Djibouti News Gazette

UNITED NATIONS, — A Russian-drafted call for aid access and civilian protection in Ukraine that does not mention Moscow’s role in the crisis failed at the UN Security Council, with only Russia and China voting yes and the remaining 13 members abstaining.

“If Russia cared about the humanitarian situation, it would stop bombing children and end their siege tactics. But they haven’t,” Britain’s UN Ambassador Barbara Woodward told the council after the vote. Russia denies attacking civilians.

A Security Council resolution needs at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes by Russia, China, Britain, France or the United States to be adopted. Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia accused those who abstained on Wednesday of doing so “for political reasons”.

Explaining China’s yes vote, Ambassador Zhang Jun said Beijing had a “strong expectation” that there should be an immediate ceasefire, but that while pushing for a halt to the fighting, the council should “also respond to the humanitarian crisis in a positive, pragmatic and constructive manner”.

China abstained last month in a Security Council vote on a draft resolution that would have deplored Moscow’s Feb 24 invasion of Ukraine, a move Western countries viewed as a win for showing Russia’s isolation. Russia vetoed the resolution.

Moscow had scrapped a planned council vote on the draft aid resolution last Friday after accusing Western countries of an “unprecedented pressure” campaign against the measure. The United States rejected Russia’s allegation.

“Russia alone is to blame for the war in Ukraine,” US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the council on Wednesday. “Russia’s disingenuous efforts to deny the truth of its actions will continue to fail.”

A diplomatic tit-for-tat has been escalating since Russia launched what it calls a “special military operation” that is says aims to destroy Ukraine’s military infrastructure. UN chief Antonio Guterres has blasted Russia’s “absurd war.”

Russia proposed the Security Council text after France and Mexico withdrew their own push for a council resolution on Ukraine’s humanitarian situation because they said it would have been vetoed by Moscow. That draft would have criticised Russia for its role in creating the humanitarian situation in Ukraine.

Ukraine and its allies are instead planning to put a similar draft resolution to a vote this week in the 193-member General Assembly where no country wields a veto. General Assembly resolutions are nonbinding, but they carry political weight.

South Africa has put forward a rival draft text in the General Assembly on the same issue that does not mention Russia.

The Ukraine-led draft currently has 88 co-sponsors and South Africa’s draft has about six, including China, diplomats said.

Nebenzia accused Ukraine and its allies on Wednesday of “another political anti-Russian show” in the General Assembly, urging countries to vote for the South African draft, saying it would “send a signal to Ukraine’s peaceful population that the United Nations is aware of their situation and wants to help.”

Ukraine’s UN Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya appealed to the UN General Assembly: “We ask all those who stand against the war to vote with us.”

Ukraine and its allies are looking to improve on the 141 yes votes cast to adopt a March 2 General Assembly resolution that deplored Russia’s “aggression” against Ukraine and demanded it withdraw. Russia, Belarus, Eritrea, North Korea and Syria voted no, while 35 states – including China – abstained.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

ADDIS ABABA — Ethiopia’s government on Thursday declared “an indefinite humanitarian truce effective immediately,” saying it hoped to help hasten delivery of emergency aid into the Tigray region, where hundreds of thousands face starvation.

Since war broke out in northern Ethiopia in November 2020, thousands have died, and many more have been forced to flee their homes as the conflict has expanded from Tigray to the neighboring regions of Amhara and Afar.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government “is committed to exert maximum effort to facilitate the free flow of emergency humanitarian aid into the Tigray region,” it said in a statement.

“To optimize the success of the humanitarian truce, the government calls upon the insurgents in Tigray to desist from all acts of further aggression and withdraw from areas they have occupied in neighboring regions,” it said.

“The government of Ethiopia hopes that this truce will substantially improve the humanitarian situation on the ground and pave the way for the resolution of the conflict in the northern Ethiopia without further bloodshed.”

The TPLF reacted to the government’s announcement on Twitter:

The conflict erupted when Abiy sent troops into Tigray to topple the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the region’s former ruling party, saying the move came in response to rebel attacks on army camps.

Fighting has dragged on for over a year, triggering a humanitarian crisis, as accounts have emerged of mass rapes and massacres, with both sides accused of human rights violations.

More than 400,000 people have been displaced in Tigray, according to the U.N.

The region has also been subject to what the U.N. says is a de facto blockade.

The United States has accused Abiy’s government of preventing aid from reaching those in need, while the authorities in turn have blamed the rebels for the obstruction.

Nearly 40 percent of the people in Tigray, a region of 6 million people, face “an extreme lack of food,” the U.N. said in January, with fuel shortages forcing aid workers to deliver medicines and other crucial supplies on foot.

‘Welcome news’

Western nations have been urging both sides to agree to a cease-fire, with Britain and Canada hailing the truce declaration.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States “urges all parties to build on this announcement to advance a negotiated and sustainable cease-fire, including necessary security arrangements.”

“The UK welcomes the Government of Ethiopia’s decision to announce an indefinite humanitarian truce, and to ensure unimpeded access of aid into Tigray. We call on Tigrayan authorities to reciprocate,” the British Embassy in Ethiopia said on Twitter.

Canada’s embassy to Ethiopia and Djibouti said on Twitter that the announcement was “welcome news, as aid is urgently needed in northern Ethiopia.”

Diplomats led by Olusegun Obasanjo, the African Union’s special envoy for the Horn of Africa, have been trying for months to broker peace talks, with little evident progress so far.

Analysts said the truce was an important step but urged the government to follow up the announcement with action and ease humanitarian access to Tigray.

“The unconditional and unrestricted delivery of aid could also help create enough trust to pave the way for ceasefire talks and, eventually, dialogue,” said William Davison, the International Crisis Group’s senior analyst for Ethiopia.

‘Ground to a halt’

More than 9 million people need food aid across Afar, Amhara and Tigray, according to the U.N.’s World Food Program.

But humanitarian organizations have been forced to increasingly curtail activities because of fuel and supply shortages.

“WFP operations in the Tigray region have ground to a halt, with only emergency fuel stocks and less than one percent of the required food stocks remaining,” the agency said this week.

A TPLF push into Afar has worsened the situation, driving up the need for emergency aid in the region.

The road from Afar’s capital, Semera, to Tigray’s capital Mekele is the only operational land route into Tigray, where the U.N. estimates hundreds of thousands are living in famine-like conditions.

The government previously declared a “unilateral cease-fire” in Tigray in June last year, after the TPLF mounted a shock comeback and retook the region from federal forces.

But fighting intensified in the second half of 2021, with the rebels at one point claiming to be within 200 kilometers of the capital Addis Ababa, before reaching a stalemate.

Source: Voice of America