STILL USING HYDROCRABONS
Cogeneration plant at Edmonton International Airport takes off
Nicole Bergot 

Edmonton International Airport (EIA) has powered up a new natural gas cogeneration power plant to cut carbon emissions and costs

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 Ed Kaiser The Edmonton International Airport on April 25, 2020.

The facility, under construction in 2019 and operational this spring, facilitates the capture of heat from electrical power generation, using it to warm water, which in turn heats the EIA terminal.

The plant is expected to cut the airport’s annual carbon emissions by roughly 20 per cent — or 7,000-8,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year, says a Tuesday EIA news release.

Video: Massive solar farm proposed for Edmonton International Airport (Global News)

The facility is also expected to reduce EIA’s energy costs by roughly $800,000 per year.

Atco was the prime contractor for the $11-million project, located adjacent to the central utilities plant.

“Using natural gas, an abundant, affordable and clean energy source, makes CoGen a win-win solution that offers facilities an opportunity to decrease their environmental footprint through decreased GHG emissions and lower operational costs,” said Lance Radke, Atco vice president, customer experience and initiatives.

The Government of Alberta contributed $1.85 million towards construction.

“We couldn’t have done it without our partners, the Government of Alberta and ATCO, and we’re thankful for their support. Our company is committed to being carbon-neutral by 2040 under our commitment to the climate pledge and this new cogeneration facility goes a long way to helping us get closer to that goal by reducing our current emissions by 20 per cent,” said Tom Ruth, EIA president and CEO.

Amazon prioritized finding 'wicked smart' college grads for management roles over promoting hourly workers within the ranks, according to a new report

insider@insider.com (Allana Akhtar) 

© Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images More than 75% of managers at Walmart stores in the US began as hourly workers, according to The New York Times. Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Amazon kept hourly workers from getting promoted by seeking out new college grads to fill management roles, NYT reports.

By comparison, Walmart reportedly promotes hourly workers at roughly double the rate of Amazon.
Amazon has a minimum wage of $15 for all workers, a pay floor Walmart has not officially enacted.

Walmart - the country's largest private employer and Amazon's biggest competitor - promotes hourly employees to managers at roughly double the rate at Amazon, according to a new New York Times report.

More than 75% of managers at Walmart stores in the US began as hourly workers, the Times reported. Amazon, for example, last year promoted only about 220 of 5,000 employees at the JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island, according to the Times. It's part of a plan at Amazon to fill management roles with "wicked smart" college graduates, one former executive told the outlet.

David Niekerk, a former human resources vice president who stepped down in 2016, told The Times Amazon prevented hourly employees from achieving promotions by design, and said the firm's then-head of operations shot down a 2014 proposal to create more leadership roles for these workers.

The lengthy report examined how Amazon has kept business flowing amid a pandemic. One of the biggest revelations reported by the Times was how quickly Amazon burns through hourly employees, leaving some executives to fear that they may run out of new workers.

Before the pandemic, Amazon lost 3% of hourly workers each week, resulting in an annual turnover rate of 150%, according to documents reviewed by The Times.

 "Amazon touts new initiative in response to criticism over work conditions at warehouses"

In 2019, Walmart said its turnover rate for store employees is down 10% to the lowest level in five years. Across the industry, the National Retail Federation reported six out of every 10 employees has been promoted.

Amazon, which flourished during the COVID-19 pandemic as Americans spent more on e-commerce than in-store shopping, announced it would hire 75,000 people across US in Canada with a starting pay. of more than $17 and a signing bonus of up to $1,000. The retailer also increased pay by up to $3 an hour for 500,000 current workers.

Read more: Target is recovering from a sweeping back-end system failure, affecting everything from payroll software to call centers, just 2 years after its cash registers crashed around the globe

The online retailer repeatedly touts their $15 minimum wage - a benchmark Walmart has not officially set for its workforce yet. In a Bloomberg article published late last year, an Amazon spokesperson brought attention to the fact Walmart has "yet to join" Amazon in raising its minimum wage to $15.

Jeff Bezos envisions Amazon as "Earth's best employer and Earth's safest place to work" in his final letter to shareholders as chief executive. Bezos wrote he will renew his commitment to helping reduce work-related injuries and increase employee satisfaction as Executive Chair.

