Dear Excellencies,

We Tigrayan diaspora submit this urgent appeal concerning planned and targeted genocide. The action by the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments were genocide - state organised, systematic deportation and massacre of a designated population, defined by their religion and ethnicity, namely the Tigrayans, that it was carried out, initiated, and organised by those governments, to eliminate those people from their homeland, or to destroy their political and cultural potential.

Thousands have been killed in massacres, thousands more have fled, and countless women, nun and girls have been violently raped. Four hundred eighty five days and counting; the people of Tigrai have been ethnically cleansed, mass massacred, violently raped, their infrastructure, factories and institutions turned to dust. They were cut off from the rest of the world by well-designed systematically implemented siege. To continue its genocide the government of Abiy Ahmed and Isaias Afewerki made Tigray unreachable to humanitarian aid and the death from end stage starvation and preventable and treatable diseases piles up. As Tegaru-in diaspora we urge the world to take meaningful actions that would save our people than to serve us platitude. 

Since the declaration of a country-wide state of emergency on November 2, 2021, Ethiopia has imposed a “de facto humanitarian blockade”. A deadly chokehold on the people of Tigray, the genocidal regime is now busy manufacturing fictitious narratives to evade accountability for engineering the siege starvation of Tigrayans—a heinous crime under international law.

In October 2021, the head of the World Food Program said of Tigray: “there’s no way that the people are surviving there”. More recently, the UN’s humanitarian chief called the lack of meaningful international action a “stain on our conscience”. And the World Health Organization director general in January 2022 described the crisis as “an insult to our humanity”.

Most egregiously, Ethiopian and Eritrean combined forces, not only to carry out the war crimes of unimaginable savagery and scale on ground, but they also took to the sky to bomb every city and town in Tigrai with Chinese, Turkish and Iran’s drones with impunity. 

At present, the humanitarian situation in Tigray is indescribably bleak. Hospital in Tigray now facing imminent total collapse, we call upon desperate plea to the world that lays bare the suffering of the people of Tigray. Most aid agencies have run out of food stock, medicine and fuel. There is no therapeutic nutrition in Tigray for treating children suffering from acute severe malnutrition (SAM). The WFP has warned of a “humanitarian disaster”. Tigray Bureau of Social Affairs warned nearly half of the population could perish due to the ongoing siege that has blocked all kinds of medical items and food supplies to the region for the last 7 months. 

The United Nations Human Rights Council should take its responsibility seriously and make an equivocal statement into the atrocities committed by Ethiopia and Eritrea governments. We call upon United Nations Human Rights Council & Security Council of the United Nation:

1. We call upon to you immediate delivery of live saving humanitarian aid to Mekelle and no fly zone over Tigray.
2.The violation thus inflicted is irreversible; the death and destruction, the agony of millions cannot be undone, thus the urgency for action.

The Genocide Convention is aimed in making sure that there is no delay in the reaction of the world community. The world community, as one body, or member nations individually are obligated to act to remedy such violations. This is what the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has identified in past cases as an obligation erga omnes.  

The UN must be reminded of these responsibilities. It must ensure the delivery of cross-border humanitarian aid with or without the consent of the Ethiopian government and establish a mechanism to monitor implementation. Just as it did for Syria in 2016, the UN must urgently approve and initiate the air dropping of emergency food and medicine. We thank you in advance for your attention; and we look forward to your credible response to this urgent plea.

 
Sincerely,