“You Will Never Be Able to Give Birth”: War-Related Sexual and Reproductive Violence in Ethiopia

😢😢😢 ዋይ! ዋይ! ዋይ! 😠😠😠

515 Medical Records + 657 Health Workers Reveal “Systematic, Deliberate, Ongoing" Reproductive Violence In Ethiopia

👉 Press Release: Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), New York, July 31, 2025.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is a New York-based advocacy organisation that uses science and medicine to prevent mass atrocities and severe human rights violations.

Ongoing Conflict-Related Violence in Tigray Constitute Crimes Against Humanity

In Tigray, survivors experienced brutal and deliberate forms of conflict-related sexual and reproductive violence which caused severe and permanent psychological and physical harm to survivors, their families, and communities.

“Gang rapes, including culturally prohibited practices, raping when they are bleeding, entering bad things like steel into their wombs, raping mothers in front of their families. Imagine how it is, it is very sad their children were killed and they were also raped. The damage to their bodies cannot be described.”

• multiple perpetrator rape;
• vaginal, oral, and anal rape;
• forced witnessing of sexual violence including against family members;
• insertion of foreign objects into the vagina following sexual violence;
• forced pregnancy and forcible transmission of HIV or other sexually transmitted infections (STIs);
• sexual violence against children; and/or,
• sexual violence committed alongside other forms of tortur

Combatants in Ethiopia have perpetrated widespread, systematic, and deliberate acts of conflict-related sexual and reproductive violence, according to a new report published today by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the Organization for Justice and Accountability in the Horn of Africa (OJAH).

The new report (“You Will Never Be Able to Give Birth”: Conflict-Related Sexual and Reproductive Violence in Ethiopia) is the most comprehensive study to date utilising medical evidence to understand the intent of perpetrators in the Tigray region – documenting how Ethiopian and Eritrean armed forces aimed to prevent future Tigrayan births and exterminate the ethnic group – and how impunity for sexual and reproductive violence is enabling further attacks in Amhara and Afar.

PHR and OJAH call on all parties to the conflict to adhere to international law and facilitate rehabilitation of survivors of conflict-related sexual and reproductive violence. The international community must ensure credible, independent documentation of crimes in Ethiopia and advance full accountability for perpetrators.

Researchers analysed an unprecedented scale of data from across the Afar, Amhara, and Tigray regions of Ethiopia, including 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 with health workers and four focus groups with professionals who provided care to survivors.