"If we want to be Earth's Best Employer, we shouldn't settle for 94% of employees saying they would recommend Amazon to a friend as a place to work," Bezos wrote in April. "We have to aim for 100%."

Walmart and Amazon were not immediately available for comment.

ABOLISH THIS LOUGHEED ERA CONSITUTIONAL MULLIGEN

Peter L. Biro: Section 33 has no place in a liberal democracy. It ought to be repealed

Special to National Post

Canada’s democracy has always been considered resilient and well immunized against the democratic backsliding that is occurring in other liberal democracies. Yet there is one feature of Canada’s Constitution that undermines this rather smug assessment: Section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms — the infamous notwithstanding clause — which permits Parliament and the provincial legislatures to provisionally suspend the operation of the charter with respect to certain fundamental rights and freedoms

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© Provided by National Post The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

In recent weeks, we have seen two provincial premiers resort to the notwithstanding clause in order to insulate legislation from charter scrutiny. In Ontario, Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government announced that it plans to invoke the notwithstanding clause in order to restore parts of the Protecting Ontario Elections Act that restricts third-party election advertising and that had been struck down by a judge for infringing freedom of expression.

And in Quebec, the Coalition Avenir Québec government of Premier François Legault has invoked the notwithstanding clause as part of Bill 96, which seeks to amend Canada’s Constitution to identify Quebec as a nation and make French its official and common language. In 2019, the Legault government also resorted to the notwithstanding clause when it passed Bill 21, An Act Respecting the Laicity of the State, which is intended to eradicate religious symbols in most of the public sector.

Back in 2018, Premier Ford introduced legislation cutting the size of Toronto’s city council in half, and announced that he would be prepared to invoke Section 33 in order to save the law in the event that it was found to violate the charter. In the face of public opposition, both Ford and his attorney general cavalierly defended the proposed use of Section 33 by touting their access to “all the tools in the toolbox.”

The willingness of our leaders to resort to the notwithstanding clause is cause for concern. Although the invocation of Section 33 does not offend the rule of law because the notwithstanding clause is, indeed, in the constitutional “toolbox,” it nevertheless poisons the liberal-democratic well from which free citizens draw their water.

Section 1 of the charter already anticipates that there will be circumstances in which rights and freedoms may lawfully be curtailed. But the courts have imposed a rigorous, multi-pronged test under Section 1 that requires the government to establish that the law or action responds to a matter of pressing and substantial concern, that its objective is rationally connected to the abridgement of a charter right, that the impairment of the right must be minimal and that there must be proportionality between the benefits of the law and the deleterious effects of the impairment.

With Section 33, however, governments are not required to satisfy a judge that any of these conditions are present. Except to the extent that a government’s purpose is articulated in legislative debate, the exercise of justifying the abridgement of constitutionally protected rights and freedoms can be dispensed with altogether when such an exercise risks producing an inconvenient or embarrassing result for the government.

The notwithstanding clause is the product of some heavy-handed, high-stakes bargaining amongst federal and provincial negotiators during the constitutional negotiations of 1981. The insistence by then-premiers Peter Lougheed, Allan Blakeney and Sterling Lyon on the inclusion of such a constitutional override clause was crucial in securing the requisite provincial support for the patriation package.

The principal justification for such an override was perhaps best articulated by constitutional law scholar Peter Russell: “A belief that there should be a parliamentary check on a fallible judiciary’s decisions on the metes and bounds of our fundamental rights and freedoms.” However, almost four decades after the inclusion of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada’s Constitution, we have had the benefit of a rich and well-developed jurisprudence under Section 1.

It is high time we recognize that the escape hatch of Section 33 undermines Canada’s commitment to protecting civil liberties, erodes the legitimacy of our democracy, renders it vulnerable to democratic backsliding and compromises Canada’s credentials as a global champion of human rights and liberal-democratic values.

The problem is not that first ministers will be tempted to use all the tools in the constitutional “toolbox,” but that Section 33 is a dangerous and altogether unnecessary tool. It simply has no place in the constitutional toolbox of any mature and robust liberal democracy. It ought to be repealed.

