[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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