“You Will Never Be Able to Give Birth”

A groundbreaking new report by the Organization for Justice and Accountability in the Horn of Africa and Physicians for Human Rights exposes harrowing evidence of widespread, deliberate, and ethnically targeted sexual and reproductive violence in Ethiopia’s Tigray, Amhara, and Afar regions. Drawing on 515 medical records of survivors of conflict-related sexual violence; 602 survey responses from health workers who have treated survivors; and 40 in-depth interviews and four focus groups with professionals who provided care to survivors, the study reveals how Ethiopian and Eritrean forces weaponized rape to destroy Tigrayan reproductive capacity, acts that survivors say were committed with the intent of ethnic extermination. The report highlights a disturbing pattern of violence, including rape by multiple perpetrators, forced pregnancies, and the insertion of foreign objects, which continues to be associated with conflict across the country. With international justice mechanisms shut down and national processes failing, the report demands urgent global action to end the cycle of abuse, restore dignity to survivors, and hold perpetrators accountable.

READ THE FULL REPORT HERE