All parties to the conflict in Ethiopia responsible for war crimes

All parties to the year-old conflict in Ethiopia have committed, to varying degrees, war crimes and crimes against humanity that primarily targeted civilians who had nothing to do with the hostilities, as well as women, who suffered sexual abuse on a scale that investigators acknowledge has yet to be determined, the United Nations said Wednesday.

The investigation that led to these findings was conducted by a joint commission of the UN Human Rights Office, led by High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet, and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, and covers the period from 3 November 2020, when conflict broke out in the northern Tigray region, to the end of June, coinciding with the central government's declaration of a unilateral ceasefire.

"There are details of violations and abuses, including extrajudicial killings and executions, torture, sexual and gender-based violence, violations against refugees and forced displacement of civilians," Bachelet told reporters.

According to the account of the situation on the ground, the unilateral declaration of a cessation of hostilities has had a relative impact on the levels of violence, since then "all parties continue to violate human rights to this day" and reports of abuses committed by Tigrayan forces "have multiplied," she said.

The conflict in Ethiopia pits the Ethiopian National Defence Forces, the Eritrean Defence Forces, the Amhara Special Forces and various related militias against the Tigrayan Special Forces, various militias (the main one being the Tigray People's Liberation Front, known by its acronym TPLF) and other groups that are their allies.

The report recounts several episodes of ethnically motivated brutality, in particular massacres of members of the Amhara or Tigrinya ethnic groups, which it mentions as acts that could correspond to "widespread and systematic attacks against a specific civilian population and would therefore be crimes against humanity".

It also portrays a situation in which torture has become commonplace, as well as detentions in secret locations or military bases and the looting and attacks on homes, churches, and hospitals, which in some cases were being used as military installations, said the head of the East and Southern Africa section of Bachelet's office, Françoise Mianda.

One of the consequences of this situation is that only half of the medical and basic health care facilities in Tigray are functioning.

The report also alleges that all parties to the conflict have perpetrated sexual violence and that their members have been involved in criminal acts, including gang rapes, in order to "degrade and dehumanise the victims".

From 30 interviews with women survivors, the researchers found that half had been victims of gang rape and that among them some had become pregnant or acquired sexually transmitted diseases.

However, "given the stigma and trauma associated with sexual violence, the inquiry believes that the prevalence of rape is likely much higher than we are able to document," the report acknowledges.