A UN Security Council meeting on the conflict in Ethiopia’s dissident Tigray region is back on, after division between European and African members over whether the closed-door discussion should take place nearly scuttled the sit-down.
France, Britain, Belgium, Germany and Estonia — backed by the United States — announce the virtual meeting, the first on the conflict, will go ahead Tuesday after African countries pulled out of organizing it.
Refugees from the Tigray region of Ethiopia wait to register at the UNCHR center at Hamdayet, Sudan on November 14, 2020. (AP/Marwan Ali)
“They say ‘Africans solutions to African problems.’ It is something that we have to respect only to a certain degree,” a European diplomat tells AFP on condition of anonymity.
“At a certain moment, we have to put it on the agenda, even if the Africans don’t like it,” he added, highlighting the Europeans’ impatience over the lack of Security Council action on the weeks-long fighting.
Earlier, South Africa, Niger, Tunisia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines withdrew their request because envoys have yet to travel to Ethiopia, said one African diplomat.
— AFP
We can't do this work alone.
The war with Iran has been draining for all of us in Israel. But when I heard about a high casualty incident – ballistic missile impacts in Arad and Dimona that left nearly 200 people wounded – I drank a cup of coffee, packed a bag, and headed south.
There, I spoke with Shilgit, the head of an after-school program for underprivileged youth. Standing outside her destroyed center, Shilgit said it was a miracle that no children were hurt and spoke about the community coming together in the hours since.
As a Times of Israel reporter, I’m committed to telling stories of resilience like Shilgit’s. But my colleagues and I can't do this alone. If you value work like this,please consider joining our reader support group, The Times of Israel Community. Your financial support is essential to keep real human reporting like this going.
We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.
That’s why we started the Times of Israel - to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we haven’t put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community.
For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
Thank you, David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel
From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, November 24, 2020
