Brief introduction and context: a nation in turmoil
Ethiopia, a landlocked nation in the Horn of Africa and the continent’s second-most populous country, has long been a mosaic of over 90 ethnic and national groups (Reuters, 2022). Among them are the Tigrayans, who make up roughly 6% of the population. Predominantly Orthodox Christian, with a minority Muslim community, Tigrayans live mainly in the northern region of Tigray, with its capital in Mekelle, and share close cultural and linguistic ties with highland Eritrea.
The conflict in Tigray, a consequence of a “constitutional dispute and power struggle” (International Crisis Group, 2023), erupted in November 2020, rooted in a deepening political struggle between Ethiopia’s federal government, led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which once dominated Ethiopia’s ruling coalition (1991–2018). Tensions mounted when the federal government postponed national elections due to the COVID-19 pandemic, an action rejected by Tigray’s regional leaders, who held their own elections in September 2020 (Plaut and Vaughan, 2023). This move, deemed illegal by the federal parliament, set the stage for war.
From the outset, Tigray was plunged into isolation: power, banking, transport, and communications were cut off, leaving families disconnected and vulnerable (UN UCHREE, 2023). The conflict drew in multiple actors, including Eritrean forces and Amhara regional militias, particularly over disputed territories in Western Tigray. The war unfolded in several phases. Initial fighting resulted in heavy casualties and the fall of Mekelle to federal forces, followed by a Tigrayan counteroffensive that extended deep into neighbouring regions. By late 2022, following a series of offensives, blockades, and devastating humanitarian crises, the Ethiopian government and the TPLF signed a Cessation of Hostilities Agreement (Reuters, 2022).
Yet, peace remains elusive. Reports persist of ongoing human rights violations, including sexual violence, forced displacement, mass detentions, and attacks on civilians and critical infrastructure, with famine and violence persisting, with over a thousand hunger-related deaths reported in 2023. (UN ICHREE, 2023).
This conflict has left deep scars, not only in the form of destruction and loss of life, but also through enduring food insecurity and the suffering of millions who remain cut off from consistent aid and justice.
Atrocities and humanitarian consequences
The conflict produced one of the most severe humanitarian crises in recent history, with starvation, mass displacement, and large-scale civilian deaths at its core. The Ethiopian government, in coordination with allied Eritrean forces, Amhara regional militias, and other armed groups, employed siege warfare that deliberately restricted the movement of people and essential supplies, including food, medicine, fuel, seeds, and fertilisers, into the Tigray region. This blockade, compounded by widespread reports of farmland destruction, looting of farm equipment, killing of livestock, and obstruction or confiscation of humanitarian aid, effectively weaponised hunger to force political submission. Food prices rose by 200-400%, eroding purchasing power and leaving over 83% of Tigray’s population food insecure, with at least two million facing severe hunger. Malnutrition rates surged, while access to international food assistance remained minimal (The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 2022).
Mortality rates also spiked drastically. Of reported deaths during the war period, more than 72% were attributed to intentional violence, with a standardised mortality rate among adults increasing from 1.0 per 1,000 person-years before the war to 21.3 during the conflict. An estimated 102,000 deaths occurred among individuals aged 15 and older, surpassing mortality levels recorded during Ethiopia’s 1980s famine and previous civil wars (Gebregziabher, Asgedom, Abraha, et al., 2025).
Multiple independent investigations, including a 2025 report by the New Lines Institute, concluded there is a reasonable basis to believe that members of the Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF), the Eritrean Defence Forces (EDF), the Amhara Special Forces (ASF), and affiliated militias committed acts that meet the threshold for genocide under the Genocide Convention. These acts included mass killings, infliction of serious bodily and mental harm, deliberate creation of life-threatening conditions, and measures to prevent births among Tigrayans, accompanied by documented public incitement to genocide on social media. While Ethiopia has denied such allegations and sought to limit international scrutiny, evidence indicates both individual and state-level failures to prevent or punish these crimes, raising concerns of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the war crime of starvation by depriving civilians of essential means for survival. Despite the formal cessation of hostilities, accountability, comprehensive humanitarian access, and reparative justice remain largely absent, leaving lasting scars on the region and its people (Ibrahim and Weis, 2025).
Conflict-related sexual and reproductive violence
Among the various atrocities, the conflict and its aftermath have been marked by extensive, systematic, and deliberate sexual and reproductive violence (SRV), constituting some of the gravest violations of international law, including war crimes and crimes against humanity. From the onset of the conflict, ENDF, EDF, Amhara Special Forces (ASF), and affiliated militias carried out widespread attacks on Tigrayan civilians. Survivors, predominantly women and girls, but also men and children, reported harrowing violations including gang rapes by multiple perpetrators, sexual slavery, forced impregnation, forced pregnancy through the removal of contraceptive devices, intentional transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, sexual mutilation, and the forced witnessing of family members being raped or killed (Physicians for Human Rights and The Organization for Justice and Accountability in the Horn of Africa, 2023). Many acts were accompanied by verbal threats and explicit statements indicating an intent to terrorise, destroy the social fabric of Tigrayan communities, and impair their reproductive capacity. Health workers documented cases where perpetrators left written notes inside survivors’ bodies, declaring intentions to “eradicate the Tigrayan lineage” and force births from their own ranks (Organisation for Justice and Accountability in the Horn of Africa and Physicians for Human Rights, 2025).
