An international human rights investigation into the brutal civil war in Ethiopia’s Tigray province will be published on Wednesday amid concerns that the scope of the UN inquiry has been constrained by both Addis Ababa and the ongoing conflict.
Due to be released almost exactly a year after the conflict began, the joint UN Human Rights Office and government-created Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC), will nevertheless be the most authoritative overview of the war and its consequences.
Independent human rights groups, humanitarian organisations and foreign media are banned from Tigray, in a conflict where at least tens of thousands have died and there have been accusations of sexual violence and deliberate starvation.
Investigators were allowed to visit Tigray however, because of the partnership with the EHRC – but were not able to visit all key locations, including the site of an alleged massacre in Axum in November 2020 by Eritrean troops fighting alongside the Ethiopian government.
The involvement of the EHRC has left Tigrayan leaders sceptical about the investigation’s independence – while the conflict, which saw much of Tigray recaptured by rebels over the summer, has created further difficulties.
David Crane, the founder of the Global Accountability Network and founding chief prosecutor for the special court for Sierra Leone, an international tribunal, said: “What you need when you go into an atrocity zone is a clean slate so outside investigators can look into it neutrally, dispassionately.
“You want to do these things where you don’t build doubt, distrust from the beginning,” including among people interviewed, he added.
Ethiopia expelled seven senior UN officials last month, including the human rights officer Sonny Onyegbula, who was working on the report. Addis Ababa accused the officials of “meddling in internal affairs”.
Rising tensions between the Ethiopian government led by Abiy Ahmed and the Tigrayan TPLF, previously the dominant group in the country’s politics, led to the start of fighting in November 2020.
Initially, Ethiopia, in alliance with neighbouring Eritrea, seized control of Tigray, amid multiple reports of atrocities. Tigrayan forces regrouped and staged a counterattack, regaining much of Tigray in June and capturing parts of neighbouring provinces.
Despite a recent counterattack by Ethiopian forces in October, the TPLF claims to have gained further ground, seizing strategic towns on the road to Addis, prompting speculation that the capital itself could fall to the rebels.
In a sign of paranoia around the fate of Addis Ababa, state media called on Monday for residents to register weapons in the next two days. On Sunday, Ahmed called for citizens to “use any type of weapons to block the destructive [rebel push], to overturn it and bury it”. “Dying for Ethiopia is a duty for all of us,” he said.
The rights report only covers the period from November 2020 to 28 June 2021, when the TPLF recaptured Mekelle, the province’s capital, and is based on 269 interviews with victims and witnesses, as well as with other sources.
Some involved in the investigation told the Associated Press that the head of the EHRC, Daniel Bekele, underplayed some allegations that fighters from the country’s Amhara region were responsible for abuses and pressed to highlight abuses by Tigray forces.
But Bekele asserted the commission’s independence, saying it was “primarily accountable to the people it is created to serve” and that he and the commission had consistently cited “serious indications that all parties involved in the conflict have committed atrocities”.
Bekele also said the investigation lacked the support of the Tigray authorities now administering the region.
The UN has said Ethiopia’s government had no say in the report’s publication, though it was given the chance to read it in advance and to point out “anything it believes to be incorrect”. It has acknowledged there have been difficulties in accessing key locations.
Last week, Ethiopia’s government released the results of its own investigations focusing on alleged abuses by Tigray forces. The ministry of justice said it found 483 non-combatants were killed and 109 raped in parts of Amhara and Afar that have been recaptured by federal forces in recent weeks.
The spokesperson for the Tigray forces, Getachew Reda, said the allegations were not worth “the paper they’re written on”. Accusations of rapes and killings by Tigray forces are “absolutely untrue, at least on a level these organisations are alleging,” he said.
