ethiopia

China’s aviation regulator on Monday grounded nearly 100 Boeing Co 737 MAX 8 aircraft operated by its airlines, more than a quarter of the global fleet of the jets, after a deadly crash of one of the planes in Ethiopia.

An attempt to get U.N. Security Council approval for a statement calling for an end to violence in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region and to spotlight the millions in need of humanitarian assistance was dropped Friday night after objections from India, Russia and especially China, U.N. diplomats said.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed gave Tigrayan regional forces 72 hours to surrender before the military begins an offensive on the regional capital of Mekelle.

In a surprise move, Ethiopia’s prime minister on Wednesday announced plans to drop charges against political prisoners and close a notorious prison camp in what he called an effort to “widen the democratic space for all.”

Ethiopian investigators urged Boeing to review its flight control technology and said pilots of state carrier Ethiopian Airlines had carried out proper procedures in the first public findings on the crash of a 737 MAX jet that killed 157 people.

The Board of Directors of the African Development Fund (ADF) on 3 July approved a grant of $165.08 million to support Ethiopia’s response to the health and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, including helping to ease fiscal pressures on the economy.

The Board of Directors of the African Development Fund has approved a grant of $31.2 million to the Government of Ethiopia to increase access to multi-sectoral nutritional services for children under-five years, by boosting access to services for improved health, a more diverse and nutritious food, and improving knowledge, attitude and practices on feeding, care and hygiene. The Multi-sectoral Approach for Stunting Reduction Project (MASReP) will target forty districts or woredas in the country’s Amhara and Tigray regions.

Ethiopia’s parliament has approved senior diplomat Sahle-Work Zewde as the country’s first female president, proceedings on state television showed, cementing another shift in the country’s political system from Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

Ethiopia's ruling coalition late Tuesday named a chairman set to become the country's new prime minister amid the latest state of emergency in Africa's second most populous nation.

Forces from Ethiopia’s rebel Tigray region fired rockets on Friday at the distant capital of the neighbouring Amhara region, Amhara authorities said, raising worries the conflict could spill into a wider war.

An Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 passenger jet to Nairobi crashed early on Sunday, killing 149 passengers and eight crew, the airline said, the same model that crashed during a Lion Air flight in Indonesia in October.

Abiy’s government has been trying to quell a rebellion by a powerful ethnic faction that dominated the central government for decades before he came to power in 2018. Thousands of people are believed to have been killed, and nearly 44,000 have fled to Sudan, in a conflict that has called into question whether Abiy can hold together fractious ethnic groups in Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous country.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali has won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for his peacemaking efforts with neighboring Eritrea.

Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chairperson of the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee that awards the Peace Prize, said Abiy was named for his decisive initiatives to end his country's conflict with Eritrea within months of his coming to office in 2018.

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres applauded the committee's choice.

Abiy Ahmed Ali: "I was so humbled and thrilled when I just heard the news."

"I have said often that winds of hope are blowing ever stronger across Africa. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is one of the main reasons why," he said in a statement Friday.

Internal reforms

The Nobel Committee also took note of Abiy's push for reforms within Ethiopia, largely aimed at easing the government's control of political discourse in the East African country.

"He spent his first 100 days as prime minister lifting the country’s state of emergency, granting amnesty to thousands of political prisoners, discontinuing media censorship, legalizing outlawed opposition groups, dismissing military and civilian leaders who were suspected of corruption, and significantly increasing the influence of women in Ethiopian political and community life," the committee said.

The committee acknowledged that much work remains to strengthen democracy in Ethiopia, but said it hopes the peace agreement with Eritrea will lead to more positive changes for both countries.

The East African neighbors fought a brutal war from 1998 to 2000 and remained at bitter odds thereafter over unresolved land and border issues.

After Abiy came to power in April 2018, he said Ethiopia would comply with a 2002 ruling forcing it to cede territory, including the contested town of Badme. In July, he and Eritrean leader Isaias Afwerki signed a peace agreement officially ending hostilities.

William Davison, Ethiopia analyst for the International crisis Group, said Abiy cannot rest on his laurels.

"[His] bold leadership has helped drive through positive changes in Ethiopia and achieve rapprochement with Eritrea. But there is a lot of work to do to achieve a new domestic political settlement between fractious actors, and there are also major obstacles to advancing the Eritrea peace process, suggesting that Abiy's hardest challenges lie ahead," he said Friday.

Rights group Amnesty International said the Nobel prize "should push and motivate [Abiy] to tackle the outstanding human rights challenges that threaten to reverse the gains made so far. He must urgently ensure that his government addresses the ongoing ethnic tensions [in Ethiopia] that threaten instability and further human rights abuses."

Regional peacemaker

The Nobel Prize committee also recognized Abiy for his role in other peace and reconciliation processes in East and northeast Africa. Last year, Ethiopia contributed to the normalization of diplomatic ties between Djibouti and Eritrea after years of tension. In Sudan, he helped resolve an impasse between the ruling military council and opposition, paving the way for a power-sharing agreement.

Abiy, 43, came to power in April 2018 and began to implement sweeping reforms and changes in Ethiopian policies.

In an interview with VOA's Horn of Africa service in May 2019, Abiy acknowledged that he planned to be an agent of change.

"I don’t believe that it’s proper to stay in power for long periods of time. And as long as I have power, I believe that I should use that to change people’s lives. But within my efforts working to bring change, there may be errors — but all of my intention and action is aimed at elevating Ethiopia," he said.

The prize of about $900,000 will be presented in Oslo on Dec. 10.

The Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences will be awarded on Monday, Oct. 14.

Source: VOA

Ethiopians in Washington gathered Thursday to support the country’s Nile dam project and voice displeasure over the U.S. role in the negotiations.

Singapore, Australia, Malaysia and Oman became the latest nations to suspend Boeing 737 MAX aircraft on Tuesday, while identification of the Ethiopian crash’s 157 victims dragged and black boxes were yet to yield the cause.

With laughter and hugs, the leaders of longtime rivals Ethiopia and Eritrea met for the first time in nearly two decades Sunday amid a dramatic diplomatic thaw.

An explosion injured scores attending a rally for Ethiopia's reformist new prime minister on Saturday, shortly after he spoke and was waving to the crowd that had turned out in numbers unseen in recent years in the East African nation.

The only thing the survivors can agree on is that hundreds of people were slaughtered in a single Ethiopian town.

The U.S. is “gravely concerned by reported atrocities and the overall deteriorating situation” in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in the toughest statement yet from the U.S. on Ethiopia’s ongoing conflict.

Britain on Tuesday joined a growing number of nations to suspend flights by Boeing 737 MAX aircraft over their territory, after an Ethiopia Airlines plane of that model crashed on Sunday killing 157 people.

The U.S. Embassy in Eritrea says six explosions were heard Saturday night in the capital, Asmara. It follows an embassy report of another “loud noise, possibly an explosion” in the city on Friday, nearly two weeks after the government of neighboring Ethiopia’s defiant Tigray region confirmed firing missiles at the city during its war with Ethiopian federal forces.