US STATE DEP’T RELEASES REPORT ON ETHIOPIA

Falls Church, Virginia (3/22/2023) On March 20, 2023, the US Department of State released its annual series of human rights reports on countries across the world, including a report on the human rights situation in Ethiopia. OLLAA’s staff has worked closely with the US Department of State over the past year to ensure that their reporting on human rights in Ethiopia included an analysis of the human rights situation facing the Oromo.  As such, we were pleased to see that their latest report on Ethiopia contained a greater focus on the situation in Oromia, including the explicit recognition that multiple parties were responsible for the commission of human rights violations throughout the region. The latest report also included reports of a wide variety of violations that had been perpetrated against Oromos, including attacks on civilians, extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrests and detentions, freedom of movement, internal displacement, gender-based violence, and the forcible recruitment of child soldiers. Finally, the report recognized the challenges faced by those attempting to verify and report on human rights abuses in Oromia due to telecommunications shutdowns and other factors.

At the same time, OLLAA remains concerned that the State Department’s report still fails to provide a fully accurate and comprehensive picture of the human rights situation facing the Oromo. For example, although the report did acknowledge reports that attacks against civilians had been committed by various parties in Oromia, the OLA was the only non-state actor the report listed as a perpetrator of attacks, instead referring to other groups, especially Fano, who have been credibly accused of attacks by civilians by multiple sources, as “unidentified militants.” OLLAA also notes that there were several key events that were reported on by major media sources and human rights organizations that did not appear in this report, most notably the reports of indiscriminate drone strikes throughout Oromia following the signing of the peace agreement between the TPLF and the Ethiopian government in November 2022. 

OLLAA will continue to engage with the US State Department in order to keep them apprised of the human rights situation in Oromia, to urge them to condemn abuses against Oromos, and to encourage them to press the Ethiopian government to enter into a negotiated end to the conflict in Oromia. We encourage the State Department to continue to improve its reporting on human rights abuses against Oromos in its future reports. 

OLLAA is an umbrella organization that works in collaboration with dozens of Oromo communities around the world.