Addis Ababa — "Rape culture is being normalised."
The silence over grave sexual violence crimes committed during the conflict in Ethiopia's northern Tigray region has enabled the spread of similar atrocities in other conflict zones, says a report co-authored by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the Organisation for Justice and Accountability in the Horn of Africa (OJAH).
The report, "You Will Never Be Able to Give Birth": Conflict-Related Sexual and Reproductive Violence in Ethiopia, released today, documents systematic abuse in Tigray predominantly committed by Ethiopian soldiers and their Eritrean and ethno-militia allies during the 2020-2022 war, and how a lack of accountability led to revenge attacks in the neighbouring Amhara and Afar regions.
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Researchers analysed hundreds of medical records and surveys of health workers in Tigray, Amhara, and Afar to understand the intent of the widespread acts of sexual and reproductive violence.
The report concludes that, in Tigray, the aim was to prevent future Tigrayan births. Health providers relayed stories of women who had plastic bags, nails, stones - even abusive letters - forcibly inserted into their wombs to destroy their ability to have children, with the goal of "destroying communities, and the Tigrayan ethnicity".
Tigrayan women were also held in captivity where they were raped - by multiple attackers - resulting in forced pregnancies. Tigrayan men also suffered rape and sexual assault, the report found.
These acts constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, the report noted.
The lack of accountability for those crimes triggered yet more violence. When Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF) soldiers advanced into parts of Amhara and Afar in 2021, they committed similar deliberate acts of sexual abuse, noted Payal Shah, the report's co-author and director of research at PHR.
"The intent of the violence in both Amhara and Afar regions suggests that, in some cases, these crimes were fueled by a lack of justice, accountability, or healing for crimes committed in Tigray," Shah told The New Humanitarian.
Breaking down the identity of the perpetrators, the report finds that, in Tigray, 84% of health workers surveyed indicated that survivors identified the Eritrean military as the main culprits.
The sexual violence did not end with the signing in 2022 of the Tigray peace agreement in Pretoria, South Africa: Eritrean forces occupying parts of the northern border region have continued to commit acts of sexual abuse.
Silent crimes
Several human rights reports have flagged the grave and serious nature of sexual crimes in Tigray during the war. But international bodies, including the UN's International Commission of Human Rights Experts, were consistently stonewalled in their efforts to investigate by the Ethiopian government, which instead pushed for "an African solution to an African problem".
Yet, even the African Union's Commission of Inquiry on Tigray faced resistance and came to an abrupt end in October 2023 without publishing a single report on its work.
Days before the inquiry's mandate was terminated, the UN Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia stated that, "there is a high risk of further atrocity crimes in the country" and urged for continued scrutiny.
The trauma has been long lasting. The report found that the majority of survivors in the three regions came to seek medical help long after the violence occurred.
"They try to deal with it themselves for as long as possible, and they come to us at very late stages when they are at their worst," said a health provider in Tigray who participated in the study and whose name, like others in this article, is being withheld due to safety concerns.
Some come after multiple failed suicide attempts. "They would tell us that they took pills to take their lives but that it didn't work," the health provider told The New Humanitarian. "For every woman that has come to get help, there are a hundred who haven't."
Sexual violence becoming normalised
Across Ethiopia, there is an increasing number of cases of sexual violence. Many of the crimes being committed are by people taking advantage of the broader insecurity in the country, where forced displacement and poverty-driven early marriages make women's lives yet more vulnerable.
"It almost feels like sexual violence has been allowed, especially when you see the level of violence women are facing in Tigray," said a researcher on sexual violence, who asked not to be named so she could speak freely. "Rape culture is being normalised."
Sexual abuse is not just being committed by armed groups, but also from within communities. The report analysed 50 medical records from Amhara between February 2021 and July 2024 and found that 22 of the perpetrators were civilians, with 10 of them either family members or intimate or ex-partners.
A health worker who reviewed medical records at a hospital in Afar said gaining access to the records had proved challenging, and evidence of sexual violence from within communities was met with denial.
"The male healthcare workers say that there was no sexual violence - that these cases didn't happen," she explained.
The nationalist narratives entrenched by conflict are all about "us versus them", noted the researcher, but it obscures what is happening within. "So when communities are harming each other, when it's happening within the same region, then it's not convenient for this narrative."
Healthcare providers, as witnesses to the violence, have also faced real risks speaking out and participating in the report, said Shah. "The surveys allowed health workers to respond anonymously. That was very important in getting the number of responses that we received," she explained.
Children born out of violence
Sexual violence survivors are facing more than the physical and psychological trauma from what happened to them. There's also very limited access to healthcare to start a complicated path to recovery - partly the result of United States aid cuts.
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Tigray's healthcare facilities have also been decimated by the two-year war. Healthcare workers have spent years listening to stories that are difficult to hear and even harder to remedy.
But continued documentation of sexual violence crimes is the way to make sure that survivors get the care and justice they deserve, said Shah. For participants in the report, justice has a range of meanings: from treatment and access to healthcare for survivors to ensuring their attackers are held to account.
"When perpetrators face no consequences, violence is normalised, survivors are silenced, and peace remains fragile," noted an OJAH co-author of the report, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons.
"With conflict currently escalating in Amhara and tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea rising, breaking this cycle is vital not only for survivors, but for the future of Ethiopia and sustainable peace in the Horn of Africa," they said.
The health provider in Tigray who spoke to The New Humanitarian is deeply worried about the impact of the violence she has witnessed on the next generation.
"There are rape survivors who ask us if we can take their children, but we don't have the capacity," she explained. "There are countless orphans of the war, children whose mothers don't recognise them, born out of violence, what happens when they grow up? What does that mean for the next generation here?"
*A journalist whose name is being withheld due to security concerns
Edited by Obi Anyadike.
