Preface:

Our team would like to recognize that ethnic tension following this two-year conflict in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia is still ongoing. While an understanding of the general background pertaining to the conflict is available, accounts of sexual violence experienced by women and girls are scarce and grossly underreported. As peace talks continue, the international community will acquire more information on the correct facts in the coming months. The evidence discussed in this website is based on the information we were able to gather at the time of publication. 

The federal government of Ethiopia has cut all communications and has barred aid workers as well as a journalist from entering the affected region for a good part of the conflict. UN officials, including the Secretary-General, considers Tigray “under a de facto humanitarian aid blockade” where even if aid workers are permitted in, they “face extensive hurdles in moving supplies and personnel”(Ethiopia). Although media outages in certain areas have since been restored, during the first four months of the conflict journalists were not allowed in with access still being determined on the strict basis of authorization. 

The major players in this conflict disagree about the basic facts pertaining to the overall situation in Tigray as each side has used social media and media outlets to “shape the public narrative” surrounding the clash (Ethiopia). Social media, especially by those who successfully fled the Tigray region into Sudan, members of the diaspora, and activists, have largely been the only way in which most Thinktanks, NGOs, and International Governing bodies have been gathering information.

 

Background:

Except for a short period of Italian rule, Ethiopia is one of the few African countries that has had very little experience with colonialism. Until 1974, when the Military Junta, the Derg, ousted Emperor Haile Selassie, the Ethiopian monarchy had been in power for the longest period of time. The Derg, who were Marxist, established a ruthless dictatorship and set up Ethiopia as a socialist state. In 1991 a coalition of rebel forces led by a majority of Tigrayans once again ousted the military junta and later established themselves as the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). Once a constitution was enacted in 1994 and the country’s first multiparty elections took place in 1995, Ethiopia essentially became a one-party state under the Tigray Peoples’ Liberation Front (TPLF), one of the EPRDF’s four ethnic-regional parties for about 30 years. During this time, there were no proper elections, little to no free press, and most political opponents were imprisoned.

Ethiopia is home to over 80 ethnic groups and, as of 2022, its ethnic makeup consists of 35.8% of Oromo, 24.1% of Amhara, 7.2% of Somali, 5.7% of Tigray, 4.1% of Sidama, 2.6% of Guragie, 2.3% of Welaita, 2.2% of Afar, 1.3% of Silte, 1.2% of Kefficho, and 13.5% other ethnicities. The country’s ethnic makeup is a significant reason the country’s constitution is unique. Ethiopia’s constitution is set up to be an ethnic-based federal system and guarantees the right to self-determination for all ethnic groups, thus allowing all ethnic groups that make up the country to be equitably respected. 

In April 2018, a few months after Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn resigned due to anti-government protests nationwide, Abiy Ahmed, the nation’s first ethnic Oromo, was elected as prime minister and took office. Abiy Ahmed was a former military intelligence officer and deputy president of Oromia, a regional state in Ethiopia, and he was also a chairman of the EPRDF.

 Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed understood that trust between ethnic enclaves had been broken since 1991 when former Prime Minister Meles Zenawi governed Ethiopia as an autocracy. He also understood that during this regime, ethnic tensions had worsened due to political and economic reforms. Thus in order to create a sense of community and effectively repair the nation-state, the measures he took in his first 100 days were a complete reversal of his predecessor’s actions. By releasing political prisoners, removing terrorist designations on opposition groups, granting amnesty to political dissidents, loosening press restrictions, and prosecuting former officials and elites for abuses committed in the past regime, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was essentially making Ethiopia turn a new leaf as well undoing the past TPLF regimes reforms. 

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed also, in November of 2019, formally ended the EPRDF ethnic-based ruling coalition by merging it into a new single unity party called the Prosperity Party. Of the four constituent parties in the EPRDF, the TPLF refused to join the newly merged party. However, the TPLF was not the only one who objected to this; the Prime Minister’s own Oromo Democratic Party, as well as some proponents of the country’s ethnic federal system, had their own objections about the new single-party system.

In March 2020, Prime Minister Abiy’s government citing the COVID-19 pandemic postponed the regional and national elections that were to be held in November of that year. Thus allowing the Prosperity Party-dominated parliament an extension of its term, which was supposed to end in October 2020. The TPLF saw the postponement of the election as unconstitutional. In September of that year, the Tigray regional government led by the TPLF proceeded to hold state council elections despite objections by the federal government that the election conducted in the region would be illegal. In response, the federal government challenged the legitimacy of the Tigray regional government by cutting federal funding to the region. Not to mention, Abiy’s government also changed the leadership of the military’s North Command located in Tigray. These two actions taken by Abiy’s government became a turning point for the TPLF. Tensions were already high post – Tigray’s regional election, but the cutting of federal funding and change in military command for the military forces in Tigray had just exacerbated it. In the early hours of November 4th, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered a military operation of Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) troops known as the Mekelle Offensive in Tigray following an alleged TPLF attack on a military base in the region. According to Abiy, the TPLF attack on a military base was considered high treason and accused the TPLF of instigating conflict based on ethnic lines in the hope that it would make the country “ungovernable”(The). Interestingly enough, when Prime Minister Ahmed announced the military operation of the Mekelle Offensive, Abiy had never called it an invasion but rather a “law enforcement operation” against what Abiy’s government calls the criminal clique (Ethiopia). As a couple of months went by, said military operation increased in severity, with Tigray Defense Force (TDF) troops ramping up military responses leading from a gradually escalating conflict to a civil war also known as the Tigray War. Later on in the war, Eritrea, Ethiopia’s neighboring country and longtime adversary, joined the side of ENDF troops, which up until the spring of 2021, the Abiy government had denied the involvement of Eritrean troops in the conflict in Tigray. 

