Canada is abdicating its responsibility to protect civilians in Tigray

Now seven months in, the civil war in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region has deteriorated into one of the world’s most dire humanitarian crises. In the early 2000s, Canada was instrumental in codifying the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) norm. The meagre response thus far by the Liberal government is evidence of a gap between policy and practice. What is happening in Tigray? Setting aside the competing narratives over how the conflict began on Nov. 4, 2020, there is no justification for the manner in which this war is being waged. This is not only a war against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a party that was the dominant force in Ethiopian politics from 1991 to 2018. Rather, this is a campaign of revenge against the Tigrayan people being conducted by the Eritrean and Ethiopian armies, along with militias from the Amhara region. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won a Nobel Prize in 2019 for signing a ‘peace’ deal with Eritrea, has resurrected a policy in Tigray known as “draining the ocean to catch the fish.” From 1983 to 1985, the Derg military regime headed by Mengistu Haile Mariam used famine as a weapon of war in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to stamp out rebellions in Tigray and Eritrea, leading to an estimated 1.2 million deaths. Famine is looming once again, as the United Nations is warning that over 90 per cent of the population of Tigray, meaning 5.2 million people, are in need of emergency food and humanitarian aid. A UN analysis found that some 350,000 people are living under famine conditions in Tigray. An estimated 90 per cent of this year’s harvest and 80 per cent of the livestock have been looted or destroyed. Already pushed to the brink, farmers are being prevented from preparing for the next season. Eritrean and Ethiopian security forces are reportedly continuing to block humanitarian workers from providing assistance to those in need. The head of Ethiopia’s Orthodox Church, Abune Mathias, has called what is happening in Tigray genocide. An information and electricity blackout in most rural areas since November makes it difficult to determine an exact death toll. A project overseen by Belgium professor Jan Nyssen has documented over 8,000 civilians killed and identified 2,562 of these. These numbers include the massacre of hundreds of Tigrayans in Axum, Maryam Dengelat, Temben, and Mahbere Dego. At the war’s outset, there was a massacre of hundreds of Amhara residents in Mai Kadra that was followed by a wave of killings and violent displacement of Tigrayans in the same town. A process of ethnic cleansing of Tigrayans is underway in Western Tigray in regions that Amhara nationalists claim were wrongfully annexed to Tigray in the 1990s. Gender-based violence takes two forms in Tigray. As a Tigrayan rape survivor told Weltspeigl, Eritrean soldiers claim to have been ordered to kill all Tigrayan males over the age of seven and rape all Tigrayan females over the age of eight. This is part of a concerted effort to debase the entire Tigrayan society in revenge for the TPLF’s past abuses, including by destroying cultural sites, as well as looting factories, hospitals, and schools. Canada, R2P, and Tigray R2P was conceived in response to the failure to prevent genocide in Rwanda and the Balkans in the 1990s. Lloyd Axworthy, as Canada’s foreign affairs minister, introduced the concept of human security and took leadership over the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) in 2000. The outcome of this process was the creation of the R2P norm in 2001, which was unanimously adopted by UN member states at the 2005 UN World Summit. R2P is a non-binding principle stipulating that states hold the responsibility to protect their citizens from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. When a state fails to fulfill this responsibility, the international community is obligated to intervene. R2P reframes sovereignty away from a model that privileges the rights of states in favour of one that prioritizes the responsibilities of a state towards its population. From 2006 to 2015, Canada’s role as a vocal proponent of R2P was greatly diminished under Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Justin Trudeau was elected in 2015 with a mandate for his Liberal government to restore Canada’s international credibility in this regard. Despite having no issue invoking the term publicly, the Trudeau government has been criticized for not doing enough to advance the R2P norm at home and abroad. Canada’s role in addressing the crisis in Tigray was initially limited to a polite phone call between prime ministers Abiy and Trudeau on Feb. 25 in which Ethiopia’s civil war was an afterthought. In March, Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau was somewhat more forceful when he called his Ethiopian counterpart to express “Canada's deep concern regarding credible reports of human rights violations and abuses” in Tigray. In the United States, the Biden administration recently took the first concrete steps towards accountability by announcing visa restrictions on Ethiopian and Eritrean officials deemed responsible for prolonging the crisis in Tigray. The Biden administration is also considering halting financing from US loans and international financial institutions. Ethiopia has been the recipient of $3-billion in foreign assistance from Canada since 2000, more than any other country apart from Afghanistan. Canada, therefore, possesses the same diplomatic levers as Washington but has thus far been unwilling to use them. Canada’s continued provision of humanitarian aid is nonetheless essential and any sanctions should be used to punish regime officials, rather than ordinary Ethiopians. Patrick Wight holds a PhD in Political Science and International Development from the University of Guelph. He spent 18 months in Ethiopia between 2014 and 2019 while conducting research on the sidelines of the South Sudan peace process. The Hill Times

Canada is abdicating its responsibility to protect civilians in Tigray

The meagre response thus far by the Liberal government, seven months into the civil war in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray, is evidence of a gap between policy and practice.

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Canada is abdicating its responsibility to protect civilians in Tigray

The meagre response thus far by the Liberal government, seven months into the civil war in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray, is evidence of a gap between policy and practice.

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