[Congressional Bills 117th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 445 Introduced in House (IH)]
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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
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.
_______________________________________________________________________
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 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.
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, 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 multiple human rights and
humanitarian challenges, including targeted ethnic violence,
intercommunal conflict, natural 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 Federal Government subsequently deemed the
Tigray regional elections illegitimate;
Whereas Ethiopia is undergoing a fragile political transition, with the
postponed 2020 general elections originally rescheduled for June 2021,
except in the Tigray Region, where elections have yet to be scheduled,
and with delayed voter registration processes in multiple regions;
Whereas, in the early hours of November 4, 2020, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed
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, eventually including Eritrean forces, and the TPLF on the other
side;
Whereas Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed rejected requests to engage 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 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
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 displaced 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 remain
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
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 and
harassed 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, aid agencies report that constraints to access
remain;
Whereas, since mid-2020, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights, Amnesty International, 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, including 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 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, looted and destroyed homes and religious
institutions, and otherwise conducted gross violations of human rights;
Whereas the conflict has disrupted harvests, livelihoods, markets, and supply
chains, with food and medical supplies looted and medical facilities
targeted and destroyed, and with restrictions and bureaucratic
impediments continuing to constrain the humanitarian response and draw
the Tigray region closer to famine conditions and a humanitarian
disaster;
Whereas an estimated 5,200,000 people in the Tigray Region require immediate
humanitarian assistance, including almost 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 Rescue Committee, three employees of the
Danish Refugee Council, and one staff member employed by a USAID
partner, were killed while conducting humanitarian operations in the
Tigray region, and one more in Benishangul-Gumuz;
Whereas at least one known instance of allied forces operating under the command
of the ENDF deliberately targeted a humanitarian aid worker who had
declared his status before being accused of providing food and supplies
to the TPLF and eventually killed;
Whereas victims of interethnic, intra-ethnic, and intercommunal 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 estimates 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 reports 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;
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, independent 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, security, and
humanitarian crises in the Horn of Africa'';
Whereas the conflict in the Tigray Region may have led ethnic Tigrayans
throughout Ethiopia, as well as those serving 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 surveillance and mass
arrests of Ethiopians;
Whereas several opposition political parties say the Government of Ethiopia has
restricted their right to peacefully assemble and organize, citing the
detention or harassment 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 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 National 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 organizations in May 2021, further reducing
the likelihood of brokering a comprehensive political resolution to the
crises that involves all parties to the conflicts;
Whereas, on May 23, 2021, the Department of State announced visa restrictions
under the Immigration and Nationality Act on, ``current or former
Ethiopian or Eritrean government officials, members of the security
forces, or other individuals--to include Amhara regional 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 question 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, including ongoing negotiations
between Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance
Dam, Ethiopia's rapprochement with Eritrea in 2018, threats posed by the
Somalia-based foreign terrorist organization Al-Shabaab, a struggle for
influence and power among regional and global actors, an increasingly
hostile border disputes between Ethiopia and Sudan over al-Fashaga, and
the fragile democratic transition and peace process in Sudan: Now,
therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
(1) calls for the immediate cessation of hostilities in the
Tigray Region of Ethiopia and end to violence throughout the
Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia;
(2) calls on the Government of Ethiopia and the Government
of the State of Eritrea to fulfill its commitment to
immediately and fully withdraw Eritrean Defense Forces from
Ethiopia;
(3) condemns in the strongest terms any human rights
violations, murder, looting, rape, and other crimes committed
by Ethiopian forces, the Eritrean military, or any other forces
in the Tigray Region or elsewhere in Ethiopia;
(4) strongly disapproves of the escalation of political
tensions between the Government of Ethiopia and the Tigray
People's Liberation Front (TPLF) into armed conflict;
(5) calls for full and unfettered access for humanitarian
operations and for journalists and diplomats seeking access to
affected areas throughout Tigray and elsewhere in Ethiopia;
(6) calls for the swift and complete restoration of
lifesaving medical services, as well as electricity, banking,
telephone, and internet services throughout the Tigray Region
and other parts of Ethiopia where communications have been
restricted;
(7) supports the joint investigation of the Office of the
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the
Ethiopian Human Rights Commission on human rights violations in
the Tigray region;
(8) appreciates the willingness of Sudan to welcome
refugees fleeing the conflict in the Tigray Region;
(9) urges the Government of Ethiopia to--
(A) take tangible steps toward improving
humanitarian access in keeping with commitments made to
the United Nations World Food Programme and Secretary
of State Antony Blinken;
(B) pursue accountability for human rights abuses
and atrocities; and
(C) make progress on pursuing a political solution
in advance of the planned elections in 2021 and other
key issues with regard to the conflict in the Tigray
Region and threats to regional stability;
(10) calls on the Government of Ethiopia to--
(A) ensure that any apprehensions of belligerents
in the conflict 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 all opposition leaders, supporters, and
activists detained on the basis of their political
activity and views as well as journalists detained on
the basis of their reporting, and respect the rights of
freedom of expression of all Ethiopians and political
participation, without discrimination based on
ethnicity, ideology, or political affiliation; and
(C) convene a credible and countrywide process of
national dialogue and reconciliation 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;
(11) urges all parties to the conflict to--
(A) cease all hostilities, commit to a political
solution for resolving existing differences, fully
comply with international humanitarian law, and refrain
from actions that could continue, 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 in the
Tigray Region and other conflicts across Ethiopia, and
hold all perpetrators to account in a credible process;
and
(12) 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 the
Government of Ethiopia, the Government of the State of
Eritrea, the TPLF, and other parties to the conflict to
encourage the immediate and full cessation of
hostilities, and the full withdrawal of all Eritrean
forces, mitigate the humanitarian crisis in the region,
and support an inclusive process of national dialogue
and reconciliation in Ethiopia;
(B) maintain close coordination with international
allies and multilateral organizations regarding efforts
to address the conflict in the Tigray Region and other
regions of Ethiopia, and bring attention to the
conflict in international fora, including the United
Nations Security Council;
(C) immediately establish criteria to end the pause
of all remaining nonlife-sustaining assistance to
Ethiopia and continue to support programming to meet
immediate humanitarian needs, including of refugees and
internally displaced persons, advance nonviolent
conflict resolution and reconciliation throughout the
country, and aid a democratic transition in Ethiopia;
(D) as appropriate, use all diplomatic,
developmental, and legal tools to prevent further
ethnic-based violence and mass atrocities, including by
nonstate armed groups, and promote competitive
multiparty democracy in Ethiopia;
(E) continue to take actions that, according to
Secretary of State Blinken on February 27, 2021, ensure
a ``full, independent, international investigation into
all reports of human rights violations, abuses, and
atrocities'' committed in the course of the conflict;
(F) urgently determine whether atrocities committed
in Tigray amount to war crimes and crimes against
humanity; and
(G) based on the investigations, impose targeted
sanctions and accountability measures on those found
responsible for committing human rights abuses and
atrocities.
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