A resolution calling on the Government of Ethiopia, the Tigray People's Liberation Front, and other belligerents in the conflict in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia to cease all hostilities, protect human rights, allow unfettered humanitarian access, and cooperate with independent investigations of credible atrocity allegations.

III 117TH CONGRESS 1ST SESSION S. RES. 97 Calling on the Government of Ethiopia, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, and other belligerents in the conflict in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia to cease all hostilities, protect human rights, allow unfettered humani- tarian access, and cooperate with independent investigations of credible atrocity allegations. IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES MARCH 9, 2021 Mr. RISCH (for himself, Mr. CARDIN, Mr. RUBIO, Mr. COONS, Mr. KAINE, Mr. YOUNG, Mr. VAN HOLLEN, Mr. MERKLEY, Mr. WYDEN, Mr. MARKEY, Ms. SINEMA, Mr. SULLIVAN, Ms. COLLINS, Mr. BOOKER, Ms. ROSEN, Mr. GRAHAM, Mr. DURBIN, and Ms. HASSAN) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations MARCH 24, 2021 Reported by Mr. MENENDEZ, with an amendment and an amendment to the preamble and an amendment to the title MAY 19, 2021 Considered, amended, and agreed to with an amended preamble and an amendment to the title RESOLUTION Calling on the Government of Ethiopia, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, and other belligerents in the conflict in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia to cease all hostilities, protect human rights, allow unfettered humanitarian ac- cess, and cooperate with independent investigations of credible atrocity allegations. VerDate Sep 11 2014 04:06 May 20, 2021 Jkt 019200 PO 00000 Frm 00001 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6652 E:\BILLS\SR97.ATS SR97 pbinns on DSKJLVW7X2PROD with BILLS 2 SRES 97 ATS Whereas the United States and the Federal Democratic Re- public of Ethiopia share an important relationship and more than a century of diplomatic relations; Whereas Ethiopia is the second most populous country in Af- rica and plays a key role in advancing security and sta- bility across sub-Saharan Africa, including as a top con- tributor of uniformed personnel to United Nations peace- keeping 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 Fed- eral Government subsequently deemed the Tigray re- gional 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 al- lied forces on one side and the TPLF on the other side, with thousands of deaths reported; Whereas the Government of Ethiopia rejected all offers, in- cluding one extended by African Union Chairman Cyril VerDate Sep 11 2014 04:06 May 20, 2021 Jkt 019200 PO 00000 Frm 00002 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\SR97.ATS SR97 pbinns on DSKJLVW7X2PROD with BILLS 3 SRES 97 ATS Ramaphosa in November 2020, to mediate talks with the TPLF; Whereas, on November 28, 2020, the Government of Ethi- opia claimed victory in the conflict after taking Mekelle, the capital city of the Tigray Region, with Prime Min- ister Abiy announcing that his forces had ‘‘completed and ceased the military operations’’ and would shift focus to rebuilding the region and providing humanitarian assist- ance 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 promi- nent TPLF leaders, notably killing former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ethiopia Seyoum Mesfin as part of a ‘‘stabilizing mission . . . to bring to justice perpetra- tors’’; 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 sup- plies, and other necessary goods for those who remain in the region; Whereas the conflict has disrupted harvests, livelihoods, mar- kets, and supply chains, food and medical supplies have been looted, and restrictions and bureaucratic impedi- ments continue to constrain the humanitarian response, VerDate Sep 11 2014 04:06 May 20, 2021 Jkt 019200 PO 00000 Frm 00003 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\SR97.ATS SR97 pbinns on DSKJLVW7X2PROD with BILLS 4 SRES 97 ATS with nearly 4,000,000 people in the Tigray Region esti- mated 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 infrastruc- ture, and subsequent service restorations have been lim- ited; Whereas, in addition to the shutdown of telephone and inter- net services, which has severely limited the flow of infor- mation 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 Re- gion, that access is not yet unfettered; 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 cri- sis as it inevitably grows over time.’’; VerDate Sep 11 2014 04:06 May 20, 2021 Jkt 019200 PO 00000 Frm 00004 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\SR97.ATS SR97 pbinns on DSKJLVW7X2PROD with BILLS 5 SRES 97 ATS 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 re- main unaccounted for; Whereas United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi has expressed alarm about the ‘‘over- whelming number of disturbing reports of Eritrean refu- gees in Tigray being killed, abducted and forcibly re- turned to Eritrea’’; Whereas, in November 2020, four humanitarian workers, in- cluding one employee of the International Rescue Com- mittee and three employees of the Danish Refugee Coun- cil, 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 en- abled reports to emerge of targeted violence or