The “forgotten” war in Tigray, Ethiopia, between 2020 and 2022 claimed the lives of more than 200,000 soldiers and up to 400,000 civilians. Despite a peace agreement that was signed in November 2022, hundreds of thousands of Tigrayans still face the consequences of a human-made famine. Peace in Ethiopia remains elusive.
Despite the strength and quantity of evidence indicating the mass perpetration of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the world has largely moved on. Conflict in Ukraine and Gaza has overshadowed the Tigray war. The West is providing aid, but there is little willingness to insist on a full investigation and accountability for the alleged crimes—and that needs to change.
The “forgotten” war in Tigray, Ethiopia, between 2020 and 2022 claimed the lives of more than 200,000 soldiers and up to 400,000 civilians. Despite a peace agreement that was signed in November 2022, hundreds of thousands of Tigrayans still face the consequences of a human-made famine. Peace in Ethiopia remains elusive.
Despite the strength and quantity of evidence indicating the mass perpetration of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the world has largely moved on. Conflict in Ukraine and Gaza has overshadowed the Tigray war. The West is providing aid, but there is little willingness to insist on a full investigation and accountability for the alleged crimes—and that needs to change.
Ethiopia’s ethnic history is crucial to understanding the conflict and the resulting atrocities. The Tigrayan minority in the far north of the country had grown to prominence after its leading role in overthrowing the junta. Despite comprising only about 6 percent of Ethiopia’s population, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front enjoyed outsized political influence and uninterrupted involvement in the national government, arguably to the neglect of other groups. While the regions enjoyed autonomy, the coalition saw that the central government never changed hands, a democratic deficit that saw Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed eventually propelled to power in 2018.
Abiy won a Nobel Prize in 2019 after resolving territorial disputes with Eritrea. But these concessions involved giving away Tigrayan lands, which he was more than willing to do. The Eritrean Defense Forces (EDF) began maneuvers around Tigray to help Abiy control the region—troops that also resented the Tigrayans due to decades of border friction and a war from 1998 to 2000 that claimed an estimated 100,000 lives.
The run-up to the 2020-22 war was shrouded in the guise of legality, with great efforts taken to preempt criticism by calling it a “law enforcement operation” to uphold constitutional order.
The war that followed was horrendous. The long history of ethnic conflict resulted in war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against Tigrayans, as well as war crimes also committed by Tigrayan forces against people from the regions of Amhara and Afar. The International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia (ICHREE) found reasonable grounds to believe that “measures designed to deprive the civilian population of objects indispensable to their survival” were implemented, which, if caused intentionally, can constitute starvation as a method of warfare. Both the destruction of harvests and blocking of humanitarian aid likely contributed to the deaths of many of the 600,000 Tigrayans believed to have perished in the conflict.
This long-standing ethnic hatred led to members of the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) and their regional allies (including both the Eritreans and other state forces), using sexual violence as a means of ethnic cleansing against the Tigray population. Harrowing reports from victims and witnesses depict members of the EDF telling a pregnant woman they would “destroy [her] child and stop [her] from giving birth” and telling others—including a victim of rape who saw the murder of her 5-year-old child—“Let’s eliminate the Tigrayans for generations.”
After the November 2022 peace deal was signed, the following months saw the ICHREE wound down before it could fully investigate or report upon the alleged atrocities in Tigray or other regions affected by the war. Likewise, despite previously recognizing more than half a million deaths in the region and evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the Biden administration in the United States had quietly told Congress that the “pattern of gross violations of human rights” had come to an end. This allowed economic aid to resume flowing. The European Union similarly returned to its $680 million development strategy for Ethiopia, despite a lack of accountability for the widespread rights abuses in the region.
The idea that national interest (including restoring trade links with Ethiopia) must trump human rights seems to have taken hold. So, too, has the possibly more nuanced belief that peace would be impossible without the Ethiopian state on board. The normalization of relations has allowed Ethiopia to stave off international pressure and monitor truth-finding processes.
Despite this, the region is still facing famine, and violence has continued. A further 1,400 hunger-related deaths occurred between April and August 2023. Abiy’s efforts to integrate all regional armed forces into his own federal forces sparked further violent insurgency in Amhara and elsewhere, and research has revealed evidence that genocidal tactics are still being used to solve ethnic and political problems.
But more is needed to spur action. Notably, while a number of bodies have reported on the possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the Tigray war—and, in some cases, noted factual indications potentially consistent with genocide—a systematic and comprehensive analysis through the lens of the Genocide Convention has been lacking.
Our team released such an analysis at the New Lines Institute, which assesses the evidence of mass murder, rape, forced displacement, torture, obstruction of humanitarian aid, destruction of crops, and the targeting of key civilian infrastructure like the health care system. The legal analysis demonstrates that there is reason to believe not only that war crimes and crimes against humanity took place, but also genocide. Specifically, there is reason to believe that members of the ENDF, Amhara special forces, and EDF might all have committed genocide against Tigrayans—through killing, inflicting serious bodily and mental harm, imposing life-threatening conditions to bring about their destruction, and intentionally preventing births.
This is important, not only for its own sake but also for its implications for accountability. By international law, all states who are signatories to the 1948 Genocide Convention—such as Ethiopia—are under an obligation to prevent and punish genocide. This means that Ethiopia should have taken decisive preventative action when genocide seemed likely.
The report establishes that there is reason to believe that Ethiopia failed to discharge this responsibility, and that—even now—it fails to punish the commission of genocide. Such a case could be within the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice under Article IX of the Genocide Convention. It is for this reason that leading lawyers, such as Helena Kennedy, have described the report as a “landmark step” toward a legal resolution.
The international community should now renew efforts to establish an independent criminal investigation.
The apparent reticence to act is misguided. Compared to the Middle East or Ukraine, Ethiopia might seem like less of a geopolitical priority at present. But the Red Sea is a critical shipping route, and turning a blind eye would be a grave miscalculation on the West’s part.
Authoritarian states are challenging Western leadership in international institutions and in global peacemaking processes. The West’s failure to apply standards equally—whether in Ethiopia or Gaza—feeds the perception of a double standard, erodes any moral authority, and calls into question the efficacy of the rules-based order and the commitment to it.
The United States and Europe can help restore their own reputations by acting consistently with their words in their policy toward Ethiopia and helping to bring about a negotiated end to the decades-long interethnic warfare. This will require pivoting from short-term solutions to adopting a clearer approach to the causes of ongoing ethnic conflict. A prerequisite is that apparent atrocities are investigated, perpetrators brought to justice, and reparations made.
This means that Washington and Brussels must cease further economic engagement with Ethiopia’s government until it sincerely recommits to accountability for the alleged atrocities and lives up to the promises in its transitional justice policy. Armed with this new legal analysis, the West needs to revisit what it shortsightedly chalked up as a win and recognize that the root causes of the ongoing interethnic conflict and human rights abuses in Ethiopia remain unresolved. This could involve attempting to resuscitate the ICHREE’s mandate or advancing proposals for mechanisms under the auspices of the United Nations General Assembly or the U.N. Human Rights Council to lay the groundwork for full and fair investigations with a view to accountability.
