Mekelle፡Telaviv, Nairobi, Pretoria, London, (Tigray Herald).
Op-Ed ፡The World Ignored Wartime Rape in Tigray. These Women Are Still Waiting for Justice
By Tesema Nadew
The war may be on pause, but for the women and girls of Tigray, the conflict rages on not on battlefields, but in clinics, empty courtrooms, and refugee camps. Survivors of mass sexual violence brutalized in a war that few in the international community dared to fully name are still waiting to be seen, heard, and healed.
A recent assessment by the Tigray Mothers Relief and Rehabilitation Association (TMRRA) documents what many already knew: rape was used as a weapon of war in Tigray, systematically and with staggering cruelty. The report, based on surveys of over 100 survivors across six districts, details accounts of gang rape, forced incest, genital mutilation, and intentional infection with HIV.
Some of the survivors were as young as 12.
Many were raped in front of family members husbands, children, parents a deliberate effort to destroy the victim’s identity, family unit, and community cohesion. This is not incidental harm. It is strategic violence. It is ethnic war fought through women’s bodies.
Where is the World’s Outrage?
The European Union confirmed in its 2023 report what TMRRA and other local groups have long cried out: these acts amount to war crimes and potentially crimes against humanity. The involvement of Eritrean forces and Ethiopian federal and allied militias was documented. Yet no arrests. No trials. No global sanctions specifically tied to these crimes.
International mechanisms of justice, including the UN Human Rights Council’s investigative body on Ethiopia, were suspended after diplomatic pressure from Addis Ababa and its allies. Ethiopia a nation that sits on global peacekeeping councils has succeeded in shielding itself from the consequences of atrocities committed under its watch.
Survivors remain trapped in silence. The few who dare to speak risk stigma, retaliation, and abandonment. “I was raped by five men,” one survivor told TMRRA researchers. “I tried to kill myself, but my daughter found me. I stayed alive for her. But justice that’s the part that still hasn’t come.”
Justice Is More Than a Tribunal
TMRRA’s response plan is both practical and visionary: survivor-centered trauma care, legal aid, economic reintegration, and community advocacy. But local NGOs cannot carry the burden alone. Justice requires infrastructure, international leverage, and political will.
Why does the world respond swiftly to violence in some countries and not in others? Why does the sexual assault of Ukrainian women command headlines, but Tigrayan women remain invisible?
There is a word for this: abandonment.
This Is a Global Test
Wartime rape in Tigray is not only a Tigrayan tragedy it is a test of international resolve to uphold the laws and norms the world claims to cherish. Accountability must go beyond naming perpetrators. It must involve material reparations, psychosocial support, prosecution at the highest levels, and a permanent end to impunity in Ethiopia and Eritrea alike.
If these survivors are left behind, what hope remains for victims in Sudan, Gaza, Congo, or Myanmar?
We Owe Them More Than Silence
There is still time to act. The international community especially the EU, UK, and African Union must support a renewed, impartial investigation iime sexual violence in Ethiopia. Survivor voices must be centered in peace and reconstruction talks. And donor nations must fund frontline organizations like TMRRA, which have done the work the world turned its back on.
As one survivor told me: “They took everything from me. But not my truth. I’m still waiting for someone to listen.”
The women of Tigray are watching. And they remember.
Tesema Nadew is a journalist and commentator on Ethiopian regional politics and human rights.”
