Open Letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations His Excellency António Guterres
- AAA-admin
- May 18
- 4 min read
Statement from the Amhara Association of America (AAA)
OPEN LETTER
May 18, 2026 (Ginbot 10, 2018 E.C.)
Open Letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations His Excellency António Guterres
Your Excellency,
The Amhara Association of America (AAA) expresses grave concern in response to your address in Addis Ababa on May 13, 2026, in which you praised Ethiopia as the world's fastest-growing economy and celebrated the transformation of its capital Addis Ababa. We are deeply troubled that your remarks presented a one-sided picture that erases the suffering of millions and, in doing so, lent the prestige of the United Nations (UN) to a regime waging war on its own people. The UN's silence in the face of the ongoing Amhara Genocide and willingness to praise its perpetrators is not neutrality. It is complicity.
For over five years, Ethiopia's Amhara Region has been engulfed in war and over the last three years there has been a devastating confrontation between the armed forces of the Abiy Ahmed led Oromo Prosperity Party (OPP) regime, including federal and regional state forces, and the Amhara self-defense force known as Fano. This war did not begin in a vacuum: it was preceded by years of ethnic targeting, extrajudicial killings, and the dismantling of Amhara institutions. The conflict has displaced millions, shuttered thousands of schools and health facilities, and unleashed documented mass atrocities. UNICEF reported that over 4.4 million children in Amhara Region have no access to education, not mere disruption, but the deliberate destruction of a generation's future.
A November 2025 BBC investigation documented 2,697 rape cases from just 4% of health facilities in Amhara Region between July 2023 and May 2025, with perpetrators reported in most cases to be members of state security forces. Together with hundreds of mass killings across urban and rural areas across the region; forced displacement; economic strangulation through blockades; and the systematic destruction of churches and cultural heritage, these acts meet the threshold for genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention. The United Nations was founded on the promise of "never again." That promise is being broken today against the Amhara people.
On the very day of your address, four regime drone strikes rained down on Mahderemaryam town in Farta district, striking two schools (while children were present), farmers traveling to the weekly market and a detention site for POWs. These strikes, carried out during peak civilian activity, raise grave concerns about the deliberate targeting of populated areas in violation of international humanitarian law. Your speech made no mention of any of this.
Compounding the horror of war is the regime's systematic campaign to silence those who bear witness to it. The OPP regime has carried out a sweeping crackdown on Amhara opposition figures, independent journalists, and civil society leaders and human rights defenders subjecting them to arbitrary arrest, prolonged detention without charge, torture, and enforced disappearance under Ethiopia's Anti-Terrorism Proclamation, a law repeatedly condemned by international human rights bodies as a tool of political repression. In a democracy, civil society is the conscience of the state. In Ethiopia today, it is a target. By traveling to Addis Ababa and offering unqualified praise to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, you have provided cover for a regime that fears the truth and is determined to suppress it.
The UN Human Rights Council's failure in October 2023 to renew the independent investigative mechanism on Ethiopia under pressure from the OPP regime and its allies has allowed perpetrators to operate with impunity. Meanwhile, Abiy Ahmed has pursued a unilateral memorandum of understanding with Somaliland that has strained relations with Somalia, escalated tensions with Eritrea, and according to a February 2026 Reuters investigation, secretly built a training camp for Sudan's Rapid Support Forces, a militia accused of genocide in Darfur, at the behest of the UAE. These are not the acts of a stabilizing regional actor but rather a war mongering despot.
You remarked that Addis Ababa changes "with the speed of light." But the construction boom you admired has been built on the forced, uncompensated displacement of tens of thousands of the city's most vulnerable residents. A 2025 Amnesty International report found communities demolished without due process, adequate notice, or meaningful compensation. To praise this transformation while ignoring its victims is to honor a facade built on suffering.
In the years leading up to this wanton ethnic cleansing took place on the city outskirts forcibly displacing non-Oromo (predominantly ethnic Amhara) residents. Notably, the city administration in collaboration with its federal and regional counterparts has undertaken extrajudicial killings in broad daylight, arbitrary arrests and torture, and demolitions of sites of worship.
The UN's credibility rests on its willingness to speak truth to power. This is why we urgently call on your office to:
Publicly acknowledge the genocidal war on the Amhara people, and its catastrophic humanitarian toll.
Immediately reinstate an independent, UN-mandated investigative mechanism covering all crimes against civilians including conflict-related sexual violence and attacks on education and healthcare in Amhara Region and across the country.
Demand the immediate and unconditional release of all arbitrarily detained Amhara persons including opposition figures, independent journalists, civil society leaders and human rights defenders held under the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation.
Call on the OPP regime to immediately cease hostilities, lift the communications blockade, and facilitate unrestricted humanitarian access.
Initiate a process toward an inclusive civilian-led transitional government that reflects the full diversity of the Ethiopian people.
Issue a public statement condemning the May 13 drone strikes on Mahderemaryam town which occurred on the very day of your visit and all attacks on civilians, markets, schools, and houses of worship.
Ethiopia's great civilization which you rightly honored is inseparable from the history, heritage, and identity of the Amhara people. That civilization, and the people who carry it, now face an existential, state-engineered threat. We ask the United Nations to stop shielding a genocidal regime, look at the full picture, and act before it is too late.
Sincerely,
Mr. Tewodrose Tirfe
Chairman, Amhara Association of America
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