indiscrimi- nate attacks against civilians committed by multiple par- ties 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 esti- VerDate Sep 11 2014 04:06 May 20, 2021 Jkt 019200 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\SR97.ATS SR97 pbinns on DSKJLVW7X2PROD with BILLS 6 SRES 97 ATS mates 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 in- volved, 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 Sec- retary-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 Govern- ment 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 re- ports 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 for nearly a decade by mul- tiple human rights and humanitarian challenges, includ- ing targeted ethnic violence, intercommunal conflict, nat- ural disasters, and political unrest; Whereas, since mid-2020, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Amnesty Inter- national, and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission have reported atrocities and a rise in ethnic and inter- communal violence in other parts of Ethiopia, including VerDate Sep 11 2014 04:06 May 20, 2021 Jkt 019200 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\SR97.ATS SR97 pbinns on DSKJLVW7X2PROD with BILLS 7 SRES 97 ATS in the Amhara, Benishangul-Gumuz, Somali, Afar, and Oromia regions; Whereas, according to international human rights organiza- tions, 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, in March 2021, President Biden asked Senator Christopher Coons to serve as an emissary to convey the President’s grave concerns to Prime Minister Abiy about the humanitarian crisis and human rights abuses in the Tigray Region and the risk of broader instability in the Horn of Africa; Whereas Ethiopia is undergoing a fragile political 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 assem- ble and organize, 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, leading some major opposition parties to threaten to withdraw from the forthcoming general elec- tions; Whereas the conflict in the Tigray Region, intercommunal vi- olence in other parts of Ethiopia, and the erosion of polit- ical and civic space calls into the question whether the general elections in June 2021 can meet the aspirations VerDate Sep 11 2014 04:06 May 20, 2021 Jkt 019200 PO 00000 Frm 00007 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\SR97.ATS SR97 pbinns on DSKJLVW7X2PROD with BILLS 8 SRES 97 ATS and expectations of the Ethiopian people and internation- ally accepted standards for free and fair elections; and Whereas the conflict in the Tigray Region occurs within the context of complicated regional and global dynamics, in- cluding 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 ac- tors, increasingly hostile border disputes between Ethi- opia and Sudan, and the fragile democratic transition and peace process in Sudan: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the Senate— 1 (1) calls for the immediate cessation of hos- 2 tilities in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia; 3 (2) condemns in the strongest terms all violence 4 against civilians; 5 (3) calls on the Government of Eritrea to im- 6 mediately and fully withdraw its military forces from 7 Ethiopia, and condemns in the strongest terms any 8 human rights violations, murder, looting, rape, and 9 other crimes committed by the Eritrean military or 10 any other forces in the Tigray Region or elsewhere 11 in Ethiopia; 12 (4) strongly disapproves of the escalation of po- 13 litical tensions between the Government of Ethiopia 14 and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) 15 into armed conflict; 16 VerDate Sep 11 2014 04:06 May 20, 2021 Jkt 019200 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6201 E:\BILLS\SR97.ATS SR97 pbinns on DSKJLVW7X2PROD with BILLS 9 SRES 97 ATS (5) calls for the swift and complete restoration 1 of electricity, banking, telephone, and internet serv- 2 ices throughout the Tigray Region and other parts 3 of Ethiopia where communications have been re- 4 stricted; 5 (6) appreciates the willingness of Sudan to wel- 6 come refugees fleeing the conflict in the Tigray Re- 7 gion; 8 (7) urges the Government of Ethiopia to— 9 (A) take tangible steps toward improving 10 humanitarian access in keeping with commit- 11 ments made to the United Nations World Food 12 Programme and Secretary of State Antony 13 Blinken; 14 (B) pursue accountability for human rights 15 abuses and atrocities; and 16 (C) make progress on other key issues with 17 regard to the conflict in the Tigray Region and 18 threats to regional stability following the visit of 19 Senator Coons; 20 (8) calls on the Government of Ethiopia to— 21 (A) ensure that any apprehensions of 22 TPLF members are carried out with the least 23 possible use of force and that the rights to 24 VerDate Sep 11 2014 04:06 May 20, 2021 Jkt 019200 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6201 E:\BILLS\SR97.ATS SR97 pbinns on DSKJLVW7X2PROD with BILLS 10 SRES 97 ATS which those detained are entitled under Ethio- 1 pian and international law are fully respected; 2 (B) require the immediate and full with- 3 drawal of Eritrean forces from Ethiopia; 4 (C) release all opposition leaders, sup- 5 porters, and activists detained on the basis of 6 their political act [Text truncated for display. Full text available on Congress.gov.]