How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/
ABSTRACT
Sexual violence is known as an overall result of armed conflict and other crises. However, in the Tigray region, it has taken another dimension. It has become the primary weapon of war in multiple faces with systematic rape. The late intervention of the international community, including local nongovernmental organizations, forced the Ethiopian government to speak on the issue. The need to balance its actions against the United Nations Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security to support the victim and ensure their future is the primary purpose of this analysis drawn from different sources. With the ongoing conflict, what is the future of sexual violence victims in Tigray?
KEYWORDS
Sexual violence in conflict, Rape, Gender-based violence, human rights abuse.
INTRODUCTION
Following the resistance of the Tigray government to align to the political reform of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, a conflict erupted on November 4, 2021, between the special forces of the Tigray regional government and the Ethiopian National Defense forces. The escalation of tension has since provoked mass atrocities and human rights abuses especially sexual violence mainly in Mekele. Till today many voices are being raised to huge the government to stop conflict and allow humanitarian access.
MAIN CORPUS
Sexual Violence as A Normal Weapon of War in The Tigray Region?
In the current Tigray conflict, the prominent sexual violence in Mekele is systematic rape. Rape is of many kinds ranging from gang rape, rape in front of family members, and men forced to rape their family members under the threats of violence. Moreover, rocks, nails, and other dangerous objects have been moved inside women and men’s bodies, sometimes during sexual assaults, according to health workers. This kind of situation causes trauma and humiliation in the community. This psychosis forced patients to remain anonymous. However, even in a conservative society such as Ethiopia, it is worth acknowledging and encouraging women who take exceptional courage to share the most personal and excruciatingly inclement about their ordeal. Until March 25, 2021, five clinics reported more than 500 rape cases in Ethiopia’s Tigray region. It is likely too high.
The Implication of Sexual Violence on the UN-Resolution 1325
The U.N. Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security (2000) calls all parties to take extraordinary measures to protect women and girls from gender-based violence, particularly rape and other forms of sexual abuse, in situations of armed conflict. After months of denials from Ethiopia and Eritrea, the voice of many organizations prompted the Ethiopian Prime minister to admit abuses might have committed. Distraught with the situation, Pramila Patten, U.N. special representative of the secretary-general on sexual violence in conflict, on April 14, 2021, asked the U.N. to act at the highest level to apply Resolution 1325 to the crimes in Tigray. This means to take sexual violence in Tigray as a war crime and deliver justice accordingly. Therefore, prime minister Abiyi Ahmed made a firm promise to hold accountable all the alleged perpetrators of sexual violence in Tigray. Not being respectful of anyone, Mr. Abiyi implied his soldiers. in the actual context, humanitarians’ narrow approach to sexual violence not only ignores victims/survivors other than the stereotypical but also frees perpetrators from scrutiny—including the international humanitarian community itself, through whose widespread depoliticization of sexual violence has expunged the connections between gender inequality and violence
Relief for Sexual Violence Victims
How the Ethiopian government is yet to deal with the crisis and ensure all the victims of sexual assault in the Tigray region will determine their future. The government must first put an end to the conflict through a peace agreement in which the cessation of sexual violence is a condition. On the other hand, it should monitor and check the raping even after the conflict to ex belligerent not to wage a proxy war on another’s woman, provide an environment for free medical and psychological support for all the victims renovate all the medical facilities. Furthermore, mechanisms should be put in place to encourage victims to open up while enforcing measures to fight retaliation. It is also interesting to foster gender justice, restore the rule of law in Tigray, and independently investigate by an independent expert.
SUMMARY *
The article makes two connected claims. The first is empirical: that sexual violence in this conflict is not an incidental consequence of fighting but a method of warfare, indicated by its patterns, the presence of witnesses, and the forms it takes. The second is procedural: that the international framework establishing this as a matter of international peace and security existed throughout, and that its application depended on pressure from human rights organisations and medical staff rather than on any automatic mechanism. Between the first reports and the government’s acknowledgment lay months of denial, and the author treats that interval as the central failure.