Peter L. Biro is the founder of Section1.ca, a democracy and civics education advocacy organization, a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and chair emeritus of the Jane Goodall Institute, Global. He is a lawyer, business executive and the editor of “Constitutional Democracy Under Stress: A Time For Heroic Citizenship.”

US Jury deciding if immigration detainees must get minimum wage

SEATTLE (AP) — A federal jury is deciding whether one of the nation's biggest private prison companies must pay minimum wage — instead of $1 a day — to immigration detainees who perform tasks like cooking and cleaning at its jail in Washington state.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Democratic Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson sued the Florida-based GEO Group in 2017, saying the company had unjustly profited by running the Northwest detention center in Tacoma on the backs of captive workers.

A separate lawsuit filed on behalf of detainees was also filed that year, seeking back pay. Tacoma-based U.S. District Judge Robert Bryan, who rejected several attempts by GEO to dismiss the lawsuits, consolidated the cases for trial, which he conducted via Zoom because of the pandemic.

“What GEO is doing to exploit captive detainee workers at the Northwest detention center is for real — and at a massive scale,” Assistant Attorney General Andrea Brenneke told the jury in closing arguments Tuesday. “GEO could easily pay detainee workers the minimum wage and still make millions of dollars in profits from the facility each year.”


GEO's response is that the detainees simply aren't employees. Even if they were, the company says, it would be unlawfully discriminatory for Washington to require GEO to pay them minimum wage — now $13.69 an hour — when the state doesn't pay minimum wage to inmates who work at its own prisons or other detention facilities.

In her closing argument, GEO attorney Joan Mell accused the state and detainee advocates of using the lawsuits to attack the immigration detention system. GEO has operated the detainee work program for more than a decade, and the state made no effort to get the company to pay the minimum wage until 2017, amid a flurry of lawsuits Ferguson filed against the Trump administration.

“If the plaintiffs can prove the Minimum Wage Act is – quote — applicable ... then they can reform immigration detention without ever having to go to Congress,” she said. “They’re taking a shortcut via the courthouse to get what they want.”

The Northwest detention center houses people who are in custody while the government seeks to deport them or reviews their immigration status. It can hold up to 1,575 detainees, making it one of the nation's largest immigration jails, though as of early this month its population was just 216, largely due to the pandemic.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which pays GEO to run the facility, requires the company to operate a “voluntary work program” to keep the detainees occupied. It requires them to be paid at least $1 per day for work that includes cleaning bathrooms, showers and industrial kitchens; washing and folding laundry; sweeping and buffing floors; preparing and serving food; and cutting hair.

Former detainees testified that they worked because they needed money to buy extra food or clothing at the commissary or to make phone calls to loved ones.

The shifts often last just an hour or two. GEO's own analysis said it that if detainees didn't do the work, it would need to hire 85 full-time workers from the community.

GEO's contract with ICE also requires it to comply with applicable state and local law — which, the state says, includes the Washington Minimum Wage Act.

Washington appears to be the only state suing a private detention contractor for not paying minimum wage to immigration detainees. But similar lawsuits have been brought on behalf of immigration detainees in other states, including New Mexico, Colorado and California, seeking to force GEO and another major private detention company, CoreCivic, to pay minimum wage to detainees there.

The Colorado and California cases are pending, but a federal judge rejected the lawsuit brought by former detainees of CoreCivic's Cibola detention center in New Mexico — a decision upheld by a federal appeals court panel in March.

“Persons in custodial detention—such as appellants—are not in an employer-employee relationship but in a detainer-detainee relationship,” the panel wrote.

That is the crux of GEO's argument in the Washington case. The company acknowledges it has the money to pay detainees the minimum wage if it wants. In 2018 GEO made $18.6 million in profits from the facility; it would have cost $3.4 million to pay the minimum wage to detainees.

Mell also pointed to provisions in GEO's contract with ICE that state that any employees GEO hires must have legal status in the U.S. Many of the detainees don't. “The contract spells it out: The detainees are not employees,” Mell said. “They can’t be.”

But the definition of “employee” in Washington's minimum wage law is extremely broad — it includes anyone who is permitted to work by an employer, without regard to immigration or legal work status. The law says residents of “a state, county, or municipal" detention facility are not entitled to minimum wage.

