The two leaders discussed “the deteriorating humanitarian and human rights crises in Ethiopia’s Tigray region and the need to prevent further loss of life and ensure humanitarian access,†a White House statement said.
The bloc suspended $110 million in aid to Ethiopia at the start of the conflict, and last month the E.U.’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, warned of possible war crimes in Tigray and said that the crisis was “unsettling†the entire region.
Abiy’s office said it was ready to collaborate in an international investigation into atrocities in Tigray.
4 and urged him to allow humanitarian access to Tigray, the State Department said.
Alex de Waal, an expert on the Horn of Africa at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, said it is time for the United States to urgently focus on the crisis in Tigray, before more atrocities are committed and the humanitarian crisis lurches toward a famine.In western Tigray ethnic fighters from Amhara — a region with a long rivalry with Tigray — flooded in, quickly helping Mr.The American government report about the situation in western Tigray, an area now largely controlled by Amhara militias, documents in vivid terms what it describes as an apparent campaign to force out the ethnic Tigrayan population under the cover of war.Some had fled into the bush; others crossed illegally into Sudan and still others had been rounded up and forcibly relocated to other parts of Tigray, the report said.
The American report is not the first accusation of ethnic cleansing since the Tigray crisis erupted.At least 4.5 million people in the region urgently need food aid, according to the Tigray Emergency Coordination Center, which is run by Ethiopia’s federal government.