Accountability & Rule of Law – Tigray and northern Ethiopia – Advocacy – Strategic Litigation
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Press Release
Victims of the Tigray conflict file the first-ever criminal complaint in Germany against senior Ethiopian and Eritrean government and military officials
Berlin, 20 March 2025
Eight survivors of the forgotten conflict in Tigray, Ethiopia, including a former humanitarian aid worker and a former interim government official, have filed a groundbreaking criminal complaint with the German Federal Public Prosecutor alleging that twelve senior Ethiopian and Eritrean government officials and military officers committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during the conflict.
These survivors, like hundreds of thousands of others, are victims and witnesses of sexual violence, arbitrary detention, torture, and starvation, and thus far have been denied access to justice for their suffering. As one of their only hopes for accountability, these survivors, some of whom currently reside in Germany, have requested the German Federal Public Prosecutor open an investigation into these crimes.
‘It’s been a privilege to work with Legal Action Worldwide ( LAW) to be a voice for the voiceless people of Tigray. I’ve lost two of the most important people in my life in this war: my younger brother and my mom. The suffering and agony continues. Tigrayans are still dying every day. We urgently need to bring to justice those who orchestrated and engineered these unimaginable crimes in Tigray – this would bring peace of mind to me and to the people of Tigray,’ said Tsega, a male survivor, name changed to protect identity.
Since it began in November 2020, the conflict in Tigray has been characterised by persistent allegations of atrocities including forced starvation, humanitarian aid blockades, massacres, sexual and gender-based violence, torture, and arbitrary detention. These violations and abuses were predominantly committed against Tigrayan civilians by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces, as well as allied militia groups, although other parties to the conflict and civilians from other ethnic groups have also been implicated. One widely cited source puts the conflict’s death toll at anywhere between 300,000 and 800,000 people.
The complaint the eight Tigrayan survivors have filed attempts to seek accountability for some of these atrocities. Prepared by their representatives Legal Action Worldwide (LAW) and Dr. Anna Oehmichen, with support from Debevoise & Plimpton LLP and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), the complaint requests the German Federal Public Prosecutor to open an investigation into the alleged crimes under the legal principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows states to prosecute international crimes committed abroad due to the egregious nature of the underlying conduct.
German authorities have successfully used the principle of universal jurisdiction to prosecute atrocity crimes that occurred in Syria, The Gambia, and Iraq. Tigrayan victims are now rightfully demanding their own day in court. Should the complaint proceed to investigation, it will be the first time that such an investigation has been undertaken.
Antonia Mulvey, Executive Director of Legal Action Worldwide, said, ‘The conflict in Ethiopia saw atrocities committed with a level of cruelty rarely seen. Yet in over two years since active hostilities ended, victims are no closer to seeing those responsible held to account. Today marks an important day in their brave pursuit of justice as they implore the world to listen and to take action.’
Catherine Amirfar, Co-Chair of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP’s International Dispute Resolution and Public International Law Groups, said, ‘We are honored to partner with LAW again to seek accountability on behalf of victims of the forgotten war in Tigray. We hope the German Federal Public Prosecutor heeds our call to investigate and prosecute those responsible for these horrific crimes, in light of Ethiopia’s ongoing failure to hold the perpetrators to account domestically.’
Dr. Anna Oehmichen, Founder of Oehmichen International, said, ‘The scale and dimension of the offences committed in Tigray – between 300,000 and 800,000 deaths! – is dramatic. These crimes need to be investigated and prosecuted, not the least to stop the still on-going grave violations of international law,and deter other world leaders from committing similarly egregious crimes. It is to the credit of LAW that the conflict and surrounding circumstances, as well as some specific offences, was diligently investigated and brought to the German Federal Public Prosecutor’s attention. We trust that the Federal Public Prosecutor will prioritize this case adequately.’
Andreas Schüller, Program Co-Director of International Crimes and Accountability, ECCHR, said, ‘As in many other conflicts, victims and witnesses are living in Germany. German prosecutors should secure the evidence for their own investigations and those of other States as part of the global system of international criminal justice.’
Background notes
This is the second complaint filed by LAW and its partner Debevoise and Plimpton LLP on behalf of Tigrayan victims, the first of which was submitted to the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, in partnership with the Pan African Lawyers Union (PALU). The African Commission communication was filed against the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, alleging violations of its obligations under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights during the conflict. In October 2022, the African Commission issued emergency provisional measures urging Ethiopia to cease all violations, including extrajudicial killings and sexual violence, and to ensure humanitarian access in Tigray.
The complaint in Germany was submitted to the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office in September 2024 and is being supplemented with another evidentiary filing [20 March 2025]. The German Federal Public Prosecutor has the capacity to open structural investigations into alleged crimes brought to its attention, to conduct individual criminal investigations into alleged perpetrators, and to request the issuance of arrest warrants and undertake criminal prosecutions.
For media interview requests, please contact groh@legalactionworldwide.org
LAW is an independent, non-profit organization of human rights lawyers and jurists working in fragile and conflict-affected areas. LAW provides legal aid to victims and communities that have suffered human rights violations and abuses in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.
