In honour of International Women’s Day, on Thursday, March 6^th, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Women, Peace and Security organised an event in collaboration with the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on International Law, Justice, and Accountability Globally, and the Tigray All-Party Parliamentary Group titled “Conflict-Related Sexual and Reproductive Violence in Tigray.” The event—chaired by Baroness Hodgson, co-chair of the APPG-WPS—focused on the continued perpetration of CRSV in Tigray after the 2022 Cessation of Hostilities Agreement. While the world has moved on, the survivors of sexual violence in Tigray still wait for justice and accountability.

Saron Belay, the Co-Chair of the Tigray Youth Network, laid out the background of the war in Ethiopia. She discusses the Ethiopian government’s delay of national elections in September – October 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which eventually led to the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) holding constitutionally mandated regional elections. The government declared these elections null and avoid. Belay cited the national federalist Constitution’s rules on elections and temporal limits on the House of People’s Representatives, explaining how the election postponement became more than a political issue; it evolved into a constitutional crisis that underscored the tensions within Ethiopia’s federal structure and the challenges of maintaining constitutionalism and impartiality amidst political conflicts. On November 4^th, 2020, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed declared war on Tigray alongside foreign Eritrean troops and neighbouring Amhara militia; in response, the TPLF organised the Tigray Defence forces (TDF) for defence of the region. Over the course of two years, Abiy Ahmed used drones, bombs, and chemical weapons purchased from countries like Iran, the UAE, China, and Turkey against Tigray. In spite of the 2022 Cessation of Hostilities Agreement between the Ethiopian government and the TPLF, Eritrean troops continue to occupy parts of Tigray until present day and sexual violence continues to be used as a method of war. Belay notes that despite the violence, displacement, and humanitarian catastrophe in their homeland, the resilience and courage of the Tigrayan people remains undeniable.

Kate Vigneswaran, international criminal justice expert and co-author of the New Lines Institute report “Conflict-Related Sexual and Reproductive Violence in Tigray” which was launched at the APPG event, presented the legal findings of the report. Vigneswaran outlined how the report was based on open-source intelligence including government and non-governmental reports as well as findings by the UN International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia. The report sets out how sexual and reproductive violence, including rape, sexual torture, sexual and reproductive mutilation, forced pregnancy, forced nudity, and sexual slavery, inflicted by all parties to the conflict on men, women, girls, boys and LGBTQI+ persons from Tigray, Amhara, Afar and other ethnic groups was brutal, leaving survivors with life-long physical scars and mental trauma. Such acts targeted, or resulted in damage to, the reproductive capacity of the Tigrayan survivors in particular, with the apparent objective of altering the ethnic composition of the community. Vigneswaran highlighted how the violence, committed in the context of mass killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention, forced removals, destruction of food and water infrastructure and restrictions on humanitarian aid, among other violations, was widespread throughout the conflict, and continued well after the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement was signed in November 2022 in Pretoria. Vigneswaran emphasised that the report concludes there is a reasonable basis to believe sexual and reproductive violence, as well as other gender-based crimes, constitute crimes against humanity, war crimes and possibly genocide. The information shows that there are reasonable grounds to believe that victims were persecuted on gender, ethnic, and political grounds. Insufficient information is available regarding those responsible in the higher echelons of the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments and further investigation is required. Vigneswaran recommended States engage with the Ethiopian authorities with a view to instituting proceedings at the International Court of Justice; exercise extraterritorial, including universal, criminal and civil jurisdiction to provide victims with access to justice; explore creative means to provide full access to remedies and reparations, including truth-telling, compensation and community-building initiatives; and support civil society organisations working with survivor communities by adequately funding them and supporting their advocacy at the international level.

Kallie Mitchell, Head of the Gender Policy Portfolio at the New Lines Institute and co-author of the Tigray report, explained how the international community can strengthen global responses to CRSV through two key frameworks: the Women, Peace and Security Agenda (WPS) and the UK’s Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative (PSVI). Mitchell emphasised how military actors used sexual and reproductive violence against Tigrayans not only to impact the individual who was directly violated, but to terrorize and, based on many survivor testimonies and investigations cited in the report, destroy, in whole or in part, the Tigrayan ethnic group. Mitchell explained that by situating the sexual and reproductive violence that occurred during the Tigray conflict within the broader context of gendered vulnerabilities that exist in the region and in Ethiopia as a country, including historical and cultural gender norms and institutional militarized masculinity, we can better understand the severe and long-lasting impact that these violations have on individuals, families, and communities across Ethiopia. Any meaningful approaches to preventing and responding to this violence require more than legal accountability – it demands a fundamental shift in the gendered power structures that perpetuate it around the world. She urged more understanding of how deeply entrenched gender norms in peacetime serve as a driver of wartime sexual and reproductive violence; and that these norms exist beyond private spheres to shape institutions, especially those involved in conflict. These norms include boundaries of acceptable violence both in peacetime and in war; since men make up the majority of actors who start, fight in, and end wars, they are the actors deciding on these boundaries. Mitchell went on to show how the four pillars of the WPS agenda can be used to challenge the gendered power structures that enable discrimination, conflict, and gender-based violence. As a leader on WPS and the penholder of the agenda at the UN, the UK has played a key role in advancing commitments towards gender equality in peace and security frameworks. The UK has further built on its WPS commitments through its Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative (PSVI), which seeks to address CRSV through policy advocacy, survivor support, and accountability efforts. Mitchell concluded that sexual violence in Tigray was not an isolated atrocity; it is a symptom of deeper gendered power structures that persist in conflicts worldwide. And yet, the international community already has the tools to prevent and combat these crimes through the WPS agenda and PSVI.

The Q&A session covered meaningful justice for survivors of CRSV beyond domestic accountability, which remains unlikely; what reparations could look like; how advocacy groups can continue to support survivors and the work of policymakers around the world; how to change pervasive and entrenched gender norms in Tigray to support the reintegration of survivors of CRSV into their communities and families without the stigma and shame of sexual violence; and considerations of children born of wartime sexual violence. This important and timely event highlighted the ongoing challenges in addressing CRSV and advocated for comprehensive, survivor-centered approaches on an international scale.