The Ethiopian government and Tigaryan leaders have agreed to halt their two-year conflict, which resulted in thousands of deaths, displaced millions and left hundreds of thousands facing famine, an African Union special envoy said Wednesday, reported The Reuters. The AU-led negotiation talks began in Pretoria on Oct. 25.
The warring factions have signed up to a disarmament plan and the restoration of crucial services, including aid supplies.
The war, which began in November 2020, pits the Ethiopian federal military and its allies, who include forces from other regions and from neighboring Eritrea, against regional forces from Tigray.
African Union mediator Olusegun Obasanjo, welcoming delegates from the government and the Tigray forces to a signing ceremony on Wednesday in the South African capital Pretoria, said the agreement would allow humanitarian supplies to Tigray to be restored.
Former Nigerian president Obasanjo, who has been leading the African Union’s mediation team, said a high-level African Union panel will monitor and supervise the implementation of the ceasefire agreement. He praised the process describing it as an African solution to an African problem.
“This is not the end of the peace process but the beginning of it,” Obasanjo said.
Ethiopian government representative Redwan Hussien, who is Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s National Security Adviser, said both the factions should be true to the letter and spirit of the agreement.
In response, Getachew Reda, a spokesman for the Tigrayan authorities, spoke of the wide scale death and destruction in the region and said he hopes and expects that both parties would honor their commitments.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomed the peace agreement agreed in Ethiopia on Wednesday as a welcome first step that he hoped would bring solace to civilians after two years of war.
Notably, this is not the first ceasefire in the conflict. An earlier five-month truce collapsed in August.
