Mamadou Diouf | Deutsche Wells | August 31, 2021

Africans around the world have signed an open letter enjoining the African Union to mediate in the war in Ethiopia. Analysts agree on the need for intervention to end the bloodshed and prevent a major refugee crisis.

Hoping to increase pressure on the warring parties to end the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, dozens of African scholars and activists around the world took the unusual step of publishing an open letter calling for a negotiated peace.

“Ethiopia is on the precipice,” the letter reads, after condemning “the fact that the conflict is affecting ever-increasing numbers of civilians,” in a war increasingly characterized by human rights violations.

Mamadou Diouf, cosignatory of the letter and professor of African Studies at the Columbia University in the US, told DW that “the inability to prevent this conflict is a failure of Africa as a whole.”

The pan-African call for peace left no doubt about the increasing consternation over a war now entering its ninth month with no solution in sight.


Originally published by Deutsche Wells. Read the full article here.