Addis Abeba — Western Tigray is not an area where atrocity prevention begins with a blank page. During the Tigray war, international investigations documented widespread killings, sexual violence, persecution, arbitrary detention, pillage, and the forcible displacement of Tigrayan civilians - not isolated violations incidental to an ordinary security operation, but grave and, in significant respects, systematic abuses directed against civilians because of their perceived ethnic identity.
In 2022, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International jointly concluded, after months of investigation, that newly installed authorities and Amhara security forces carried out a campaign against Tigrayan civilians amounting to crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing - killings, mass arbitrary detention, sexual violence, and forcible expulsion. HRW's own account states the campaign was carried out "with the complicity of Ethiopian federal forces," operating "supported by the Ethiopian military."
The UN's own International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia (ICHREE) reached a consistent and, in places, more sweeping conclusion in October 2023, finding with reasonable grounds to believe that the ENDF - Ethiopia's federal army - participated directly in killing, torture, rape, enslavement, and enforced disappearance across the conflict, and separately found the federal government itself responsible for denying humanitarian access as a method of warfare. The federal government was not a bystander to what happened. The documented findings establish federal forces' involvement in serious violations, including killings, torture, sexual violence, and other abuses.
Social affairs newsDiscover moreEthiopian election 2026NewspapersAddis Ababa tourism On the further question of genocide, ICHREE stopped short of a determination, citing resource constraints and calling for further investigation. The New Lines Institute has gone further: in a dedicated legal analysis, it concluded there is "a reasonable basis to believe that members of the ENDF, the Amhara Special Forces, and the Eritrean military have committed genocide against Tigrayans," citing evidence including a reported February 2021 remark, relayed by the EU's then-special envoy Pekka Haavisto, that Ethiopian leadership intended to "wipe out the Tigrayans for 100 years" - a comment Haavisto said was not attributed to a specific individual but which he described as consistent with ethnic cleansing.
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A separate, later analysis published by New Lines in 2024 found further evidence that Ethiopian federal forces, Eritrean forces, and allied regional militias acted with intent to destroy Tigrayans as a group, identifying evidence matching several of the acts prohibited under the 1948 Genocide Convention. No court has ruled on whether genocide occurred, and the gap between ICHREE's caution and New Lines' conclusions is real, reflecting genuine disagreement about how much weight the evidence of intent can bear.
This piece does not pretend that gap is closed, but it does not pretend to be neutral about it either: the evidence available supports, in this piece's own assessment, the gravest available characterisation of what occurred in Western Tigray.
What is happening now?
None of this is merely historical. As New Lines Institute's analysts have put it, the strongest predictor of future mass atrocities is the existence of past atrocities, particularly where perpetrators have not been held accountable, and accountability in Western Tigray remains, by every independent account, absent.
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Warning signs must be taken seriously while there is still time to act."
The pattern has not stopped. Human Rights Watch's April 2026 findings, based on 40 people interviewed remotely between January and February 2026, found that authorities and security forces in Western Tigray are arbitrarily detaining ethnic Tigrayans and enforcing a discriminatory system that denies them identification documents and restricts their movement and employment, while Amhara and Welkait residents interviewed reported no such restrictions. One displaced man described local officials working with Amhara and Welkait residents to determine "who is Tigrayan" before issuing ID cards; without one, Tigrayan residents described being stopped, insulted, and ordered to lie on the ground by police and militia.
Download Interactive Maps The same report found that officials identified in HRW's original 2022 findings as having orchestrated the mass displacement remain in their posts and put the number of people displaced from Western Tigray specifically at over 740,000 - most still in central Tigray camps or in Sudan, nearly six years on. HRW has called for those officials to be removed and for targeted sanctions; the federal government has publicly endorsed an eventual return of the displaced but has taken, in HRW's words, "no steps" to improve conditions in the meantime. The zonal administration disputes the specific allegations, saying Tigrayans live there peacefully; that dispute is part of the record too.
Instability is rising alongside this, and independent monitors are responding to it with alarm. On 1-3 August 2026, fighting broke out between Tigrayan forces and the Ethiopian National Defence Force near Shererina, sending refugees fleeing into Sudan, where several were reportedly killed by stray fire. Responding to the clash, Amnesty International's regional director for East and Southern Africa said the resumption of violence put residents "at renewed risk of human rights violations, even as communities continue to grapple with the devastating legacy of past atrocities without justice or accountability." That warning carries particular weight given what has happened to the region's own oversight machinery: the mandates of both ICHREE and the African Commission's Commission of Inquiry on Tigray have since lapsed, and Amnesty is now calling for their renewal.
Ethiopia's June 2026 elections did little to reassure observers in the meantime - some characterised the vote, in which the ruling party took more than 90% of parliamentary seats, as a sham: no voting took place in Tigray, voting was suspended in parts of Amhara and Oromia, more than 140 polling stations were closed, and opposition parties were barred from participating.
None of these excuses the conduct on the other side. Human rights organisations have also documented a growing pattern of repressive measures by Tigrayan authorities over the past two months, including the silencing of independent media, forced conscription campaigns, and restrictions on freedom of movement. Civilian protection cannot be selective by ethnicity or political allegiance, and this piece does not treat it as such.
Ethiopian politics analysis Together, these findings describe a zone where identity, not conduct, continues to shape how the state treats its own residents, the same dynamic that preceded the atrocities of 2020-2022.