According to lawyers for the state and for the detainees, that exception doesn't cover a private, for-profit jail such as GEO's. Further, GEO oversaw the scheduling and performance of the work just as a typical employer does, they said.

If the jury finds that the minimum wage law applies to GEO, a second phase of the trial will be held to determine damages. Jurors did not reach a verdict Tuesday; they were to resume deliberations Wednesday.

In a separate effort, Washington is trying to close the detention center entirely. This spring Gov. Jay Inslee signed a law that would ban for-profit detention centers in the state. GEO has sued to block it.

Gene Johnson, The Associated Press

US Park service sued after gate kills Ugandan humanitarian

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The family of a women’s rights activist from Uganda sued the National Park Service this month after she was decapitated last year by a gate at Utah’s Arches National Park.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The gate had been left unlatched against federal policy for two weeks before it struck Esther Nakajjigo in June 2020, according to the lawsuit filed in Denver.

She and her husband were newlyweds traveling in the well-known park when the wind caught the gate as they drove out, Fox13-KSTU in Salt Lake City reported.

The lawsuit does not specify the amount of damages being sought, but Nakajjigo's family has previously filed a $270 million notice of claim. Notices of claim must be filed ahead of lawsuits against government agencies and the lawsuit was filed June 8 in federal court.

The gate sliced through the side of their rented car, striking Nakajjigo in the head and neck and killing her, the lawsuit said.

Her husband Ludo Michaud witnessed his wife's death, something he has called the “worst thing I hope I will ever see.”

Nakajjigo, 25, was born in Kampala, Uganda, and used her university tuition money to start a nonprofit community health care center for girls and young women when she was a teenager.

She earned numerous humanitarian awards and created a popular reality television series aimed at empowering young mothers. She was attending a social-entrepreneurship program in Colorado at the time of her death.

A National Park Service spokesperson declined comment Monday on the lawsuit, Fox13-KSTU reported. The park service previously issued a statement expressing sympathy to her family.

The Associated Press

'Unacceptable' that Inuk MP felt unsafe in House of Commons, Miller says

OTTAWA — Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller says it's a "sad reflection" on Canada that an Inuk MP feels she's been racially profiled by security officials on Parliament Hill.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Mumilaaq Qaqqaq, a rookie New Democrat MP from Nunavut, told the House of Commons on Tuesday night that she does not feel safe on the Hill.

She said she's been chased down hallways and racially profiled by members of the Parliamentary Protective Service.

Commons Speaker Anthony Rota's office says Qaqqaq has never complained about any incidents to the Speaker, who presides over the protective service along with the Speaker of the Senate.

The service itself has not so far responded to a request for comment on Qaqqaq's allegations.

Miller says Qaqqaq is not the first MP of colour to complain, recalling that former Liberal MP Celina Caesar-Chavannes also spoke out about feeling "carded" by Hill security — a reference to a controversial police practice that has been denounced for targeting primarily Indigenous and racialized individuals for questioning.

"It's a reflection of still who we are as a country," Miller said Wednesday.

"It is a sad reflection of where we are. It's unacceptable and it shouldn't be that way but it is."

He added: "For someone to feel unsafe in what should be one of the most secure places in the country because of who she is and what her identity is is entirely unacceptable and, in fact, is an attack on her parliamentary privilege."

Qaqqaq, first elected in 2019, has decided not to seek re-election. She told the Commons in what was her official farewell speech Tuesday that she feels she doesn't belong in the chamber.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the House of Commons has sat in a hybrid format for most of Qaqqaq's brief time as an MP, with most MPs participating virtually in proceedings from their home ridings.

But in the short time she's spent on the Hill, Qaqqaq said security guards have jogged after her down hallways, "nearly put their hands on me and racial profiled me."

She said she's learned "as a brown woman, do not move too quickly or suddenly, do not raise your voice, do not make a scene, maintain eye contact and don't hide your hands."

Last fall, Qaqqaq took a leave of absence for several months, later explaining she had been suffering from "extreme burnout, depression and anxiety." She took another two-week leave in April, citing continuing "personal health problems."