CONCLUSION
In Tigray, conflict-related sexual violence has become the primary weapon of war. It has caused much trauma, forcing victims, especially women and girls, to find uncertain places of refuge. Since the beginning and deafened by the international community and the Ethiopian government, the alarm raised by human rights organizations finally forced the latter to acknowledge that sexual violence had been perpetrated before making a solid promise to bring the perpetrators to justice. The level of sexual violence calls for a confrontation between the measures to be taken and united nations resolution 1325 on women, peace, and security to establish the belligerents’ responsibility. However, the war continues, and the Ethiopian government must letter an end to the hostilities. This will create an environment conducive to the prevention and care of victims of sexual violence through measures and mechanisms appropriate to a state of law.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The author’s recommendations are sound and their sequencing deserves attention, because in situations of this kind the order in which measures are pursued determines whether any of them reach the people concerned.
Care comes first and does not wait for anything else. The clinical needs following sexual violence are time bound: emergency contraception, post exposure prophylaxis against HIV, treatment of fistula and other injuries, and mental health support are effective when delivered early and diminish in value with every week of delay. This makes unimpeded humanitarian access not a general good but a specific medical necessity, and it makes the restoration of health facilities the most urgent single measure available. Support delivered through community structures, and by women health workers where possible, reaches people whom formal facilities do not, particularly in a setting where stigma and fear of retaliation keep survivors from presenting at all.
Documentation runs alongside. Evidence of sexual violence degrades quickly and the conditions of an active conflict are the worst possible for collecting it, yet without a contemporaneous record no accountability process years later can succeed. Trained documentation conducted to international standards, and above all according to the principle that a survivor is asked once rather than repeatedly by successive organisations, protects both the evidence and the person. Repeated interviewing by well meaning bodies is itself a recognised harm.
On accountability, the article’s reference to the framework of Resolution 1325 is right and can be made more specific. The Council’s subsequent resolutions on conflict related sexual violence, particularly Resolutions 1820 and 1888, establish it as a threat to international peace and security and provide for listing parties credibly suspected of it in the Secretary General’s annual report. Where a state investigates its own forces, as promised here, the test is whether the investigation is independent, whether findings are published and whether prosecutions reach commanders rather than only those who carried out the acts. Where that test is not met, international mechanisms exist, and preserving the possibility of their use is itself a form of pressure.
Two further points bear on the ceasefire the author calls for. Provisions on sexual violence belong in the text of any cessation of hostilities, with monitoring and defined consequences, since agreements silent on the subject have repeatedly been followed by continued violence in the areas concerned. And such provisions must survive the settlement: amnesty covering sexual violence has been included in peace agreements elsewhere and has consistently produced grievance rather than closure. A settlement that quietly extinguishes these cases purchases quiet from the parties at the expense of those they harmed.
Finally, a caution the article’s own reporting supports. Sexual violence in this conflict has been attributed to multiple forces, and survivors are found among several communities. A response organised around one group of victims and one group of perpetrators will fail those it omits and will be received as partisan by the communities it excludes, which in turn undermines the very accountability it seeks. Impartial documentation and impartial care are not neutrality about the crime; they are the conditions under which a reckoning can eventually be accepted by everyone who needs one.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
REFERENCES
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Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team
United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1325 (2000), 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013) and 2467 (2019) on women, peace and security and conflict related sexual violence.
Report of the Secretary General on Conflict Related Sexual Violence, annual editions, United Nations, New York.
Joint Investigation by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights into alleged violations in the Tigray region, report of 3 November 2021.
International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia, established by Human Rights Council Resolution S 33/1 (2021).
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 1998, Articles 7(1)(g) and 8(2)(e)(vi).
World Health Organization, UNFPA and UNHCR (2020). Clinical Management of Rape and Intimate Partner Violence Survivors, Geneva.
World Health Organization (2007). Ethical and Safety Recommendations for Researching, Documenting and Monitoring Sexual Violence in Emergencies, Geneva.