International Committee of the Red Cross
Red Cross condemns ‘horrific’ sexual violence in Ethiopia’s Tigray
The Red Cross voiced alarm Thursday over “horrific” accounts of sexual violence in Ethiopia’s conflict-hit Tigray region, amid fears that rape was being used as a weapon of war. Robert Mardini, director-general of the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross, said the organisation’s staff in hospitals and clinics in the region were hearing first-hand of extreme sexual violence. “Those reports are extremely horrific, very shocking,” he told AFP in an interview, adding that this was a “matter of grave concern”. “I haven’t heard such terrible accounts for more than two decades in the humanitarian sector,” said Mardini, who among other things closely followed the civil wars in Syria and Yemen when he headed ICRC’s Near and Middle East division from 2012 to 2018. “Many of my humani...
United Nations, Ethiopia reach aid pact for war-hit Tigray
Ethiopia and the United Nations reached an agreement on Wednesday to channel desperately needed humanitarian aid to a northern region where a month of war has killed, wounded and uprooted large numbers of people. The pact, announced by U.N. officials, will allow aid workers access to government-controlled areas of Tigray, where federal troops have been battling the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and captured the regional capital. The war is believed to have killed thousands, sent 45,000 refugees into Sudan, displaced many more within Tigray, and worsened suffering in a region where 600,000 people were already dependent on food aid even before the flare-up from Nov. 4. Aid agencies had sounded the alarm about a growing humanitarian crisis and been pressing for access, after hundred...
44,000 people missing in Nigeria, Ethiopia, other parts of Africa
Getty Images The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has revealed that about 44,000 people are registered as missing across the African continent, with nearly half of them being children. Nigeria, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Somalia, Libya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Cameroon make up 82 percent of ICRC’s missing caseload in Africa, the ICRC disclosed in a statement issued on Wednesday. “As August 30 marks the International Day of the Disappeared, nearly 44,000 people across Africa are registered as missing with the ICRC at a time when restrictions put in place to curb Covid-19 create new challenges in searching for missing people,” the statement read. According to the ICRC, about 45 percent of the cases were children. “This caseload is a drop in the ocean to the...