Since the conflict has taken place, the TPLF has continued to deny initiating the conflict and has accused Abiy of amounting troops on the Tigray border days before November 4th, 2021, and the TPLF are not alone in these accusations. The International Crisis Group had stated although the TPLF might have attacked the military base first, intervention by the ENDF was prepared before the event and had even coordinated plans with Eritrean troops. 

 

Ethnicity and Sexual Violence:

In the Ethiopian context, ethnic tension and ethnic violence play a significant role in the Tigray conflict. When Abiy Ahmed established a unitary single-party state, Prosperity Party, he did it under the pretext that it would prevent ethnic groups from competing against each other to gain power. Still, instead, ethnic tensions and competition had just increased. The Tigray conflict is seen as a manifestation of the years, if not decades, worth of ethnic tension finally bubbling up to the surface. Some experts have even said that the Tigray conflict is a struggle between the federal government, which wants to keep a centralized, unitary state and ethno-regional oppositions like the TPLF in the country fighting for autonomy. Even days after the “law enforcement operation” by the Abiy government had taken place, the UN had made a statement to the press making clear that ethnic violence had reached an “alarming level” in Ethiopia (Ethiopia, The). 

It’s also important to note that in the 1990s when Ethiopia was divided up into ethno-regional states, specific ethnicities believed that certain parts of other ethno-regional states should have been part of their state. An example is the Amharans in Tigray state, who believed that the Western part of Tigray, where most Amharans live, should have been part of the Amhara Regional State. Many of these Amharans in Western Tigray were ultimately unsuccessful in gaining recognition and representation. Soon after the Abiy government executed a “law enforcement operation” in Tigray, the Amharan officials and Ethiopian federal troops seized the Western region of Tigray and set up administrative control of the region (Ethiopia). Tigrayan women and girls in this region were often times the victims of sexual violence by Ethiopian armed forces and Amhara militia forces, “including gang rape and sexual slavery” (Chutel). One could assume that the “law enforcement operation” that the Abiy government had held had allowed Western Tigray’s Amharan’s “long-standing grievances” to come to the surface; unfortunately, one of the ways these grievances were substantiated was through acts of sexual violence (Chutel, Ethiopia).  

In the case of Ethiopia, ethnicity also plays a significant role in the sexual violence committed in the Tigray region and later when the conflict spreads to the Amhara region. Not only is sexual violence clearly being used as a weapon of war, but it is also being used as a method of ethnic cleansing, and it’s being committed by all parties of the conflict Tigrayan militia forces, Amhara militia forces, Ethiopian armed forces, Eritrean armed forces, and other regional security forces. It is clear that certain forces, such as the Eritrean and Ethiopian armed forces and  Amhara regional forces, all of whom are allied, might be intentionally targeting Tigrayan women and girls with acts of sexual violence. According to a UN report by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission Office, sexual violence has been used “as part of a deliberate strategy to terrorize, degrade and humiliate” the victims of specific ethnic groups that might be of the same ethnicity as the opposition forces and militias’ ethnicity (Tigray). There have even been cases of reprisal where Tigrayan forces have committed acts of sexual violence against Amhara and Eritrean survivors in reaction to the sexual violence committed against Tigrayan women and girls by the Eritrean armed forces and Amhara militia forces. Not to mention, often, these acts of sexual violence go along with ethnic-based slurs. It is also important to note that sexual violence may have been used to assert authority and maintain control over a given territory.

 

International Law: 

There are international laws that do address sexual violence in conflict: Article 27 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which addresses sexual violence in very broad terms, states that “Women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honour, in particular against rape, enforced prostitution, or any form of indecent assault”(Article). The Roman Statute depending on the context can consider sexual violence as a crime against humanity and a war crime. And the UN Security Council Resolution (1325) on women, peace, and security “calls on all parties to conflict to take special measures to protect women and girls from gender-based violence, particularly rape and other forms of sexual abuse, in situations of armed conflict”(Landmark). However, all these International Laws lack an enforcement mechanism. Unless the International community is willing to step in, sexual violence in conflict will continue to take place. The Tigray War is a perfect example of this sentiment. Although International organizations, the UN, and the world do know that sexual violence is occurring on a “staggering scale,” there is very little that is being done (The).