The second leave came on the heels of a Twitter spat with Labrador Liberal MP Yvonne Jones. Qaqqaq charged that Jones "is not an Inuk" and challenged her to "validate her Inuk-ness."

She eventually apologized to Jones.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 16, 2021.

Joan Bryden, The Canadian Press

HE HAS A FOOL FOR A CLIENT

Ex-CIA worker seeks to represent himself at espionage trial

NEW YORK (AP) — A former CIA software engineer accused of leaking secrets to WikiLeaks notified a judge Tuesday that he wants to represent himself at an October retrial on espionage charges.

Joshua Schulte, 32, plans to proceed on his own behalf, defense attorney Sabrina Shroff told U.S. District Judge Paul A. Crotty during a court hearing.

The judge then directed prosecutors to submit legal papers on issues surrounding a hearing that would be conducted to ensure Schulte’s right to a fair trial is protected.

Shroff said the judge may have to decide if Schulte is fit to represent himself and then could assign his lawyers to assist him as what is known as “standby counsel.”

Schulte has pleaded not guilty in the 2017 release of secrets by WikiLeaks that resulted from what prosecutors have labeled the largest leak of classified information in CIA history.

The so-called Vault 7 leak revealed how the CIA hacked Apple and Android smartphones in overseas spying operations and efforts to turn internet-connected televisions into listening devices.

After a year-long investigation, authorities arrested Schulte, who had already left the CIA after falling out with colleagues and supervisors and moved to New York City to work at a news agency.

His lawyers argued at his first trial last year that the leak could have been made by many others. A jury then deadlocked on the espionage charges while convicting him of less serious charges of contempt of court and making false statements.

Prior to his arrest, Schulte worked as a coder at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where some of the CIA’s digital sleuths design computer code to spy on foreign adversaries.

In January, Schulte represented himself in a court filing in which he complained that he was subjected to cruel and unusual punishment by being forced to await trial in solitary confinement in a vermin-infested cell of a jail unit where inmates are treated like “caged animals.”

After the October trial, Schulte will face child pornography charges in a separate trial.

Larry Neumeister, The Associated Press

KENNEY LIES

Alberta premier denies supporting niqab ban despite past public statements

© Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press Alberta Premier Jason Kenney is denying he ever supported a ban on niqab or face veils worn by some Muslim women.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney is denying he supported a ban on niqabs even though he issued a directive in 2011 banning women from wearing them during citizenship ceremonies when he was the federal minister of citizenship and immigration.

Kenney made the remarks during a news conference following the virtual Western Premiers Conference on Tuesday.

"I've never supported a proposed ban," Kenney said.

"To the contrary, I've always said that Canada is a country that protects and respects religious freedom and pluralism, and the government has no business regulating what people wear unlike in certain European and Middle Eastern countries that do have bans on face coverings," he added.

"That has never been proposed. I've always opposed that."

Kenney is facing new questions about his record in light of recent comments by Tim Uppal, the Conservative MP for Edmonton-Mill Woods.

Uppal, who became the spokesperson for the niqab ban as the minister of state of multiculturalism in the Harper cabinet, apologized in a Facebook post Sunday for not pushing back harder against the policies of his former government which he said "alienated Muslim Canadians and contributed to the growing problem of Islamaphobia in Canada."

Uppal said he decided to publicly account for his past actions after four members of a Muslim family were struck and killed by a man driving a truck in London, Ont.

The accused is now facing terrorism charges in addition to four charges of first-degree murder and one charge of attempted murder. One family member, a nine-year-old boy, survived the attack.

Uppal's caucus colleague, Calgary-Nose Hill MP Michelle Rempel Garner, also apologized for her inaction.

Despite his denial on Tuesday, Kenney continued to take responsibility for and defend the policy as recently as 2015, when the ban was struck down in court.

Kenney was also a member of cabinet when the Conservative government led by former prime minister Stephen Harper proposed a hotline during an election campaign to report so-called "barbaric cultural practices."

© CBC Edmonton-Mill Woods MP Tim Uppal, seen here in 2015 when he was minister of state for multiculturalism, became the spokesperson for legislation to ban face-coverings at citizenship ceremonies.

