Rights Watch Warns Ethiopia Fighting Could Spread Beyond Tigray

Human Rights Watch has warned that intensifying clashes in northern Ethiopia, combined with emerging alliances among armed groups from several regions, could widen the conflict and deepen an already severe humanitarian crisis across the Horn of Africa.

Laetitia Bader, deputy director of the organisation's Africa division, said fighting between Ethiopian federal forces and Tigrayan forces has escalated in recent days. At the same time, she said, armed groups from different parts of the country have been formalising alliances, raising the prospect of more parties being drawn into a conflict that has already touched multiple regions over the past six years.

Bader pointed to Amhara, where fighting between the Fano militia and federal government forces has continued and civilians have been targeted, and to Oromia, which has also been affected by prolonged conflict. She said the current situation is not simply an escalation between the parties that signed the 2022 Pretoria agreement, but one in which additional armed groups could become involved.

Human Rights Watch has long argued that key provisions of the Pretoria agreement, which ended the two-year war in Tigray, have been violated. Bader said abuses did not stop in Tigray, citing what the organisation describes as a campaign of ethnic cleansing against ethnic Tigrayans in western Tigray, where Amhara regional authorities and security forces have continued to forcibly deport the local Tigrayan population to other parts of the region. She also said Eritrean forces continue to control parts of Tigray and commit abuses there.

According to Bader, the agreement's provisions on human rights, the humanitarian situation, accountability and justice have been overlooked and violated for a long time.

She warned that renewed fighting in Ethiopia could worsen instability in a region already grappling with the war and humanitarian crisis in neighbouring Sudan, where she said drone strikes have increased and civilians are unsafe anywhere. With diplomatic attention and scrutiny of the situation having diminished amid the broader crises in the region, Bader described the situation as a crisis that was foretold, following months of escalating tensions, force recruitment in Tigray and friction between the federal government and Tigrayan forces and party.

Human Rights Watch said civilians face the greatest risks from any renewed conflict.