray Region, that access remains limited;
Whereas, on February 1, 2021, the Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee
Council stated, ``Twelve weeks since the fighting began, the basic
elements of a response on the scale needed are still not in place. It is
false to say that aid is increasingly getting through. Aid has only gone
to the places with little conflict and more limited needs and is not
keeping pace with the humanitarian crisis as it inevitably grows over
time.'';
Whereas, on February 6, 2021, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP)
announced a new agreement with the Government of Ethiopia to rapidly
scale up the deployment of emergency food assistance while improving the
process for reviewing and approving requests from United Nations and
humanitarian partner agencies;
Whereas humanitarian access to the refugee camps that were home to almost
100,000 Eritrean refugees at the start of the conflict has been
especially restricted, with the Hitsats and Shimelba camps still
completely inaccessible, and the United Nations Refugee Agency estimates
that 20,000 Eritrean refugees displaced from those camps remain
unaccounted for;
Whereas United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi has
expressed alarm about the ``overwhelming number of disturbing reports of
Eritrean refugees in Tigray being killed, abducted and forcibly returned
to Eritrea'';
Whereas, in November 2020, four humanitarian workers, including one employee of
the International Rescue Committee and three employees of the Danish
Refugee Council, were killed at Hitsats refugee camp;
Whereas challenges to access have significantly restricted the reporting and
documentation of atrocities, but survivor and eye-witness testimony and
satellite imagery have enabled reports to emerge of targeted violence or
indiscriminate attacks against civilians committed by multiple parties
to the conflict;
Whereas examples of reported atrocities committed in the Tigray Region include
the massacre in the town of Mai Kadra on November 9, 2020, in which,
according to estimates from the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission
(EHRC), more than 600 civilians died from what the EHRC Chief
Commissioner concluded was ``for no reason other than their ethnicity,''
and a mass killing in the city of Axum on November 28 through 29, 2020,
which involved, according to reports from Amnesty International, the
systematic killing of ``hundreds of unarmed civilians'' after Ethiopian
and Eritrean troops retook the city;
Whereas United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual
Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten has highlighted reports of sexual
and gender-based violence, including a high number of alleged rapes in
Mekelle;
Whereas, on January 27, 2021, the United States Government publicly confirmed
that Eritrean Defense Forces (EDF) are participating in the conflict in
alliance with the ENDF and called for the immediate withdrawal of all
EDF soldiers from the Tigray Region, and credible reports have emerged
that EDF soldiers participating in the conflict have attacked civilians,
including Eritrean refugees, and looted and destroyed homes and
religious institutions;
Whereas Ethiopia has been beset in recent years by multiple human rights and
humanitarian challenges, including targeted ethnic violence,
intercommunal conflict, natural disasters, and political unrest;
Whereas, since mid-2020, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights, Amnesty International, and the Ethiopian Human Rights
Commission have reported atrocities and a rise in ethnic and
intercommunal violence in other parts of Ethiopia, including in the
Amhara, Benishangul-Gumuz, Somali, Afar, and Oromia regions;
Whereas, according to international human rights organizations, during the
conflict in the Tigray Region, ethnic Tigrayans throughout Ethiopia have
been suspended from their jobs and prevented from leaving the country,
and there are reports of surveillance and mass arrests of citizens of
Ethiopia based on their ethnicity;
Whereas Ethiopia is undergoing a fragile democratic transition, with the
postponed 2020 general elections rescheduled for June 2021, except in
the Tigray Region, where elections have not yet been scheduled;
Whereas the Government of Ethiopia has restricted the right of several
opposition political parties to peacefully assemble, and a number of
opposition leaders have been jailed since the summer of 2020, with
varying degrees of due process violations and procedural delays in their
trials; and
Whereas the conflict in the Tigray Region occurs within the context of
complicated regional and global dynamics featuring ongoing negotiations
between Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance
Dam, Ethiopia's rapprochement with Eritrea, threats posed by the violent
extremist organization Al-Shabaab, a struggle for influence and power
among regional and global actors, increasingly hostile border disputes
between Ethiopia and Sudan, and the fragile democratic transition and
peace process in Sudan: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the Senate--
(1) strongly disapproves of the escalation of political
tensions between the Government of Ethiopia and the Tigray
People's Liberation Front (TPLF) into armed conflict and
condemns in the strongest terms all violence against civilians;
(2) appreciates the willingness of Sudan to welcome
refugees fleeing the conflict in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia;
(3) calls on the Government of Eritrea to immediately and
fully withdraw its military forces from Ethiopia;
(4) calls for the swift and complete restoration of
electricity, banking, telephone, and internet services
throughout the Tigray Region and other parts of Ethiopia where
communications have been restricted;
(5) calls on the Government of Ethiopia to--
(A) ensure that any apprehensions of TPLF members
are carried out with the least possible use of force
and that the rights to which those detained are
entitled under Ethiopian and international law are
fully respected;
(B) release opposition leaders detained on the
basis of their political activity as well as
journalists detained on the basis of their reporting,
and respect the rights of all Ethiopians to free
expression and political participation, without
discrimination based on ethnicity, ideology, or
political affiliation; and
(C) convene a national dialogue inclusive of all
nonviolent political parties, ethnic communities,
religious groups, and civil society organizations in
Ethiopia to work toward the sustainable resolution of
grievances and chart a democratic and peaceful path
forward for the country;
(6) urges all parties to the conflict to--
(A) cease all hostilities, fully comply with
international humanitarian law, and refrain from
actions that could spread or escalate the conflict,
particularly attacks on civilian targets;
(B) make demonstrable progress to guarantee
unfettered and immediate humanitarian access, for
personnel and supplies, to areas affected by the
conflict, and take all possible steps to protect the
safety of civilians, including refugees, displaced
persons, and humanitarian aid workers; and
(C) allow for, and cooperate with, independent and
transparent investigations of any alleged human rights
abuses committed in the course of the conflict and hold
perpetrators to account; and
(7) urges the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the
Treasury, and the Administrator of the United States Agency for
International Development, in coordination with the heads of
other relevant Federal departments and agencies, to--
(A) engage at the highest levels with leaders of
the Government of Ethiopia, the Government of Eritrea,
and the TPLF to encourage the full cessation of
hostilities and the withdrawal of Eritrean forces,
mitigate the humanitarian crisis that has emerged from
the conflict, and support an inclusive process of
national dialogue and reconciliation;
(B) immediately establish criteria to end the pause
of all non-life-sustaining assistance to Ethiopia and
support programming to meet immediate humanitarian
needs, including of refugees and internally displaced
persons, advance nonviolent conflict resolution and
reconciliation, and aid a democratic transition in
Ethiopia;
(C) ensure that the call made by Secretary of State
Blinken on February 27, 2021, for a ``full,
independent, international investigation into all
reports of human rights violations, abuses, and
atrocities'' committed in the course of the conflict is
realized and impose strict accountability measures on
those found responsible;
(D) take all possible diplomatic steps to prevent
further ethnic-based violence and mass atrocities,
including by non-state armed groups, in Ethiopia; and
(E) maintain close coordination with international
allies and multilateral organizations regarding efforts
to address the conflict in the Tigray Region and bring
attention to the conflict in international fora,
including the United Nations Security Council.
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