Eritrean and Ethiopian soldiers continue a widespread and systematic campaign of rape in Tigray, despite the peace agreement signed in November last year, a new report reveals.
In the first report to document sexual violence—using hundreds of medical records from the start of the conflict in November 2020 through to June 2023—healthcare professionals recount cases of gang-rape, sexual slavery and murder, including the killing of children.
The report—by Physicians for Human Rights and the Organization for Justice and Accountability in the Horn of Africa—reviewed 304 medical records of conflict-related sexual violence from health facilities across Tigray; 128 showed rape occurring after the agreement to halt all hostilities after two years of civil war.
Survivors of sexual violence in the report ranged in age from eight to 69. Three-quarters of cases (76 percent) were of gang-rapes. Ten accounts were of people who had been held captive and raped by multiple perpetrators. In almost all cases (96 percent), perpetrators belonged to military and paramilitary groups.
A brutal two-year conflict started in November 2020 when the government of Ethiopia began military operations in Tigray against the region’s ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. The war is estimated to have killed 600,000 people, making it one of the world’s deadliest recent conflicts.
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