The Tigray war ended in 2022, but three years on the conflict is still impacting women in grave ways. Sexual violence is still common and may be getting worse. Here is a deep dive into everything you need to know.
Despite the apparent ceasefire that ended the Tigray war in 2022, reports of human rights violations continue to emerge from the region. In particular, startling reports of sexual violence against women are bringing to light the gendered and systematic abuse rampant during and after this conflict.
How did this begin?
The Tigray war began in 2020, two years after Abiy Ahmed took governance of Ethiopia. When the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) ignored Prime Minister Ahmed’s orders to delay national elections due to coronavirus by holding its own regional ballot, tensions between the two sparring parties came to a head. A military offensive was launched against the regional forces of Tigray, after alleged attacks on federal army bases. From this moment in 2020 until the ceasefire in 2022, The Ethiopian federal army remained in conflict with the TPLF, with Eritrean soldiers also joining their side.
The war caused severe damage to the civilian population of Tigray, with The Financial Times reporting on over 600,000 deaths and The BBC’s recording of 350,000 civilians forcibly existing in famine conditions.Arguably, the major travesty of the Tigray war is the violence committed by all fighting sides against the region’s civilian women. It is the hidden and horrifying underbelly of the conflict that is often neglected in international media, politics, policy making and aid provisions.
What is happening to women in Tigray?
Already an under-reported issue of the war, a further global silence has fallen on reports of the alleged continuation of this sexual violence in the face of the 2022 ceasefire. A recent article by The Guardian highlights that ‘Eritrean and Ethiopian soldiers continue a widespread and systematic campaign of rape in Tigray despite the peace agreement’. Victims of this violence ranged from as girls as young as eight years old, to senior women of up to 69 years of age.
A new report from Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has shed light on the systematic nature of conflict-based sexual violence, reviewing 305 medical records from health facilities across Tigray.
The major conclusion of the report is that since the start of the Tigray conflict until June 2023, “military actors have perpetuated brutal and widespread acts of conflict-related sexual violence in Tigray and that these acts have not ceased following the signing of the CoHA [Cessation of Hostilities Agreement]”.
It is notable that whilst 169 of the studied incidents of conflict related sexual violence occurred before the signing of the CoHA in November 2022, a similar statistic of 128 incidents were logged in the peace agreement’s wake. 96% of the perpetrators of these offenses were identified as individuals belonging to military and paramilitary groups, indicating the conflict-based nature of these attacks. PHE reports that 66% of these offenders were recognised by surviving victims as speaking Tigrinya, the language spoken in both Eritrea and Tigray – demonstrating the involvement of all fighting parties.
Furthermore, the report notes that 76% of the documented acts constituted rape by multiple perpetrators at once, highlighting the brutality experienced by the region’s women. “Soldiers and militias subjected Tigrayan women and girls to rape, gang rape, sexual slavery, sexual mutilation, and other forms of torture, often using ethnic slurs and death threats”, finds Amnesty International.
Systemic violence against women
Investigations into collated reports of these incidents reveal both their political and gendered intent. PHR describes them as “systematic” due to the “scale of cases, patterns of incidents, and descriptions of perpetrators”. Amnesty International notes that there is a clear similarity throughout cases: “intent to inflict lasting physical and psychological damage on the survivors”.
Attacks are described as being particularly targeted towards damaging womanhood, with a clear focus on destroying the women’s fertility. Horrifically, reports show a pattern of perpetrators inserting threatening notes into women’s uteruses after committing rape. One such note was found to read “Sons of Eritrea, we are brave. We have committed ourselves to this, and we will continue doing it. We will make Tigrayan females infertile”.
In an investigation by The Guardian, a pattern emerged of women being found with foreign bodies forcibly inserted reproductive organs. This included nails, screws, plastic rubbish, sand, gravel and the aforementioned letters or notes. These attacks held a clear undertone of attempting to prevent births and therefore blight the future of these communities, as well as dehumanising the women through the politicisation of their bodies.
Genocide in Tigray
This is deemed an act of genocide under international law, as the perpetrators’ intentions can be seen as attempting to destroy an ethnic group through the forced removal of their future.
