This policy outlook aims to provide an overview of the humanitarian crisis in the Ethiopia’s Tigray region and explain the Tigray conflict’s impact on the national and regional elections in June 2021.
Ethiopia’s war in the northern Tigray regional state has killed thousands of people and about a third of Tigray’s 6 million people have been displaced since the brutal conflict started early last November. Millions need emergency food aid, and hundreds of thousands are reportedly facing starvation. The war has fuelled deadly ethnic violence in some regions of Ethiopia and stands to severely impact Ethiopia’s general elections, scheduled for June 2021. Ethiopia’s federal government must first allow life-saving aid to follow to the region, expel Ahmara fighters and Eritrean soldiers from the region, and initiate an inclusive national reconciliation. This policy outlook aims to provide an overview of the humanitarian crisis in the Tigray region and explain the Tigray conflict’s impact on the national and regional elections in June 2021. Finally, it seeks to shed light on the regional ramifications of the Tigray war in the context of the renewed Sudanese-Ethiopian border clashes and neighbouring Eritrea’s involvement in the conflict.
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