The United Nations’ top development agency said in a memo to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres that leadership in Ethiopia’s Tigray region deserves much of the blame for provoking the federal government’s bloody offensive against the Tigrayans, appearing to suggest that a military crackdown that has driven half a million people from their homes and fueled allegations of mass atrocities may have been justified.
The confidential memo—signed by Achim Steiner, the administrator of the U.N. Development Program (UNDP)—says that “all sides” in the East African conflict bear a share of responsibility for the bloody government offensive on the northern Ethiopian region of Tigray, with federal forces receiving backing from the Eritrean armed forces and militias from Ethiopia’s Amhara ethnic group.
