News: EU Parliament adopts resolution on Ethiopia; demands immediate cessation of hostilities, calls for wide range sanctions including arms embargo

The resolution also “calls on the UN Security Council to consider deploying UN peacekeepers to the [Tigray] region”

Addis Standard Staff

Addis Abeba, October 08/2021 – The European Parliament has on 07 October adopted a resolution demanding “immediate cessation of hostilities by all parties” and calling for wide range sanctions, including arms embargo, against all the belligerents participating in the ongoing civil war in Ethiopia.

The 27 points resolution was adopted by a total of 618 yeses, 58 abstains and four nos.

The first point in the resolution “demands the immediate cessation of hostilities by all parties, which is a necessary prerequisite for much-needed improvements to the humanitarian situation in Tigray and
other regions, in particular Afar and Amhara; calls for an immediate return to constitutional order and for the establishment of a ceasefire monitoring mechanism.”

Among the call for wide rage sanctions, the Parliament adopted a call “on the Member States to halt exports of arms and surveillance technology to Ethiopia that are being used to facilitate attacks on civilians and perpetrate human rights violations.”

It also called on the “Ethiopian Government to sign and ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court; calls on the warring parties to guarantee unfettered access to independent human rights monitors and investigators, including UN and African Union investigators.”

The resolution explained that the “11-month conflict has triggered a human-induced crisis and this wide-scale human suffering is entirely preventable.” It also highlights that children were “being recruited into the conflict by the warring parties, including the Tigrayan forces; and that “the use of child soldiers constitutes a war crime.”

Furthermore, it noted that “the Ethiopian authorities have arbitrarily detained and forcibly disappeared ethnic Tigrayans in Ethiopia’s capital, and have committed other abuses against them such as closing Tigrayan-owned businesses; whereas incitement to hatred and discrimination and rising levels of inflammatory anti-Tigray rhetoric are evident throughout Ethiopia, including by high-level government officials.”

Among the 27 points resolution is the call for the “UN Security Council to consider deploying UN peacekeepers to the region.” The Parliament expressed its “regrets that the UN Security Council has so far not addressed the situation in Tigray” and urged “the EU and its Member States to press the UN Security Council to hold regular public meetings on Tigray and to take decisive action to ensure unhindered humanitarian access, to safeguard the protection of civilians, to end grave violations of international law, and to ensure accountability for the atrocities.”

The Parliament instructed the President to forward copies of the resolution to the Vice-President of the Commission/High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the Council, the Commission, the governments and parliaments of the Member States, the European External Action Service, the Federal Government and House of Federation of Ethiopia, the Tigrayan authorities, the Government of the Republic of Sudan, the Government of the State of Eritrea, the governments of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, the African Union and its member states, the Pan-African Parliament, and the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly.” AS