Tigray, Ethiopia
Mass rape and starvation: Soldiers from Eritrea are using rape and starvation to subdue the population in Ethiopia’s war-torn Tigray region, a top United Nations official said this week. Fighting broke out in the northern region last November, after Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent troops to crush what he believed was a budding rebellion by ethnic Tigrayans. Neighboring Eritrea—which signed a peace deal with Abiy in
2018 that ended a decades-old frozen conflict—sent troops across the border to help Ethiopian government forces. “Eritrean soldiers are using starvation as a weapon of war,” said U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock. “Rape is being used systematically to terrorize and brutalize women and girls. Aid workers have been killed, interrogated, beaten.” More than 350,000 people in Tigray are currently living in famine conditions.