Condemning all violence and human rights abuses in Ethiopia, and calling on the Government of Ethiopia and the Government of the State of Eritrea to remove all Eritrean troops from Ethiopia, and for all belligerents in the conflict, including the Ethiopian National Defense Forces, the Tigray People's Liberation Front, and Amhara regional forces, and other armed groups to cease all hostilities, protect human rights, allow unfettered humanitarian access, and cooperate with independent investigations of credible atrocity allegations.

IV 117TH CONGRESS 1ST SESSION H. RES. 445 Condemning all violence and human rights abuses in Ethiopia, and calling on the Government of Ethiopia and the Government of the State of Eritrea to remove all Eritrean troops from Ethiopia, and for all belliger- ents in the conflict, including the Ethiopian National Defense Forces, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, and Amhara regional forces, and other armed groups to cease all hostilities, protect human rights, allow unfettered humanitarian access, and cooperate with independent inves- tigations of credible atrocity allegations. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES MAY 28, 2021 Ms. BASS (for herself, Mr. SMITH of New Jersey, Mr. MEEKS, and Mr. MCCAUL) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs RESOLUTION Condemning all violence and human rights abuses in Ethi- opia, and calling on the Government of Ethiopia and the Government of the State of Eritrea to remove all Eritrean troops from Ethiopia, and for all belligerents in the conflict, including the Ethiopian National Defense Forces, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, and Am- hara regional forces, and other armed groups to cease all hostilities, protect human rights, allow unfettered hu- manitarian access, and cooperate with independent inves- tigations of credible atrocity allegations. VerDate Sep 11 2014 01:48 May 29, 2021 Jkt 019200 PO 00000 Frm 00001 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6652 E:\BILLS\HR445.IH HR445 pbinns on DSKJLVW7X2PROD with BILLS 2 •HRES 445 IH 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, and is a key contributor of uniformed personnel to United Nations peacekeeping missions and to the African Union Mission to Somalia; 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 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 Federal Government of Ethiopia postponing the 2020 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 Ethiopia is undergoing a fragile political transition, with the postponed 2020 general elections originally re- scheduled for June 2021, except in the Tigray Region, where elections have yet to be scheduled, and with de- layed voter registration processes in multiple regions; VerDate Sep 11 2014 01:48 May 29, 2021 Jkt 019200 PO 00000 Frm 00002 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR445.IH HR445 pbinns on DSKJLVW7X2PROD with BILLS 3 •HRES 445 IH Whereas, in the early hours of November 4, 2020, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered a military offensive in re- sponse to an attack by the TPLF on the Northern Com- mand of the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF), which evolved into an armed conflict between the ENDF and allied forces on one side, eventually in- cluding Eritrean forces, and the TPLF on the other side; Whereas Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed rejected requests to en- gage in talks with the TPLF during a meeting in Addis Ababa with former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former Mozambique President Joaquim Chissano, and former South African President Kgalema Motlanthe, three special envoys appointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, the then-African Union Chairman in November 2020, to mediate in the conflict and broker a solution to the crisis; 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 apprehend leaders of the TPLF; Whereas clashes have continued in the Tigray Region, and Ethiopian soldiers, Eritrean forces, and other armed groups 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 [the] perpetrators’’; Whereas the conflict in the Tigray Region has forced more than 63,000 Ethiopians to seek refuge in Sudan, has dis- VerDate Sep 11 2014 01:48 May 29, 2021 Jkt 019200 PO 00000 Frm 00003 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR445.IH HR445 pbinns on DSKJLVW7X2PROD with BILLS 4 •HRES 445 IH placed more than 1,000,000 people internally, and has caused severe shortages of food, water, medical facilities and supplies, and other necessary goods for those who re- main in the region; 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 and harassed in connection to their coverage of the con- flict, 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, aid agencies report that constraints to access re- main; Whereas, since mid-2020, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Amnesty Inter- national, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC), and other credible human rights monitors have reported gross violations of human rights, incidents of ethnic cleansing, rising cases of sexual and gender-based violence, and other atrocities and a rise in ethnic and intercommunal violence in other parts of Ethiopia, in- VerDate Sep 11 2014 01:48 May 29, 2021 Jkt 019200 PO 00000 Frm 00004 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR445.IH HR445 pbinns on DSKJLVW7X2PROD with BILLS 5 •HRES 445 IH cluding in the Amhara, Benishangul-Gumuz, Somali, Afar, Oromia and Southern Nations, Nationalities and People’s Region states; 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, looted and destroyed homes and religious insti- tutions, and otherwise conducted gross violations of human rights; Whereas the conflict has disrupted harvests, livelihoods, mar- kets, and supply chains, with food and medical supplies looted and medical facilities targeted and destroyed, and with restrictions and bureaucratic impediments con- tinuing to constrain the humanitarian response and draw the