During a meeting with Marcel Clement, the Regional Director for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Tigray IRA President Getachew Reda expressed concern over potential limitations of domestic transitional justice mechanisms in addressing crimes perpetrated by Eritrean forces.
Emphasizing the importance of justice for reconciliation and progress, Regional Director Marcel Clement underscored the necessity of addressing these issues with a victim-centered approach.
The Ethiopian government had established an “inter-ministerial task force” prior to the signing of the Pretoria peace deal to implement the recommendations of the joint investigation by the Ethiopian state-appointed Human Rights Commission and the UN Human Rights body. However, the report was rejected by the then Tigrayan authorities, who argued that it failed to document the massive atrocities carried out in Tigray.
Investigators of the Joint Investigation Team were unable to travel to sites of serious abuses in the region, including Axum, where Eritrean forces killed hundreds of youth door to door.
It’s to be recalled that the UN established the International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia (ICHREE) in December 2021, only to terminate its mandate in September of last year before conducting on-the-ground investigations in Tigray.
