AU monitoring team visits Ethiopia’s Tigray to oversee peace deal implementation

African Union and East African officials arrived in Ethiopia’s Tigray region on Thursday (29 December) to launch a joint monitoring and verification mechanism for a peace deal signed in November to end the two-year war.

The mediating team, led by Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, as well as African Union (AU) representatives and diplomats from various countries, arrived in Mekele, the Tigray region’s capital. The team that helped broker a peace deal between Ethiopia’s federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in South Africa is trying to ensure the implementation of the terms of the agreed ceasefire. The peace deal calls for the restoration of all services, the provision of adequate aid to the needy population, the disarmament of rebel groups, and the withdrawal of foreign forces and other militia groups from the region.

Meanwhile, the government restored telecommunication services to more towns this week, and Ethiopian Airlines flew to Mekele for the first time in nearly two years on Wednesday (29 December), allowing families to reconnect. The following day, Ethiopia’s federal police began to deploy to Mekele, marking a new stage in a nearly two-month old peace deal.

The bloody conflict between the federal government and Tigray rebels that began in November 2020 led to as many as half a million dead, according to the US sources.