Issue No. 208

The Dissolution of ICHREE

Tomorrow, 4 October, the United Nations International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia (ICHREE) will be disbanded, and with its dissolution, serious international scrutiny of the Tigray War could be over. While the Commission was far from perfect, it promised to be the most significant independent and international investigation into the war’s numerous human rights violations.

The dissolution, only to be allayed by an unlikely last-minute intervention, comes despite the Commissioners’ warning on 18 September that their work was incomplete, with human rights violations ongoing in northern and western Tigray, as well as the Oromo and Amhara regions. Realpolitik and seeming indifference of the international community appear to have won out.

One of the 11 principles underpinning the November 2022 Pretoria agreement between the Federal Government of Ethiopia (FGE) and Tigrayan authorities was “accountability and justice,” in line with Ethiopia’s 1995 Constitution and the African Union’s Transitional Justice Policy Framework. The agreement further stipulated that the FGE should implement a comprehensive transitional justice mechanism developed with all stakeholders.

From the start, Addis refused to cooperate with the ICHREE, insisting that a domestic investigation and transitional justice mechanism would better serve the country. The motive behind Ethiopia’s insistence on a national transitional justice approach and a ‘comprehensive’ process is not hard to decrypt. State media reported as early as July 2022 a “discussion on transitional justice options” by an Inter-Ministerial Task Force, accountable to the Attorney General, to examine human rights violations in northern Ethiopia. The task force was seemingly established with the primary objective of creating a false equivalence between the violations of Tigrayan and federal and allied forces. Its first notable output was a press conference insinuating that ICHREE was both agenda-driven and inadequate.

If fully implemented, a comprehensive transitional justice process could still go some way to help Ethiopia make peace with itself-- with adequate self-reflection, recognition of wrongdoing, and a strong precedent of accountability. Ethiopia’s ongoing design of the transitional justice policy framework, however, leaves much to be desired.

It is the Attorney General himself who heads the Working Group on National Transitional Justice Policy. As the now obsolete Inter-Ministerial Task Force was also accountable to the AG, it was no surprise when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that the post-war transitional justice process would continue investigations conducted by the task force during the war.

The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) conducted public consultations with UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN-OHCHR) regarding transitional justice at the same time the task force was discussing its agenda. According to its 8-page summary of public consultations, participants stated that “they live in constant fear of conflict and recurrence of the violations they experienced.” They needed “restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, and guarantees of non-repetition,” including “returning to their homes, living without fear, and getting their livelihoods back.” Yet while they were “ready to forgive and reconcile if there is truth and acknowledgement... including from the highest level,” they expressed “discomfort with purely state-led processes and institutions.”

The EHRC-UNOHCHR consultations were carried out before the Pretoria agreement and without Tigrayan input, but they still help to capture the needs of those in Tigray. Roughly one million Tigrayans are currently living in under-funded and over-crowded camps, having been forcibly displaced from their homes. About a third of the Tigray region is still under occupation by Eritrean and Amhara forces, 11 months on from the Pretoria agreement, with human rights violations still being committed. Thousands have starved to death since the conclusion of the war; malnutrition and hunger are spiralling as the suspension of international food aid drags on. Forget restitution or compensation. And the state-owned Commercial Bank of Ethiopia hasn’t resumed payment for pensioners. Few Tigrayans would take a state-led transitional justice mechanism seriously, and Tigrayan authorities have yet had no representation in the process.

On 22 September, in a letter to the federal Ministry of Justice, Tigray Interim Administration (TIA) Deputy Tsadkan Gebretinsae accused the current justice initiative of ignoring the Pretoria agreement, failing to consult Tigray, and being the wrong “modality.” The TIA instead proposed that an independent body should develop a comprehensive justice mechanism or that a hybrid model should be developed through collaboration among international, federal, and regional bodies.

Regardless of Tigray’s opposition, the federal government’s National Transitional Justice Working Group appears to be in its final stages, with the draft policy expected to be submitted in the coming weeks. What issues this transitional justice process might address and what it could possibly achieve are yet to be seen.

There are other immediate problems facing the domestic transitional justice mechanism. First, there is the inability of a domestic court to prosecute Eritrean soldiers responsible for grave human rights violations, such as the massacres in Axum and Adigrat in November and December 2020. Second, ongoing violence across the country, including full-blown insurgencies in Oromia and Amhara, would likely compromise the independence of federal human rights investigations, in that the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) and Fano militia were both parties in the Tigray War.

The closure of ICHREE sends a signal to all current and future efforts at transitional justice, not just in the Horn of Africa, but around the world. The silence of the international community and the African Union, which shuttered its own investigation without fanfare in May 2023, is damning. There can not be a peaceful political transition or genuine transitional justice post-conflict without the resettlement of the victims of the war, the withdrawal of all occupying forces, restoration of livelihoods, and effective engagement with all relevant stakeholders. If the peak of transitional justice was South Africa’s experiment, let’s not allow Tigray to become its nadir.

By the Ethiopian Cable team