Monday, May 17, 2021
Press release
———————————————–
On Monday, May 17, 2021, the African Studies Unit of the Forum for Development and Human Rights Dialogue issued a report on “Violence against Tigray Children (Humanitarian Tragedy).
Ethiopia is one of the most vulnerable countries suffering from ethnic conflicts and major displacement crises over the past two years, with many Tigray residents accusing the federal government of waging an ethnic cleansing campaign against them, and as violence continues, some 2.3 million children in Tigray province have no access to humanitarian assistance, the report said.
The report explained that the armed conflicts led by the Ethiopian army Test in a severe humanitarian crisis consisted of the displacement of more than one and a half Ethiopians during the rule of Abi Ahmed and the number of Ethiopian refugees to Sudan reached 61 thousand refugees following renewed clashes in the region of “Tigray” between the Ethiopian army and the “Regional Liberation Front” amid expectations that 20,000 fugitives will enter Sudan in the next phase and the number of Ethiopian refugees in Sudan will rise to 200,000.
The report also made it clear that the United Nations accuses Eritrean forces of committing crimes against humanity, demanding that they withdraw from Tigray province, while the heads of nine UN agencies and other officials called for an end to attacks against civilians in Ethiopia’s besieged Tigray region “including rape and other horrific forms of sexual violence.”
The report noted that the war in Ethiopia had had devastating effects on infrastructure and material losses in Tigray province, where schools and medical centers had been looted, vandalized, and occupied by Ethiopian army armed forces and groups and its Eritrean ally.
According to the report, Ethiopian forces have left more than 3,000 people dead and displaced more than 1million displaced, caused Ethiopian army troops humanitarian coath to erase killings, torture, rape, and genocide, and made Tigray’s children live a terrible human tragedy that will remain in their minds for a lifetime.
The report also stated that a large proportion of these forced displaced persons, approximately 50% or more, are children accompanied by their families or unaccompanied, and according to UN estimates, more than 30% of refugees are under the age of 18, while 5% are over 60 years of age and severe acute malnutrition rates reach 10% among children under the age of five.
Concerning the humanitarian crisis for displaced children in Tigray, the report noted that there are some 1,052,000 internally displaced persons in the Tigray region, half of whom are children under the age of 18, according to a March 2021 report by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Concerning the manifestations of violations against Tigray’s children, the report noted that the conflict in Tigray had violated all international conventions on the protection of children, with UNICEF noting that at least20 children had been killed in the Church of Maryam Sayeda Zion in Tigray province in November 2020 and that Eritrean forces had killed hundreds of children and civilians in a massacre in the Ethiopian province of Tigray in November 2020, according to reports of international organizations.
The report explained that the United Nations has indicated that sexual violence targets girls as young as 8 years of age, out of one million displaced by violence, children have suffered severely and many schools in the city have become camps for displaced persons and are full of children being treated for bullets and shrapnel, some of whom have lost limbs.
The report also indicated that thousands of children in Tigray province were detained by Ethiopian forces, where Ethiopian army forces abducted and disappeared a large number of children in unknown places, noting that more than 1,000 children and adults had been abducted from western Tigray from November 2020 to April 2021.