Uppal, who appeared on CBC Radio's Edmonton AM Tuesday, deflected questions about whether he felt Kenney should apologize as he was accounting for his own actions as the minister of state for multiculturalism.

"[Kenney] has a very good relationship with a lot of people in the Muslim community," Uppal said. "This is something that I have seen myself first-hand."

Kenney left federal politics in 2016 to run for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta, the first step in his successful drive to unite the PCs with the Wildrose Party.

Jasvir Deol, the NDP MLA for Edmonton-Meadows, called for Kenney to apologize. The premier was not in Tuesday's question period to take Opposition questions on the issue.

IN THE CLOSET CONSERVATIVES

RACE BASED RELIGION

Southern Baptists elect moderate Ed Litton president in defeat for hard right


JUNE 16, 2021 / 7:25 AM / AP

Nashville — The Southern Baptist Convention tamped down a push from the right at its largest meeting in decades on Tuesday, electing a new president who has worked to bridge racial divides in the church and defeating an effort to make an issue of critical race theory.


Ed Litton, a pastor from Alabama, won 52% of the vote in a runoff against Mike Stone, a Georgia pastor backed by a new group called the Conservative Baptist Network that has sought to move the already-conservative denomination further right.

Litton, who is white, was nominated by Fred Luter, the only Black pastor to serve as president of the United States' largest Protest denomination. Luter praised Litton's commitment to racial reconciliation and said he has dealt compassionately with the issue of sexual abuse within SBC churches, another hot-button subject at the gathering of more than 15,000 church representatives.

It was standing room only in the hall where, with Nashville's COVID-19 precautions lifted, attendees were packed closely without facemasks. One small section was reserved for those wearing masks.

Last year's annual meeting was canceled due to the pandemic.

Pastor Ed Litton, of Saraland, Alabama, answers questions after being elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention on June 15, 2021, in Nashville.

MARK HUMPHREY / AP

Stone had campaigned aggressively, including speaking at churches across the country and even appearing on "Fox & Friends" on Tuesday before the vote. And the Conservative Baptist Network had encouraged supporters to come to the meeting as voting delegates.

But in the end, the message that seemed to resonate with voters was that Stone - who supported a motion to repudiate critical race theory - was a divisive choice.

"We're a family, and at times it seems like an incredibly dysfunctional family," Litton said after the results were announced. "But we love each other."

Delegates rejected a proposal that would have explicitly denounced critical race theory, which is an academic construct for framing systemic racism. It's been a target of religious and political conservatives. Instead, they approved a consensus measure that doesn't mention it by name but rejects any view that sees racism as rooted in "anything other than sin."

The measure also affirmed a 1995 resolution apologizing for the history of racism in a denomination that was founded in 1845 in support of slavery and for "condoning and/or perpetuating individual and systemic racism in our lifetime."

One white delegate urged the convention to denounce critical race theory by name, saying it held him "guilty because of the melanin content of my skin." But another argued that the convention shouldn't be swayed by a political movement that has already seen some state legislatures ban teaching of the theory.

"If some people in this room were as passionate about the gospel as they are about critical race theory, we would win this world to Christ," said James Merritt, chairman of the resolutions committee and a former convention president.

Several Black pastors have voiced frustration over critical race theory debates playing out in the SBC instead of the denomination confronting systemic racism itself. Several have already departed the SBC over what they said was racial insensitivity from overwhelmingly white leadership.

Dwight McKissic, a prominent Black pastor from Texas who had planned to join that exodus if Stone won, tweeted in response to Litton's election: "God has a plan for the SBC & I want to be a part of it. Truly, racism was rejected 2day!"

The two-day meeting concludes Wednesday, when delegates will consider proposals for a sweeping review of the SBC's response to abuse in its churches. It's an issue that recently erupted with secret recordings and leaked letters purportedly showing that some leaders tried to slow-walk efforts to hold churches accountable and sought to intimidate and retaliate against those who advocated on the issue. Stone was among those specifically called out.

