All sides of the Tigray war have been repeatedly accused of committing war crimes since it began in November 2020. In particular, the Ethiopian federal government, the State of Eritrea, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and Amhara Special Forces (ASF) have been the subject of numerous reports of both war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Government-allied forces had engaged in torture, ethnic cleansing and widespread sexual violence, and have faced accusations of committing a genocide against Tigrayans. The Tigray Defense Forces (TDF) also engaged in the extrajudicial killings of civilians, war rape, using civilians as human shields, and widespread looting and destruction of civilian infrastructure in the Afar and Amhara Regions.
Crimes against humanity
The EHRC claimed in November 2020 that the Mai Kadra massacre could constitute a crime against humanity. Human Rights Concern Eritrea claimed in February 2021 that crimes against humanity occurred during the war, in particular in the "appalling treatment of Eritrean refugees in the Shimelba and Hitsats camps" and called for an immediate independent international enquiry.
Many sources have accused the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments of engaging in crimes against humanity via ethnic cleansing of Tigrayans. In its 26 February 2021 report on the Axum massacre, Amnesty International described the indiscriminate shelling of Axum by the ENDF and EDF in January 2021 as possibly "amount[ing] to war crimes", and the following mass executions of Axum civilians by Eritrean troops as a crime against humanity.
Wartime sexual violence
War rape and sexual violence were widespread throughout the war, and was perpetrated by virtually all sides. According to one witness in May 2021, girls as young as 8 and women as old as 72 were among those being raped. Such sexual violence was often accompanied by other forms of physical and mental abuse. Physical abuses included burning their victims with hot iron or cigarettes, forcing metal rods or nails into their victim's genitals, etc. Mental abuses included raping their victim in front of their family members, forcing their victims to rape their family members, calling their victims derogatory words and ethnic slurs, etc. After being subjected to sexual violence, many women became infected with STIs like HIV, and often found difficulty seeking treatments due to a combination of shame and the collapse of medical infrastructure due to the war.
A UN investigation in September 2022 confirmed the reports of widespread rape and sexual violence by all parties, including the practice of mass rape as perceived retribution by the TDF, as well as the use of sexual slavery by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces.
Sexual violence by the ENDF, EDF and ASF
Soldiers and militias often subjected Tigrayan women and girls (including pregnant women and young girls) to rape, gang rape, sexual slavery, sexual mutilation, and other forms of sexual torture. According to nine doctors in Ethiopia and one in a Sudanese refugee camp interviewed by CNN, sexual violence in the Tigray war violated laws regarding rape as a weapon of war. The women treated by the doctors stated that the ENDF, EDF and ASF soldiers who raped them described Tigrayans as having no history and culture, that the intent was to "ethnically cleans[e] Tigray", to "Amharise" them or remove their Tigrayan identity and "blood line." One of the doctors, Tedros Tefera, stated, "Practically this has been a genocide." In March 2021, The Daily Telegraph argued that testimonies supported the view that sexual violence was being weaponized, stating that "Survivors, doctors, aid workers and experts speaking to the Telegraph all pointed to rape being systematically used as a weapon of war by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces." Reasons for the rape that were stated to the victims included the aim of "cleansing Tigrayan blood." These reports of targeted, mass sexual violence against Tigrayans was corroborated by an April 2022 joint Human Rights Watch–Amnesty International report on the Western Zone, describing similar occurrences.
Sexual violence by Tigrayan rebel forces
In January 2022, Amnesty International published a report stating that acts of rape and violence by the TPLF in the Amhara Region "may have been committed as part of a systematic attack against the Amhara civilian population." Survivors spoke of being gang raped, beaten and called ethnic slurs, often in front of their children. Reportedly, some TPLF fighters used the rape of Tigrayan women by pro-government forces as a justification for committing sexual violence themselves. In March 2022, the EHRC published a report stating that the TDF committed widespread and systematic acts of sexual violence against women and girls in the Afar and Amhara regions, including through gang rape and rape with foreign objects.
Ethnic cleansing of Tigrayans in the Western Zone
According to a report by The New York Times released in February 2021, confidential U.S. government documents described Amhara Region officials and armed forces as carrying out ethnic cleansing in the Western Zone, "deliberately and efficiently rendering Western Tigray ethnically homogeneous through the organized use of force and intimidation […] Whole villages were severely damaged or completely erased." Many Tigrayans fled across the border to Sudan, and those unable to flee were captured, and forcibly transferred to other parts of Tigray. In March, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) stated that "tens of thousands of people [had] been displaced from [the Western Zone] allegedly on ethnic grounds." The OCHA also confirmed that the zone was run by Amhara regional authorities, with humanitarian access "only [being] possible through Amhara Region." The Norwegian Refugee Council estimated that between 140,000 and 185,000 people had fled from the Western Zone to Shire, in the span of around 2 weeks in March 2021.
In contrast to towns with majority Tigrayan populations, the Times said that towns with majority Amhara populations were "thriving, with bustling shops, bars and restaurants."
