ADDIS ABABA: The African Union said on Friday it was following events in the Ethiopian region of Tigray with “deep concern” as tensions between rival factions threaten a fragile peace agreement.
“The African Union has been closely monitoring the evolving situation within the Tigray People’s Liberation Front with deep concern,” it said in a statement.
A peace agreement in 2022 ended a brutal two-year war between Tigrayan rebels and the federal government that claimed up to 600,000 lives, according to some estimates.
However, a failure to fully implement the terms has fueled divisions within the Tigrayan political elite and, combined with deteriorating ties between Ethiopia and neighboring Eritrea, raised fears of a new conflict.
“The AU emphasizes that adherence to the 2022 peace agreement is crucial for maintaining the hard-won peace and fostering an environment conducive to sustainable peacebuilding, reconciliation and development,” the statement said.
Also on Friday, Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, warned that at least 31 people had died from more than 1,500 cholera cases in Ethiopia’s Gambella region over the past month, adding that the outbreak is “rapidly spreading.”
The international NGO said the situation has worsened with the arrival of people fleeing violence in neighboring South Sudan.
“Cholera is rapidly spreading across western Ethiopia and in parallel, the outbreak in South Sudan is ongoing, endangering thousands of lives,” MSF said in a statement.
Several regions of Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous nation with around 120 million people, are battling cholera outbreaks, with Amhara — its second-largest region — among the hardest hit.
In South Sudan’s Akobo County, located in the Upper Nile region, 1,300 cholera cases have been reported in the past four weeks, according to MSF.
It said recent violence in Upper Nile between the South Sudanese government and armed groups is “worsening the outbreak.”
“Thousands are being displaced, losing access to health care, safe water, and sanitation,” MSF said.
South Sudan, the world’s youngest nation and still hit by chronic instability and poverty, declared a cholera epidemic in October.
The World Health Organization says some 4,000 people died from the “preventable and easily treatable disease” in 2023, up 71 percent on the previous year, mostly in Africa.+