First published on June 16, 2021 / 1:33 AM

© 2021 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia's Tigray at "tipping point"


BY PAMELA FALK

JUNE 16, 2021 / 3:08 AM / CBS NEWS

United Nations — In his harshest statement yet on the seven-month crisis in northern Ethiopia's Tigray region, U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock told Security Council members Tuesday "there is now famine in Tigray." He put the blame squarely on forces from the neighboring nation of Eritrea.


"Eritrean soldiers are using starvation as a weapon of war," he said.

Lowcock painted a brutal picture. "Rape is being used systematically to terrorize and brutalize women and girls. Aid workers have been killed, interrogated, beaten, blocked from taking aid to the starving and suffering and told not to come back," he told diplomats in a closed briefing at an informal dialogue of the U.N. Security Council that was requested by the Mission of Ireland.


Ireland's U.N. Ambassador, Geraldine Byrne Nason called the situation an "unfolding humanitarian catastrophe."

"Now, we are at a tipping point," she said.A woman stands in line to receive food donations at the Tsehaye primary school, which was turned into a temporary shelter for people displaced by conflict, in the town of Shire in the Tigray region of Ethiopia on March 15, 2021. BAZ RATNER / REUTERS

"Ignorance is dangerous. Denial is unforgiveable."

"Despite all we have told you of the widespread and systematic scale of the rapes, we continue to receive horrific reports of widespread sexual violence," Lowcock said, clearly frustrated by the lack of action from the 15-nation council.

Lowcock outlined three areas where progress is "urgently" needed: humanitarian access, funding, and a hastening of the pace of aid.

"Ignorance is dangerous. Denial is unforgiveable," he warned, saying there is a "duty" to "do something."

Fighting in Ethiopia broke out in November 2020 between government troops and Tigrayans. Eritrea sent forces across the border to help Ethiopian troops.

The Biden administration has spoken out. Last month, citing continuing atrocities, Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on the "governments of Eritrea and Ethiopia to take all necessary steps to ensure that their forces in Tigray cease and desist this reprehensible conduct."

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Linda Thomas Greenfield scolded the council last week, asking, "Do African lives not matter?" and taking issue with the lack of a single public meeting on the crisis.

U.S. AID Administrator Samantha Power called on the Security Council's three African members to put the issue on the agenda.

Council members weigh in

After Tuesday's U.N. meeting, those three nations - Niger, Tunisia, and Kenya - along with St. Vincent and the Grenadines, issued a statement saying they, "share in the concern for the humanitarian needs faced by 17.1 million Ethiopians including people in the Tigray region." The four nations said they are concerned about "reports of sexual violence against women and girls."

They called on Ethiopia to "conduct thorough investigations into these atrocities."

Not mentioning famine in the statement, the nations cautioned, "Any action by the Security Council must recognize and respond to the reality that Ethiopia is finalizing preparations for an election that is barely a week away."

Ethiopia's U.N. ambassador, Taye Atske Selassie Amde, who was at the meeting, said Eritrean forces "will definitely leave soon," a commitment that Eritrea also made in April – and one that hasn't happened.

Later in the evening, Ireland's Byrne Nason told CBS News, "Ireland has been on the Security Council for six months, and in those six months we have never looked away from this developing catastrophe in Tigray."

She said, "We need unhindered humanitarian access to the hundreds of thousands already in immediate danger of starvation, we need to ensure humanitarian workers and supplies are safe, and we need to end all violence."

"Ultimately, a political solution is needed, and Ireland certainly called for that today, but while we work towards that, our number one priority is ensuring that no more lives are lost," Byrne Nason added.

Russian Deputy Ambassador Anna Evstigneeva, who attended the meeting, told CBS News in a statement, "We take the humanitarian challenges that Ethiopia faces very seriously." She said "humanitarian agencies should scale up their assistance with full respect to and in close coordination with the sovereign authorities."

"We oppose any politicization of humanitarian situations, including in Tigray," Russia's envoy said.

U.K. Ambassador to the U.N. Barbara Woodward spoke to reporters after the closed dialogue, saying she was disappointed that nations on the Council have not been able to agree to a meeting in public, saying that "without a ceasefire, this could become a man-made famine."

First published on June 16, 2021 

© 2021 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Pamela Falk

Pamela Falk is CBS News Foreign Affairs Analyst and an international lawyer, based at the United Nations.