Alex de Waal OBE | |
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Born | Alexander William Lowndes de Waal February 22, 1963 Cambridge |
Education | The King's School, Canterbury |
Alma mater | University of Oxford |
Occupation(s) | Human rights activist, author, academic |
Organization(s) | World Peace Foundation, The Fletcher School, Tufts University |
Father | Victor de Waal |
Relatives | Edmund de Waal, Thomas de Waal (brothers) |
Alexander William Lowndes de Waal (born 22 February 1963), a British researcher on African elite politics, is the executive director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. [1] Previously, he was a fellow of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative at Harvard University, as well as program director at the Social Science Research Council on AIDS in New York City. [2]
De Waal was born in Cambridge, United Kingdom to Victor de Waal, an Anglican priest, and Esther Aline Lowndes-Moir, an author. He attended The King's School, Canterbury. [3] He graduated with a BA in Psychology with Philosophy from Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 1984 going on to receive a DPhil in social anthropology from Nuffield College, Oxford in 1988. [3] [4]
De Waal was the chairman of the Mines Advisory Group between 1993 and 1998. [5] In 1997, the Mines Advisory Group was co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize as a founding member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. [6]
De Waal set up two human rights organisations, African Rights (1993) and Justice Africa (1999), focusing respectively on documenting human rights abuses and developing policies to respond to human rights crises, notably in Rwanda, Somalia and Sudan. His book, Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry was published in 1997. Foreign Affairs described the book as "A powerful critique of the international humanitarian agencies dominating famine relief in Africa." African Rights, which mainly dealt with the situation in Rwanda, has later come under criticism. Luc Reydams argued in 2016 that "African Rights was instrumental in shaping and spreading an easily consumable one-sided narrative of the Rwandan conflict". [7]
From 1997 to 2001, he focused on avenues to peaceful resolution of the Second Sudanese Civil War. In 2001, he returned to his work on health in Africa, writing on the intersection of HIV/AIDS, poverty and drought. As the conflict worsened in 2004, he returned to his doctoral thesis topic of Darfur. During 2005 and 2006, de Waal was seconded to the African Union mediation team for Darfur. [2] In 2008 he became well known as a critic of the International Criminal Court's decision to seek an arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omar al Bashir, arguing that while Bashir was guilty of heinous crimes the 14 July 2008 Public Application charging him was poorly written and too weak to achieve a conviction. Additionally, he believed that the "ICC arrest warrant will lead to pre-emptive military action in Darfur, a reversal of the recent gains for civil and political rights, further restrictions on the UN and humanitarian operations, and an end to the [Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2004]". [8]
During 2005–06, de Waal was seconded to the African Union mediation team for Darfur, and from 2009 to 2012 served as senior adviser to the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel for Sudan. He was on the list of Foreign Policy's 100 most influential public intellectuals in 2008 and Atlantic Monthly's 27 "brave thinkers" in 2009.[ citation needed ]
He is an editor of the African Arguments book series published by Zed Books with Richard Dowden, Director of the Royal African Society. de Waal also writes and published regular commentary on contemporary Sudan through his World Peace Foundation blog Reinventing Peace. [9]
In November 2020 he wrote an article on the Tigray War involving Ethiopian federal powers and the TPLF, in which he quoted prime minister Abiy Ahmed calling the TPLF a criminal junta. He suggested the conflict would cause prospects for peace, democracy, and protection from famine to be set back a generation. [10] He
On 23 January 2024, de Waal said that Israel was committing a war crime through enforced starvation in the Gaza Strip, stating, "An entire population being reduced to this stage is really unprecedented. We haven’t seen it in Ethiopia, in Sudan and Yemen – pretty much anywhere else in the world." [11] He stated "it is the worst man-made famine in 75 years" [12] He was a strong supporter of the TPLF when they attacked EDF bases in Tigray in November 2020.
In the outset of the Tigray War, de Waal and Mulugeta Gebrehiwot published reports surrounding the situation in Tigray with regards to Eritrea's involvement. [13]
A widespread famine affected Ethiopia from 1983 to 1985. The worst famine to hit the country in a century, it affected 7.75 million people and left approximately 300,000 to 1.2 million dead. 2.5 million people were internally displaced whereas 400,000 refugees left Ethiopia. Almost 200,000 children were orphaned.
Seyoum Mesfin Gebredingel was an Ethiopian politician and diplomat. He was Ethiopia's Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1991 to 2010 and served as Ethiopia's Ambassador to China from 2011 to 2017.
The Tigray People's Liberation Front, also known as the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, is a left-wing ethnic nationalist, paramilitary group, and the former ruling party of Ethiopia. It was classified as a terrorist organization by the Ethiopian government during the Tigray War until its removal from the list in 2023. In older and less formal texts and speech it is known as Woyane or Weyané.
This is the bibliography and reference section for the Darfur conflict series. External links to reports, news articles and other sources of information may also be found below.
Ahmed Ibrahim Ali Diraige was the former governor of the Sudanese province of Darfur and late head of the National Redemption Front alliance of rebel groups in the Darfur conflict. He was residing in the United Kingdom.
Sudanese refugees are persons originating from the country of Sudan, but seeking refuge outside the borders of their native country. In recent history, Sudan has been the stage for prolonged conflicts and civil wars, as well as environmental changes, namely desertification. These forces have resulted not only in violence and famine but also the forced migration of large numbers of the Sudanese population, both inside and outside the country's borders. Given the expansive geographic territory of Sudan, and the regional and ethnic tensions and conflicts, much of the forced migration in Sudan has been internal. Yet, these populations are not immune to similar issues that typically accompany refugeedom, including economic hardship and providing themselves and their families with sustenance and basic needs. With the creation of a South Sudanese state, questions surrounding southern Sudanese IDPs may become questions of South Sudanese refugees.