Dr Anna Oehmichen, Rechtsanwältin, is the Founder of Oehmichen International, a Berlin based criminal law firm specialized, inter alia, in international criminal law, human rights and judicial cooperation in criminal matters.
Debevoise and Plimpton LLP is a global law firm headquartered in New York with a broad public international law practice, including in representing parties before regional and international courts and tribunals. Debevoise is pro bono counsel to LAW in these proceedings.
ECCHR is a Berlin-based independent, non-profit legal and educational organization dedicated to enforcing civil and human rights worldwide. It was founded in 2007 by international human rights lawyers to protect and enforce the rights guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as other human rights declarations and national constitutions, through legal means.
Solidarity of Nations of Ethiopia (SONE) Statement on Current Ethiopian Affairs
February 25, 2025
Before we delve into the central theme and purpose of this statement, by way of introduction, we present what SONE stands for and what its mission is. As clearly stated in the preamble of our bylaws, SONE is a civic not-for-profit organization legally registered in the United States under the Internal Revenue Code of 501 (C) 3, and its mission is to struggle with an objective to ascertain the realization of self-determination of all nations and nationalities in Ethiopia. Moreover, SONE advocates on behalf of Ethiopian nation and nationalities and represent their interests with respect to their aspirations to meaningfully achieving the full-fledged autonomy and ultimate decision-making process in their respective regional states and/or zones; and via our organization, we furnish and provide constructive ideas and advice to Ethiopia’s nationalities while at the same time serve as the voice to the Ethiopian people. The objective of SONE’s mission, thus, is to realize and witness a peaceful, stable, and prosperous Ethiopia restructured under a federation or confederation democratic system, as decided by the people or the nation and nationalities only.
It is against the backdrop of our mission that we now examine the current Ethiopian affairs, but sadly it is not an Ethiopia at crossroads, or a country beset by a crisis that we are going to explore; it is a fragile and politically fragmented Ethiopia, with its attendant economic collapse, that we are going to deal with.
Ethiopia once known to the rest of the world as land of origins, the cradle of humanity and civilization of late antiquity and medieval times, the headquarters of the African Union, and one that attracted the world with a double digit economic growth in the first decades of the 21st century, is now in shambles, and its component parts, the edifice of its body politic, the centrifugal forces, are moving in separate directions, in spite of the miraculous glue that holds them together. For all intents and purposes, with a weak state at the center, Ethiopia has become an ideal Hobbesian state of disorder and instability.
Almost all parts of Ethiopia are now inundated with warfare conducted by the federal government against the Amhara Fano in Amhara Regional State, the Oroma Liberation Army (OLA) in the Oromia Regional State, not to mention the less reported skirmishes in Benishangul, Gambella and other places. The same government forces, so-called Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) also conducted its major operations of genocide against the people of Tigray in collaboration with Eritrean and Fano/Amhara Militia forces and by inviting foreign forces such as the Somali and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Throughout history, as in present-day Ethiopia, weak states run the danger of civil war and fragmentation, and as the late political scientist Charles Tilly aptly put it “states of war are our largest examples of organized crime”, and it is abundantly clear that the Ethiopian state at present is presided over by a war monger regime that commits an organized crime against the Ethiopian people in general and against the nation and nationalities in particular. Apparently, the Ethiopian nation and nationalities under the current regime have not only encountered the disempowering function of diluting the constitutionally mandated fundamental rights, but they have also countenanced attacks from the so-called ENDF, supposedly territorial army-turned federal police to subdue armed combatants and other social movements.
Incidentally the transformation of the ENDF into a federal police is a clear indication of a failed state and/or weak state, and SONE examines “a state’s failure to maintain a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within its territory,” as Max Weber told us a long time ago; a good example of the Weberian paradigm is the inability of the Ethiopian state to dislodge Eritrean forces that still occupy sovereign Ethiopian territory in Tigray. However, we like to extend a word of caution in relation to the Pretoria Agreement by which the federal government is held responsible to push out foreign forces from Tigray. The federal government, however, did not fulfill its obligations thus far and it is either not willing to do it or it could be part of a secret agenda to let Eritrean forces occupy Ethiopian territory indefinitely. Furthermore, according to the Pretoria Agreement, the ENDF was supposed “to be deployed along the international borders of Ethiopia to safeguard the sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of the country from foreign incursions”, but nothing of this sort was translated into action by the ENDF. On the contrary, the government at Arat Kilo seems to have permitted the Eritrean forces to continue occupy Ethiopian sovereign territory, subjugate and kill the people of Tigray under occupation, and plunder the resources of the Tigray Regional State.
