A fresh report has exposed the appalling extent and brutality of sexual violence used in the conflict during the war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region a campaign that medics and researchers now claim was systematically employed to decimate communities and obliterate the Tigrayan identity.
The report, produced by Physicians for Human Rights and the Organization for Justice and Accountability in the Horn of Africa (OJAH), is the most detailed analysis so far into what survivors, doctors, and human rights activists refer to as “weaponised sexual violence.” Drawing on over 500 patient records, over 600 healthcare worker surveys, and interviews with those who are treating victims, the report is a grim description of violence used to shatter not only individuals, but communities as a whole.
Physicians, nurses, and psychologists report treating thousands of survivors ranging from infants to the aged. Women were gang-raped, beaten with foreign objects, and deliberately infected with HIV. Some troops put plastic-wrapped notes inside victims, stating their intention to exterminate the Tigrayan people by rendering women infertile or giving birth to children of the invaders’ ethnicity.
“This is unlike anything I’ve seen in two decades working in gender-based violence,” said Payal Shah, human rights lawyer and co-author of the report. “It was extreme. Deliberate. Systematic.”
At Mekelle’s Ayder hospital, chief clinical director Dr. Abraha Gebreegziabher remembers weeks where more than 100 rape victims were taken in. “There was a clear pattern: gang rape, insertion of metal and stones, attempts to spread infection it was being done to destroy people’s futures.”
The violence didn’t end with the ceasefire. The report identified that sexual assaults have persisted into 2024 and spread to surrounding areas such as Amhara and Afar. The victims are usually left with long-term physical and psychological injuries, and many are currently displaced and without appropriate treatment, as clinics have closed due to the reduction of funds.
Children were some of the most tragic cases. Some of the survivors were under a year old. Others were made to witness their mothers or sisters being raped or murdered. One nurse explained that most of the child victims didn’t even know what had been done to them. “They just cry. They don’t know the word for rape.”
The emotional toll on victims and caregivers has been severe. Health professionals who work on these cases develop PTSD, depression, and burnout. “Even we are traumatised,” a surgeon commented off the record. “I treated a three-year-old girl. How do you process that?”
In spite of the evidence, there has been scant accountability. Local health workers report that perpetrators including Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers are still acting with impunity. Human rights analysts are now demanding international investigations into crimes against humanity and genocide.
“If there is no justice, there is no healing,” said one psychologist. “This wasn’t random. This was calculated violence intended to destroy a people. And the world needs to know.”