For many women, these bodily mutilations have proved fatal or left life-long mental and physical scars. PHR’s report notes that “the medical records reflect serious physical and psychological consequences of conflict-related sexual violence”. This includes (but is not limited to) uterine prolapse, chronic pelvic pain, fistulas, and abnormal uterine bleeding.
Further to this, 27% of the patients tested by PHR for pregnancy came back as positive, as well as multiple cases of HIV being contracted, all due to conflict related sexual violence. All of these consequences have the power to negatively change the futures and lives of the female community in Tigray.
In addition, many survivors continue to suffer mentally due to the abuse they experienced. 13% of the women studied suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as well as 17% recording symptoms of depression. Stigmas of rape and persisting conservative and religious values have also led to the social ostracism of many victims. Despite the incredible resilience of these women, there are clear signs of long-lasting mental health impacts on both individuals and their communities.
Is this a global problem?
Sadly, the women of Tigray are not alone in this story. Women across the world are consistently becoming the scapegoat of conflicts, with rape being employed as a horrific tactic of warfare. This gendered violence can be seen in the histories of Rwanda, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo and, most recently, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, alongside many others.
Coined by The United Nations Security Council as “war’s oldest, most silenced and least-condemned crime”, rape within conflict is not contained to a single place, time or nationality. Instead, it is a globally and historically recurring brutality that finds women consistently first to take the brunt of civilian violence in conflicts. Gita Sahgal’s analysis that “rape is often used in ethnic conflicts as a way for attackers to perpetuate their social control and redraw ethnic boundaries” demonstrates that societal and religious patriarchal structures perpetuate armed forces’ ability to oppress vulnerable groups in order to spread their own political doctrines.
For instance, in the 1990s, rape was used as a strategy for ethnic cleansing in the Bosnian war. Decades later, and it is apparent that the same intentions can be found in the methods of bodily mutilation inflicted upon Tigrayan women. This, however, is not solely about conflict. Although the climate of war may lead to more brutal violence towards women, it also uncovers the latent social conditions that foster the attitudes within society to deem this acceptable. The consistent gendered subjugation within modern conflicts uncovers the damaging and ongoing politicisation of women’s bodies within societal structures, with the dehumanisation of the female gender meaning that when conflict occurs, women are seen as a method of spreading political violence and pain.
What has been done to combat this global atrocity?
Although sexual violence during conflict was established as a threat to international peace and security in 2008 by the United Nations Security Council, these violations continue to go unpunished and ignored in peace negotiations.
In a sample of 45 conflicts since 1989, only 10 had peace agreements mentioning sexual violence. Although organisations such as UNIFEM and UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict are creating further policies and initiatives to help diminish the damage of such violence, there is very little practical implementation of success in these efforts.
UN Women’s statement that “most often, mass rape continues after the guns fall silent and peace treaties are signed” reveals a global systematic removal of women’s humanity, as well as a deeply ingrained societal hatred towards the female population.
How can things change?
Globally, the response towards the plight of women in Tigray has been mixed. Often referred to as ‘the forgotten war’, the atrocities towards Tigrayan women appear to be doubly forgotten. Although aid work is effective in providing baseline care for survivors, there is a need for increased international accountability and attention to truly solve the sexual violence that is continuing to be perpetuated.
Most urgently, condemnations of the extent of these atrocities within the Ethiopian government highlight a systematic negligence towards their own people. For instance, in a statement in 2021 to The BBC, attorney general of the Ethiopian government Gedio Timothewos declared that the reports of systematic sexual violence were “very exaggerated and unsubstantiated”.
What is clearly demonstrated here is that this is a problem larger than the Tigray war itself. There exists a global issue with the welfare of women and vulnerable members of society not just during civil unrest and periods of conflict, but also within their fundamental rights within societies. The silence on both a national and global scale towards the women of Tigray highlights a lack of urgency to solve the gender inequalities that allow atrocities towards women to persist in the modern world.
The use of sexual violence towards women as a weapon of war will only be truly eliminated if societies and the world as a whole truly adopt gender equality, releasing women and other vulnerable groups from their unwilling role as scapegoats of their communities.
However, until this is achieved, it is crucial that more attention is given to this issue on the global stage, with an increased effort to serve victims of these crimes justice through the routes of international courts of justice, as well as making sure proper aid and rehabilitation is provided to communities.