Tigray region closer to famine conditions and a hu- manitarian disaster; Whereas an estimated 5,200,000 people in the Tigray Region require immediate humanitarian assistance, including al- most 100,000 Eritrean refugees; 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, since November 2020, at least eight humanitarian workers, including one employee of the International Res- VerDate Sep 11 2014 01:48 May 29, 2021 Jkt 019200 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR445.IH HR445 pbinns on DSKJLVW7X2PROD with BILLS 6 •HRES 445 IH cue Committee, three employees of the Danish Refugee Council, and one staff member employed by a USAID partner, were killed while conducting humanitarian oper- ations in the Tigray region, and one more in Benishangul-Gumuz; Whereas at least one known instance of allied forces oper- ating under the command of the ENDF deliberately tar- geted a humanitarian aid worker who had declared his status before being accused of providing food and sup- plies to the TPLF and eventually killed; Whereas victims of interethnic, intra-ethnic, and intercom- munal violence in Ethiopia come from all ethnic groups, and victimizers often come from some of the same groups; 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- mates from the EHRC, more than 600 Amhara civilians were killed due to what the EHRC Chief Commissioner concluded was ‘‘for no reason other than their ethnicity’’, and a mass killing of Tigrayans in the city of Axum on November 28–29, 2020, which involved, according to re- ports from Amnesty International, the systematic killing of ‘‘hundreds of unarmed civilians’’ after Ethiopian and Eritrean troops retook the city; Whereas, on February 11, 2021, the governing party of the Benishangul-Gumuz state acknowledged that dozens of its mid- and senior-level officials have been complicit in targeted ethnic violence against Amhara, Agaw, and Shinasha; VerDate Sep 11 2014 01:48 May 29, 2021 Jkt 019200 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR445.IH HR445 pbinns on DSKJLVW7X2PROD with BILLS 7 •HRES 445 IH Whereas, on March 25, 2021, the United Nations Office for the High Commissioner of Human Rights and the EHRC announced that they will conduct a joint ‘‘objective, inde- pendent investigation’’ into human rights abuses in the Tigray region for an initial period of three months; 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, on April 23, 2021, Secretary Blinken announced the appointment of Ambassador Jeffery Feltman as U.S. Special Envoy to the Horn of Africa, to ‘‘underscore the Administration’s commitment to lead an international diplomatic effort to address the interlinked political, secu- rity, and humanitarian crises in the Horn of Africa’’; Whereas the conflict in the Tigray Region may have led eth- nic Tigrayans throughout Ethiopia, as well as those serv- ing with the ENDF in various missions throughout the region, to be suspended from their jobs, redeployed from their forward operating bases, and detained or prevented from leaving the country, and there are reports of surveil- lance and mass arrests of Ethiopians; Whereas several opposition political parties say the Govern- ment of Ethiopia has restricted their right to peacefully assemble and organize, citing the detention or harass- ment of some of their local candidates and supporters and efforts to prevent them from opening local offices, 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 VerDate Sep 11 2014 01:48 May 29, 2021 Jkt 019200 PO 00000 Frm 00007 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR445.IH HR445 pbinns on DSKJLVW7X2PROD with BILLS 8 •HRES 445 IH some major opposition parties to threaten to withdraw from the forthcoming general elections; Whereas the Government of Ethiopia, with the help of allied forces operating in Tigray and other parts of Ethiopia, continue to detain prominent political opponents, some of whom have been charged with terrorism and other crimes; Whereas the National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) announced on May 15, 2021, that the national elections have been further delayed; Whereas according to a pre-election assessment conducted by the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, ‘‘significant difficulties, including widespread insecurity and ethnic conflicts, delays in Na- tional Election Board of Ethiopia’s (NEBE’s) candidate and voter registration procedures, poor cooperation from some state governments, boycotts and threats of boycotts by several political parties with broad constituencies, as well as the COVID–19 public health crisis, threaten the ability of voters and parties to participate in the process and, thereby, the potential for credible elections.’’; Whereas the Government of Ethiopia designated the TPLF and a group it identified as ‘‘Shene’’ as terrorist organi- zations in May 2021, further reducing the likelihood of brokering a comprehensive political resolution to the cri- ses that involves all parties to the conflicts; Whereas, on May 23, 2021, the Department of State an- nounced visa restrictions under the Immigration and Na- tionality Act on, ‘‘current or former Ethiopian or Eri- trean government officials, members of the security forces, or other individuals—to include Amhara regional VerDate Sep 11 2014 01:48 May 29, 2021 Jkt 019200 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR445.IH HR445 pbinns on DSKJLVW7X2PROD with BILLS 9 •HRES 445 IH and irregular forces and members of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF)—responsible for, or complicit in, undermining resolution of the crisis in Tigray.’’; Whereas the conflicts in the Tigray and Oromia Regions, intercommunal violence in other parts of Ethiopia, and the erosion of political and civic space call into the ques- tion of whether the general elections in 2021 can meet the aspirations and expectations of the Ethiopian people and internationally 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 in 2018, threats [Text truncated for display. 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