Statement

of

Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro L. Locsin, Jr.

on Draft Resolution S-33/L.1: Situation of human rights in Ethiopia

To be delivered by Philippine Permanent Representative Evan P. Garcia 

at the Thirty-Third Special Session of the Human Rights Council

Geneva, 17 December 2021

Excellencies,

The Philippines votes NO to this resolution. It doesn’t help the situation in any way; all it does is make the self-righteous feel justified in their mistaken self-importance. We usually invoke the so-called principle against country specific resolutions; we do not do so in this instance. 

We are gravely concerned by the findings of the Joint Investigation Report[1], including accounts of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) against women and children. The list of horrors committed by all parties to the conflict is sickening: “physical violence and assault; attempted rape; rape including gang rape, oral and anal rape; insertion of foreign objects into the vagina; and intentional transmission of HIV… A 19-year-old survivor was abducted, detained, and repeatedly raped for three months. Rape of a woman with a disability was also documented.”[2]

It is even more heart breaking that children are not spared: “Children were subjected to SGBV, physical injuries and, in some cases, killings as a direct result of the conflict. Children were exposed to traumatic experiences such as witnessing the killing or rape of close family members by soldiers of the parties to the conflict... The displacement and killing of their caregivers left children orphaned and vulnerable to further abuses and violations. Thousands of children were separated from their families as result of the conflict. Children in Tigray and children displaced from Tigray to the Amhara region do not have adequate food, water, shelter, protection, and other lifesaving assistance.” 

This cannot continue. But it will if we resort to the cheap tactics of sovereign usurpation by the last countries in the world entitled to substitute their judgment for that of the specific country concerned. 

We note that while the Ethiopian Government has expressed reservations with some aspects of the JIT report, it has accepted and recognized the subject report. It has not disputed nor disregarded the Report. Instead, it has set up an Inter-Ministerial Taskforce to oversee redress and accountability measures in response to these human rights violations. It has begun to implement the recommendations in the Report, which we note was issued only a month ago. The Philippines welcomes these actions.

The proponents of this resolution on the other hand, want to intervene again and right away. While welcoming the Ethiopian Government’s decision to set up an Inter-Ministerial Taskforce to oversee redress and accountability measures, they are simultaneously seeking to create an International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia, to investigate the same allegations of violations and abuses to take over sovereign prerogatives. Why? And who are they to do so? Even the independent Ethiopian Human Rights Commission itself is concerned that the international investigative mechanism proposed by the resolution duplicates the work of the JIT report, and is therefore repetitive and counterproductive to ongoing implementation processes, and an unnecessary indeed self-defeating measure to end the specific horror of that civil conflict. That only further delays redress for victims and survivors; and an end to the horror.

The proponents must learn to respect and not pre-empt a sovereign state’s prerogative to set up its own national accountability efforts and mechanisms to address human rights and humanitarian law violations. They must cease using the Human Rights Council for unilateral undeservedly self-important actions that hinder cooperative and constructive efforts to change the human rights situation on the ground. In continuing to resort to these tactics, the proponents are weakening the Human Rights Council by turning it into an arena of condemnation and a judicial hall without due process, instead of a body for engagement, respect for sovereignty, and dialogue. As the Queen in Alice in Wonderland shouted, “First the judgment of conviction; and then the trial.” The nerve coming from whom it does. The Philippines will not allow this. We vote NO. Thank you. END

[1] Joint Investigation Team (JIT) report of the OCHRE and the Ethiopian Commission on Human Rights, 03 November 2021.

[2] ibid.