In what has been described as a landmark legal complaint submitted before the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, Lawyers acting for Tigrayan civilians asked the Commission to look into the conduct of Ethiopian troops in the war against the rebel forces in the north. The Ethiopian troops are reported to have committed a wide range of human rights violations, including mass killings, sexual violence, and military targeting of civilians in their war with the northern rebels.
According to the executive director of the rights organization Legal Action Worldwide, Antonia Mulvey, the conduct of Ethiopian troops “could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, but further investigation would be required”. He further added that “the African Commission has a unique opportunity to stand by victims and survivors from this conflict, to order emergency measures to stop unlawful killing of civilians trapped in Tigray and to hold Ethiopia to account”.
A joint investigation by the UN and Ethiopian Human Rights Commission revealed that “there were reasonable grounds to believe that all parties to the conflict had committed human rights violations” to varying degrees. Based on the report of the said investigation, some of the violations might constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Since the eruption of the conflict between the federal government of Ethiopia and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in November 2020, the federal forces are alleged to have committed widespread violations involving the targeting of civilians, extrajudicial killings, gender-based sexual violence, arbitrary arrest and detention, destruction of property, mass displacement of civilians, ethnic discrimination among others. Interviews and research conducted by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, between December 2020 and March 2022, found that hundreds of thousands of Tigrayens have been displaced from their homes due to threats, intimidation including campaigns of violence and forcible removal. The Amhara regional security forces were also alleged to have committed extrajudicial killings, rape, acts of sexual and gender-based violence, widespread pillage of crops and livestock, mass arrest and prolonged arbitrary detention, torture, and ill-treatment of Tigrayans. The testimony of Goitom, a 42-year-old ethnic Tigrayan farmer depicted how Amhara security forces beat up and detain Tigrayans in his town in January 2021. The 42-year-old Goitom, who was among the first group of Tigrayans that fled from abuses in the Western Tigray war zone said this in his testimony:
“Our numbers were decreasing by the day. After the Tekeze incident happened, Tigrayans left in big numbers. There was nothing to live for. We were not part of the town; it was taken over by other people. We were not allowed to live.”
Report of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International found that Amhara regional security forces and militias with federal forces’ complicity are responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Tigrayans from the western Tigray region. The report established that the campaign of ethnic cleansing in western Tigray was conducted through resort to serious human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes and crimes against humanity.
On the need to hold perpetrators of these atrocities to account, it’s clear that Ethiopia is not a state party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court which makes the prosecution of the alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity impossible. Also, invoking the UN Security Council to refer the matter to the ICC is highly unlikely as China and Russia can veto any such motion in the face of their current diplomatic ties with the federal government of Ethiopia. Thus, as indicated in the complaint submitted before it by Lawyers acting for the Tigrayan victims, the African Commission should look into the conduct of Ethiopian troops in their wars with the northern region’s rebel forces; order for emergency measures to stop the unlawful killings of civilians, and make referrals to the African Court on Human and People’s Rights and hold the federal forces responsible for those atrocities to account.
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