The Woyane rebellion was an uprising in the Tigray Province, Ethiopia against the centralization process from the government of Emperor Haile Selassie which took place in May–November 1943. The rebels called themselves the Woyane, a name borrowed from a game played locally between competing groups of young men from different villages, which connoted a spirit of resistance and unity. After nearly succeeding in overrunning the whole province, the rebels were defeated with the support of aircraft from the United Kingdom's Royal Air Force. Out of all the rebellions that engulfed Ethiopia during Haile Selassie's rule, this was the most serious internal threat that he faced.
Abiy Ahmed Ali is an Ethiopian politician who is the current Prime Minister of Ethiopia since 2018 and the leader of the Prosperity Party since 2019. He was awarded the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize "for his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, and in particular for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea". Abiy served as the third chairman of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) that governed Ethiopia for 28 years and the first person of Oromo descent to hold that position. Abiy is a member of the Ethiopian parliament, and was a member of the Oromo Democratic Party (ODP), one of the then four coalition parties of the EPRDF, until its rule ceased in 2019 and he formed his own party, the Prosperity Party.
The Tigray war was an armed conflict that lasted from 3 November 2020 to 3 November 2022. It was a civil war that was primarily fought in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia between forces allied to the Ethiopian federal government and Eritrea on one side, and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) on the other.
This timeline of the Tigray War is part of a chronology of the military engagements of the Tigray War, a civil war that began in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia in early November 2020.
Mulugeta Gebrehiwot Berhe is an Ethiopian peace researcher who as of 2021, was a senior fellow at the World Peace Foundation, Tufts University. He was a rebel of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) when the EPRDF was a guerilla army. He led the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration program of the 380,000 armed rebels after the EPRDF gained control of Ethiopia in 1991. Mulugeta was a mediator in the Darfur Peace Agreement negotiations that led to the 2006 Abuja Agreement and the 2011 Doha Agreement during peace process for the War in Darfur. He was founding Director of the Institute for Peace and Security Studies in 2007. In January 2021 during the Tigray War, Mulugeta, telephoning from the mountains in Tigray Region, described the killings of civilians by the Eritrean Defence Forces (EDF) and the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) as "genocide by decree".
All sides of the Tigray war have been repeatedly accused of committing war crimes since it began in November 2020. In particular, the Ethiopian federal government, the State of Eritrea, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and Amhara Special Forces (ASF) have been the subject of numerous reports of both war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Beginning with the onset of the Tigray War in November 2020, acute food shortages leading to death and starvation became widespread in northern Ethiopia, and the Tigray, Afar and Amhara Regions in particular. As of August 2022, there are 13 million people facing acute food insecurity, and an estimated 150,000–200,000 had died of starvation by March 2022. In the Tigray Region alone, 89% of people are in need of food aid, with those facing severe hunger reaching up to 47%. In a report published in June 2021, over 350,000 people were already experiencing catastrophic famine conditions. It is the worst famine to happen in East Africa since 2011–2012.
The Tigrayan peace process encompasses the series of proposals, meetings, agreements and actions that aimed to resolve the Tigray War.
The Tigray Defense Forces, colloquially called the Tigray Army, is a paramilitary group located in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. It was founded by former generals of the Ethiopian Military in 2020 to combat federal forces enforcing national government mandates in the Tigray region, culminating in 2020 with the outbreak of the Tigray War. The TDF has made use of guerilla tactics and strategies. Human rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have reported that the TDF has committed war crimes against civilians including gang rape and extrajudicial killing during their occupation of both the Afar and Amhara regions. According to the Ethiopian Ministry of Justice, TDF combatants have been found liable for upwards of 540 civilians casualties. as of 28 December 2021.
Tsadkan Gebretensae is an Ethiopian former military officer. He is a Lieutenant general and member of the central command of the Tigray Defense Forces. In 1976 Tsadkan joined Tigray People's Liberation Front, becoming one of its main commanders in the Ethiopian Civil War. Following the war, he became chief of staff of the Ethiopian National Defense Force, rebuilding the force and leading it in the Eritrean-Ethiopian War. After the start of the Tigray War in 2020, he rejoined the Tigray's military leadership. Tsadkan is widely regarded as one of Africa's best military thinkers and strategists.
The EHRC–OHCHR Tigray investigation is a human rights investigation launched jointly by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in mid-2021 into human rights violations of the Tigray War that started in November 2020. The EHRC–OHCHR joint investigation team's report was published on 3 November 2021.
This Timeline of the Tigray War is part of a chronology of the military engagements of the Tigray War, a civil war that began in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia in early November 2020.
Abiy Ahmed is currently the third serving Prime Minister of Ethiopia. In 2018, he became the first ever Oromo descent to assume the role of prime minister in the history of Ethiopia. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in his second year as a prime minister of Ethiopia in 2019 becoming the eighth African laureates to win the award for peace.
The Ethiopia–Tigray peace agreement, also called the Pretoria Agreement or the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement (CoHA), is a peace treaty between the government of Ethiopia and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) that was signed 2 November 2022, wherein both parties agreed to a "permanent cessation of hostilities" to end the Tigray war. The agreement was made effective the next day on 3 November, marking the two-year anniversary of the war.