Ethiopia - April 2024

On 22 April, the UN reported that over 50,000 people had been displaced by armed clashes in northern Ethiopia, including the districts of Raya Alamata, Zata and Ofla. The report described the humanitarian situation of the displaced as ‘dire…with thousands of women and children in need of broad humanitarian support to survive.’ Media outlets were not able to identify the fighters but reported them as being from the rival Tigray and Amhara provinces. Since the end of the Tigray War in 2022, tensions between Tigrayans and Amhara in the area have been heightened by an unresolved territorial dispute over Raya Alamata, which both provinces claim.

Sources: United Nations, Addis Standard, The Africa Report (1), British Broadcasting Corporation, The Africa Report (2)

In April, a prominent politician from the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) was shot dead and his body found by the side of a road, in what some have alleged was an extrajudicial killing by government security forces. Bate Urgessa, a senior political officer within the OLF, one of Ethiopia’s largest political parties, was an outspoken critic of the Ethiopian government and had been imprisoned on numerous occasions. In February, he had been detained for conspiring to incite unrest after being interviewed by a French journalist. Extra-judicial killings are common in Ethiopia’s Oromia region, where they are reported to have been carried out by government security forces and the separatist rebels, the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), in their long running conflict. The OLF, OLA and Urgessa’s family have all suggested military involvement in his death, with the latter alleging that people who looked like government security forces had abducted him from his hotel room the morning before his body was found. Oromia’s regional government denied the charge, but condemned the killing and promised an investigation into it. On 12 April, it was reported that 13 unnamed suspects had been arrested.         

Sources: Addis Standard, The Africa Report, British Broadcasting Corporation, Associated Press, Reuters, Human Rights Watch