The most dangerous of all human toxic activities, of course, are inter-ethnic conflicts, which by the way the Ethiopian nation and nationalities try to avoid, but the regime’s sinister spin-off from its larger project, as we have witnessed so far, is fueling ethnic conflicts as demonstrated in the recent video clip that was widely shared in the social media in which Abiy Ahmed (his voice, without his image) vents his discourse of ethnic conflict in Wellega, Western Oromia; he says, “we must pit one ethnic group against the other; literally in Amharic he said, “we should make them eat one another”! We can then safely assume that Abiy and his cronies are dedicated to fulfilling someone’s agenda of dismantling Ethiopia. Here, we offer a piece of history, which could (and should) be a lesson for all Ethiopians. The piece of history was offered to readers by Abner.org with a title “Kissinger and Lord Macaulay on Ethiopia,” authored by Engdashet Bunare, Miraf Eyassu, and Shiferaw Lulu. We extend our gratitude to Abner.org and these Ethiopian authors, but since that of Macaulay is beyond the scope of this statement, we will only briefly quote that of Kissinger. “Henry Kissinger strategy revolves around exploiting ethnic, religious, and other divisions within Ethiopia to perpetuate ongoing conflicts…Kissinger’s 1972 advice places significant emphasis on exploiting such divisions to keep the country weakened and embroiled in enduring conflicts.”
The Kissinger policy agenda of ethnic conflict in Ethiopia is now clearly fulfilled by the Abiy regime, but although the bad omen for Ethiopians may have created havoc to their country and derailed the development march that was once initiated by the previous regime of the EPRDF, if Ethiopia disintegrates as per the Kissinger-cum-Abiy agenda, neither the centrifugal nor the centripetal forces will prevail.
Ethiopia is indeed embroiled in civil wars, not one ethnic group against another, although some aspect of the latter was exhibited earlier between the Oromo and the Somali, and more recently between the Afar and the Somali. The civil wars are mostly armed clashes between the respective fighting forces of the nationalities (e.g. Oromo, Amhara etc.) against the ENDF. But there is no guarantee in stopping ethnic-based conflicts that could politically fragment Ethiopia to the extent of total collapse.
The war conducted against Tigray, of course, has no parallel in recent human history, especially if we compare it to the ongoing wars in Oromia and Amhara. There is no doubt that innocent people in Oromia and Amhara are targeted by extensive drone operations and massive destruction was wrought in these regional states, but the war against Tigray was conducted with the intention of eliminating the Tigrayans.
SONE does not base its analysis on the quantified statistical data of deaths inflicted by the wars. Irrespective of the scope of killings, all atrocities that cause death must be condemned. We at SONE believe that killings, mass massacres, and genocide, must generate strong moral outrage, but with the depraved officials at the top echelon of the state apparatus and amorality running rampant and a combination of both has negatively affected the larger Ethiopian society; it stirred many pangs and created despondency and uncertainty in the psychology of the people.
The criminal elements in the government at all levels, including those who committed genocide should face the court of law and penalized according to the degrees of atrocities they have perpetrated. The genocide wrought against Tigrayans must force entire humanity to seek justice for the victims and bring the criminals before the ICC or before a local Ethiopian court when change takes place and a new democratic government assumes the mantles of power.
Now, so that our readers understand the essence of the Ethiopian political economy, we digress to the economybefore we conclude with solutions to the overall declining stature of the Ethiopian nation-state.
Since the assumption of Abiy Ahmed to power on April 2018, the Ethiopian economy was in deep crisis and showing no reasonable growth for the foreseeable future; on the contrary, the government adopted a reversal policy and deliberately shut down industries (including industrial parks), agricultural projects, and infrastructure that were installed by the previous EPRDF regime. Hundreds of small-scale industries (including 40 enterprises of Sheik Mohmmed Hussein Al Amoudi) were closed; the Djibouti-Hara Gebeya-Woldia-Mekelle major railway project was stalled, delayed by government obstruction before the campaign against Tigray.
Due to the deep economic crisis, thus, a significant number of foreign investors pulled out of Ethiopia, especially during the present intensification of armed conflicts in central and southern Ethiopia.
The World Economic Situation and Prospects, February Briefing No. 187 (posted on February 3, 2025) states that “the world economy has shown resilience despite multiple shocks, but the outlooks remain uncertain due to the ongoing conflicts, geopolitical and trade tensions, climate risks, and mounting fiscal pressures.” This statement clearly depicts the Ethiopian economy that suffers from ‘multiple shocks’ and ‘ongoing conflicts. While some African countries like Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa will show economic growth in 2025, Ethiopia would not even come close to recovery, let alone economic growth.
Contrary to recovery and an 8% GDP growth falsely claimed by Abiy Ahmed, two Ethiopian observers, namely Muhammed H and Idris A, in their article entitled “Ethiopia at Crossroads: The Fragile Reign of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed,” eloquently addressed the collapsing Ethiopian economy. They stated that “the Ethiopian economy plunged into a crisis, mounted by mounting debt; external debt ballooned to over $60 billion in 2023.”
On top of the above observation of the Ethiopian economy, SONE’s research indicates a staggering and alarming economic condition of Ethiopia. According to the UN report on the list of countries on their respective economic performances, Ethiopia is listed as number 176 out of 193 countries, and according to the UNDP human development index (HDI) report of 2024, Ethiopia falls to a very low HDI of 0.492; and in the global knowledge index (GKI), Ethiopia ranks 136 out of 141 countries. