Official Senate portrait of Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, smiling, in a pink jacket in front of the American and New Hampshire flags

Five US Senators Ask Rubio to Back an Ethiopia Ceasefire, Halt Arms Sales and Keep Assab Off the Table, Semafor Reports

Zegabi.com
News and Articles

Official Senate portrait of Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, smiling, in a pink jacket in front of the American and New Hampshire flags

Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in her official 2021 Senate portrait. File photo. Photo: U.S. Senate (public domain)

Five Democratic senators led by Jeanne Shaheen have asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio to back an immediate ceasefire in Ethiopia and halt new US arms sales, Semafor reported.

“US diplomatic engagement has lacked the urgency, visibility, and coordination commensurate with the threat of another devastating civil war in Ethiopia and regional conflict,” the senators wrote, according to Semafor, which said the letter warned that renewed fighting in Tigray and rising tensions with Eritrea could turn into a multi-front war that would destabilize the region. Semafor said the senators also asked the State Department to reinstate Temporary Protected Status for Ethiopians living in the United States and to surge food aid as the fighting worsens the effects of drought, and that they warned against putting Eritrea’s port of Assab, which Ethiopia wants to control, on the negotiating table. Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, who Semafor said is expected to succeed the retiring Shaheen as the committee’s leader when Democrats take control of the Senate in January, signed the letter along with the other three Democratic members of the committee’s Africa panel, according to Semafor.

The State Department did not immediately respond to Semafor’s request for comment. Zegabi found no public response to the letter from the Ethiopian or Eritrean governments by Wednesday morning, as the Foreign Ministry’s X account posted about Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s meetings with other leaders at the COP31 climate summit in Antalya, Türkiye.

The administration lifted its policy of denying arms exports to Ethiopia in May and let the sanctions program tied to the conflict in northern Ethiopia lapse in September, Semafor reported. Temporary Protected Status for Ethiopians ended on Aug. 18, 2026, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Rubio called for de-escalation in an October call with Abiy Ahmed, and in September six Democratic senators, including Shaheen and Coons, said in a statement that the agreement that ended the 2020 to 2022 war was “unraveling” and urged Rubio to engage the federal government in Addis Ababa, the TPLF leadership and associated armed groups “to stop the renewed conflict and return to mediation immediately.”

On X, Ababu A. (@Ethiosalem), who describes himself in his bio as an “Advocate for Rights,” wrote that his test for any ceasefire push was whether it counted Amhara civilians too, adding that “the displaced families hit by a drone at the Hayk camp on Oct 29 deserve the same attention as any other front,” a reference to the drone strike on a South Wollo camp that residents said killed 18 people.

Zegabi emailed requests for comment at about 10 a.m. Eastern on Nov. 11 to Ethiopia’s Foreign Ministry, the spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, the African Union, IGAD, OHCHR, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and had not received replies by the time of this update.

Sources