Sexual and reproductive violence was systematically used as a weapon during and after the Tigray war, a new report reveals.
Physicians for Human Rights and the Organization for Justice and Accountability in the Horn of Africa interviewed 500 healthcare workers for the 88-page report released Thursday. Their findings document widespread, deliberate, and ethnically targeted violence that the NGOs say amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The Tigray conflict, which raged from 2020 to 2022, pitted Ethiopian federal forces and Eritrean troops against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. Around 600,000 people were killed, with atrocities reported on all sides.
Victims—primarily Tigrayan women and girls—were subjected to rape, forced pregnancy, sexual slavery, and other acts of extreme brutality, the report states. “The perpetrators were not motivated by sexual desire but rather by a desire to inflict pain and suffering,” a health coordinator in Tigray said.
Interviews detailed horrors including rape by up to 14 perpetrators, intentional infection with HIV, and insertion of sharp objects into women’s wombs. Many victims reported hearing their attackers express a desire to destroy their ability to bear children.
Nearly three-quarters of healthcare workers treated patients who said the violence was ethnically motivated. The report says perpetrators often wore Eritrean military uniforms or were affiliated with Ethiopian forces and allied militias from the Amhara region.
Eritrean and Ethiopian officials did not respond to AFP’s requests for comment. Lindsey Green, deputy director at PHR, said perpetrators acted with impunity while victims were silenced.
Though not conclusive on genocide, the report cites a “clear intention” to destroy the Tigrayan ethnic group. The report warns that similar atrocities are continuing in other parts of Ethiopia due to a lack of justice and accountability.