Data collected by the Organisation for Justice and Accountability in the Horn of Africa (OJAH) and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) revealed that SRV was neither isolated nor opportunistic, but systematic and often coordinated. The patterns of perpetration in Tigray indicate a targeted campaign along ethnic and political lines, with Eritrean forces particularly implicated in the most severe forms of violence, though ENDF, ASF, Fano militias, and other allied groups were also widely reported. Survivors consistently recounted perpetrators identifying themselves as Eritrean or Amhara forces, often using language, uniforms, or insignia to assert their affiliation.
Even after the formal cessation of hostilities, sexual and reproductive violence persisted in Tigray and expanded into the neighbouring Amhara and Afar regions as conflict flared between Tigrayan forces (TPLF/TDF) and local militias. Reports from these regions indicated revenge-driven sexual violence, with survivors in Amhara and Afar describing rapes, assaults, and forced impregnation by TPLF combatants, citing retribution for atrocities committed in Tigray.
The impact of this violence on survivors and their communities has been devastating and long-lasting. Survivors continue to require complex and long-term health care for severe physical injuries, infertility, obstetric complications, and profound psychological trauma, including depression, PTSD, and suicidal ideation. Communities have been left fractured, with many survivors ostracised or forced to flee, contributing to displacement and the breakdown of social support systems.
Accountability for these crimes remains grossly inadequate. International mechanisms established by the UN and African Union to investigate atrocities were prematurely terminated after pressure from the Ethiopian government, which pushed for a nationally led transitional justice process. However, this process lacks independence, fails to meet African Union and international transitional justice standards, and does not meaningfully engage survivors or ensure accountability for all parties, particularly excluding Eritrean perpetrators who were among the principal offenders in Tigray (Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, 2024).
Impunity in the spiral of authoritarianism
The situation in Ethiopia shows a troubling continuity: extrajudicial killings, mass displacement, arbitrary detention, torture, the weaponisation of sexual violence, and the suppression of civil society. This is not a cycle of instability; it is a deliberate system of governance in which impunity is policy and repression is institutionalised (Addis Standard, 2025).
While violence spreads in the country, political opponents are arbitrarily detained under the guise of national security. Journalists face harassment, imprisonment, or forced exile (Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, 2025). National mechanisms designed to deliver justice have become hollow performances, lacking independence, inclusivity, or credibility.
International partners, meanwhile, continue to extend financial lifelines, budgetary support, debt restructuring, and development assistance, while overlooking the conditions that enable ongoing abuses. This has insulated Ethiopia’s ruling elite from meaningful consequences and allowed the state to perfect this impunity machine: a political economy where war, repression, and managed instability are not byproducts of failure, but tools of power consolidation.
The government has expanded its control through legal and institutional capture. Recent amendments to the anti-money laundering law, framed as reforms to combat terrorism financing, retain sweeping powers to suppress political activity. The judiciary operates under heavy executive influence, the legislature functions largely as a rubber stamp, and the security sector answers to a narrow ruling circle (Addis Standard, 2025).
Ethiopia is thus less a state in democratic transition than a hybrid autocracy, adept at projecting reform abroad while consolidating authoritarian rule at home. As the next election approaches, Ethiopia faces overlapping risks: managed elections under tight executive control, militarisation of civilian politics, deepening economic precarity, the unresolved political status of Tigray, and heightened regional entanglements in the Horn of Africa. These trajectories do not lead to a credible democratic transition. Rather, they entrench a system where elections provide the façade of legitimacy, while violence and repression sustain the state.
Breaking this cycle requires a fundamental reorientation: conditioning assistance on verifiable human rights benchmarks, supporting independent judiciary and electoral bodies, protecting civic space, and centring survivor-led accountability processes in order not to normalise extraordinary abuses into the very architecture of governance.
Pathways and challenges to justice
As said, despite the formal commitment in the 2022 Cessation of Hostilities Agreement to establish a comprehensive transitional justice framework, accountability and justice in Ethiopia remain deeply constrained. By 2021, only a handful of military personnel were prosecuted for widespread sexual violence or killings in Tigray, leaving tens of thousands of survivors without justice. The government has actively resisted international scrutiny, dismissing UN-mandated investigative bodies, lobbying successfully to terminate their mandates, and obstructing independent inquiries, which sets a precedent for impunity. The justice process is further complicated by ongoing militarised conflict, the presence of Eritrean forces in Tigray, and efforts to integrate regional militias into federal structures, perpetuating insecurity and limiting access to survivors. Civil society organisations and affected communities, particularly women and other vulnerable groups, have been largely excluded from consultations, while legal frameworks and institutional mechanisms fail to guarantee independence, gender sensitivity, or accountability for foreign forces. The Ethiopian transitional justice system, as currently designed, risks being a vehicle of “quasi-compliance”, superficially responding to international pressure without addressing the systemic and ethnic dimensions of violence (New Lines Institute, 2024). Without meaningful international oversight, enforcement of legal standards, and genuine inclusion of victims’ voices, the process is unlikely to deliver justice or break the cycle of impunity, leaving both accountability and sustainable peace unmet.
Conclusion
Ethiopia’s ongoing crisis shows clearly that authoritarianism and impunity are mutually reinforcing, enabling atrocities to continue with little to no accountability. The transitional justice process remains compromised, survivors are sidelined, and the international community has largely failed to enforce human rights conditions, leaving systemic violence unchallenged. This tragedy deserves urgent global attention, even as the world faces multiple crises. Meaningful change requires international pressure, independent investigations, and survivor-centred justice mechanisms to break the cycle of impunity, uphold human rights, and secure a future where democracy and the rule of law can take root.
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