In a 240-page report by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International released on 6 April 2022, it was documented that Amhara Special Forces engaged in systemic campaigns deliberately targeting Tigrayans in the Western Zone. Tigrayans were often killed en masse, forcibly expelled, or otherwise experienced a number of crimes against humanity, including torture, rape, sex slavery, forced disappearances and arbitrary detention. In some cases, the Mai Kadra massacre was used as a justification to commit mass killings in "revenge", while in other cases, there was "little apparent motive beyond spreading terror." According to one witness, recounting what she discovered upon returning to her hometown in December 2020:
In Dansha, I saw the heads of people who had been beheaded around the gates of my home. The people say that Tigrayans' dead bodies shouldn't go to the grave.... The smell of dead bodies. I saw bodies where limbs were separating itself from each other because they had been left out for too long.
Tigrayans had their personal documents either confiscated or destroyed, and while the new Western Zone authorities issued new ID cards, they were reportedly not given to Tigrayans. The aforementioned IDs were required to access any essential service in the area, and when one resident attempted to get one, an administrator allegedly told him that orders "from above" were made to not give them to Tigrayans.
Tigrayans were also told, in no uncertain terms, to leave the Western Zone or be killed; some recalled seeing pamphlets telling them to leave within 24 or 72 hours if they did not want to die. 42 Tigrayans who were interviewed by Reuters gave broadly similar accounts of receiving papers explicitly mentioning this, with some of them also saying that they witnessed Tigrayans being rounded up by "Amhara gunmen." At the same time, federal Ethiopian and Amhara forces prevented civilians from trying to cross the border into Sudan, telling them to go back to their homes "in an apparent attempt to present a veneer of normalcy."
Denial and obfuscation
Both Amhara and federal Ethiopian authorities had repeatedly denied that ethnic cleansing or targeted ethnic violence was taking place in the area. Prime Minister Abiy dismissed reports of crimes committed by the ASF, saying in an April 2021 speech to Ethiopian parliament that "portraying [the Amhara Special Forces] as a looter and conqueror is very wrong." The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Ethiopia "vehemently opposes such accusations," describing them as "completely unfounded," "spurious" and "[blown] out of proportion."
Yabsira Eshetie, the administrator of the occupied Western Zone, claimed that "no one was kicking them out, no one was destroying their houses even. […] It is lawful here", and said that "only criminals had been detained." Gizachew Muluneh, head of Amhara Regional Communication Affairs, denied the reports of ethnic cleansing in the Western Zone, calling it "propaganda", and claiming that the number of displaced Tigrayans was exaggerated. Gizachew also said, in response to U.S. criticism, that "these areas are not Tigrayan areas, [historically]. […] Our forces are not in the Tigrayan areas, rather our forces are in Amhara", making an apparent revanchist claim that the Western Zone belongs to the Amhara Region.
Allegations of evidence destruction
The BBC reported on 7 May 2022 that, according to the testimonies of 15 eyewitnesses, the ASF and Fano militias – throughout the occupied Western Zone – began systemically digging up mass graves of ethnic Tigrayans, burning their bodies, and moving them to another, separate location. Witnesses stated that this started to occur a few days after funding for a UN war crimes investigation into the Tigray war was approved in March 2022 (which Ethiopia voted against). This practice is alleged to have occurred Humera, Adebay and Beaker.
Ethnic cleansing after the signing of the Pretoria agreement
Charges of forced removals of Tigrayans continued into late 2022, even as peace agreements were being signed and implemented by the federal government and the TPLF. On 10 November, according to an aid group (which chose to remain anonymous), over 2,800 people (including children) were held in detention centres for at least a year, before Fano militias rounded them up into trucks and moved them to a town near Sheraro in the North Western Zone, which lies outside of Amhara's territorial claims.
Removal of basic services
Looting and deliberate starvation
Looting by federal Ethiopian, Eritrean and Amhara forces
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International described Tigrayans being targeted with impunity, both by military and civilian groups:
Federal and allied forces looted Tigrayan homes, businesses, livestock, and crops as they took over towns and villages. Amhara Special Forces, Fano militias, and Eritrean military forces […] carried out the bulk of the looting, but groups in civilian clothes, some armed, others not, later joined them. […] Two interviewees said they saw security force members loot homes and businesses, selectively targeting Tigrayan property.
Anti-Tigrayan forces engaged in what HRW and Amnesty described as "pillag[ing]", with "schools, courts, churches, and health centers", in addition to civilian houses, being subject to looting. Amhara and Eritrean forces also took harvests, livestock and medicine from Tigrayan farmers, who were threatened with violence if they did not comply; these actions caused the looted areas to face "extreme starvation" by June 2021. Multiple witnesses, from separate villages, gave similar descriptions of Amhara militias and security forces "waiting for farmers to collect or harvest [sorghum crops] before stealing [them]." The new government of the occupied Western Zone did little to help the local Tigrayan population, and in a number of cases, actively participated in marginalizing and discriminating against them. The HRW–Amnesty report described them as "complicit in the theft of Tigrayan property". The authorities placed restrictions on their ability to harvest food, and denied them access to international aid.
A witness to the Axum massacre stated that the EDF "burned crops […] forced farmers and priests to slaughter their own animals […] stole medicine from health facilities and destroyed the infrastructure." Reports of Eritrean looting continued into late 2022, with allegations that the EDF was seizing food and other materials from Tigrayan homes, in violation of the November 2022 peace agreement.