When identity becomes security category
No government forfeits its right to investigate armed attacks, terrorism, or participation in armed groups. That principle is not in question here. The question is narrower: what happens when a state's own administrative practice is organised not around conduct - what a person has done - but around identity, who a person is or where they are from?
Human Rights Watch's 2026 findings describe exactly this dynamic in practice: local officials in Western Tigray working with Amhara and Welkait residents to determine "who is Tigrayan" before issuing identity documents, with Tigrayan residents facing detention, restricted movement, and denial of services as a result -- while residents of other ethnicities interviewed for the same report described facing none of these obstacles. That is not a hypothetical risk. It is a documented, ongoing administrative practice that converts identity itself into grounds for differential treatment by the state.
The abuses of 2020-2022 included widespread targeting of Tigrayan civilians based on their perceived ethnic identity, which is why a security and administrative system that continues to sort people by ethnicity today deserves particular scrutiny. A system that legitimately targets conduct is different in kind from one that treats an entire community as inherently suspect. That distinction is the heart of why this moment calls for caution, and it is visible now not in a document of uncertain origin, but in verified, on-the-record findings about how the zone is actually being administered.
Atrocity Prevention Frameworks: Warning signs and risks
The UN Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Crimes exists precisely to identify this kind of situation before it becomes irreversible. It is a risk-assessment tool, not a verdict: the presence of risk factors "does not directly or inevitably lead to the occurrence of those crimes." But several are visibly present here: armed conflict and instability, a "record of serious violations... not prevented, punished or adequately addressed," and "intergroup tensions or patterns of discrimination against protected groups" linked explicitly to a "history of atrocity crimes committed with impunity."
The Framework also flags, as a specific enabling indicator, the "marking of people or their property based on affiliation to a group" - precisely the kind of ethnicity-based administrative sorting Human Rights Watch has already documented in practice. None of this proves that another atrocity is underway. It means the indicators the international community itself watches for are clustering again in the same place.
Prevention operates in the space between certainty and catastrophe. Authorities do not need to establish that an atrocity is imminent before taking proportionate measures to reduce its risk -- that is the purpose of early warning. The duty is not new: the 1948 Genocide Convention's Article I commits states to prevent and punish genocide "whether committed in time of peace or in time of war" -- an obligation Ethiopia was the first state in the world to ratify, in 1949. The International Court of Justice has held that this duty is not territorially limited: any state with the capacity to influence those likely to commit genocide must act, wherever the risk arises.
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Prevention is not an accusation. It is a responsibility."
The 2005 World Summit Outcome committed states to protect their populations and prevent such crimes, a commitment the Secretary-General's 2009 report on implementing R2P translated into three pillars: state responsibility, international assistance, and, only where a state manifestly fails, timely collective response. The Secretary-General's most recent report, issued in April 2026, reinforces the same logic: prevention "begins at home," but the international community shares responsibility to help states meet it - especially, this piece argues, where the state has already once failed to.
Steps toward civilian protection
Six years of documented federal involvement in past abuses, and continuing discriminatory treatment now, are reason enough not to wait for Addis Ababa to act on its own initiative. Five steps follow, addressed principally to the international community and independent institutions:
Social affairs news First, restoring international monitoring mandates. The UN Human Rights Council should renew ICHREE's mandate, and the African Union should revive the African Commission's Tigray inquiry, both of which lapsed without producing durable oversight; in the meantime, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission and other credible independent monitors should have continued access to verify how identity documents, movement permits and access to services are actually being administered in Western Tigray, rather than relying on competing public statements from interested parties.
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Second, conduct-based security measures. Screening in Western Tigray should be anchored in individual conduct and credible evidence, not ethnicity or origin, a standard already implicit in Ethiopia's own human rights obligations, and one the government has an obligation to enforce in practice, not merely accept in principle.
Third, civilian protection and humanitarian access. Displaced people, residents, and returnees alike need explicit, monitored protection against arbitrary detention, forced displacement, and retaliation, regardless of which side of the region's disputes they are perceived to be on.
Fourth, accountability for named individuals. Officials named by Human Rights Watch as responsible for past and ongoing abuses should face targeted sanctions and removal from positions of authority -- accountability measures that do not require waiting for any commission's mandate to be renewed.
Download Interactive Maps Fifth, international preventive diplomacy. The African Union, UN, and regional partners should engage now, before tensions escalate further, and should be candid that official rhetoric portraying an entire ethnic community as a security threat deepens exactly the conditions atrocity-prevention frameworks warn against.
Election coverage Ethiopia Conclusion: A civilian question, not a partisan one
This is not an argument between Tigray and Amhara or between the TPLF and the federal government's political rivals. It is an argument for the person who has no army, no political office, and no stake in either side's territorial claim: the farmer in Humera, the displaced mother in a Sudanese camp, the elderly resident with nowhere else to go, and the more than 740,000 others for whom "eventual return" has already stretched into its sixth year. Western Tigray's civilians should not have to wait for another mass grave, another emptied village, or another wave of displacement before their protection becomes an urgent priority.
The lesson of the region's recent history is not simply that atrocities must be condemned after they occur. It is that warning signs must be taken seriously while there is still time to act. Prevention is not an accusation. It is a responsibility. AS
Editor's Note: Shushay Tewelemedhn Gebremariam is a Lecturer of Law at Aksum University, Ethiopia, and a legal professional and human rights advocate who has engaged with the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland. He can be reached at sisaytewelde1993@gmail.com
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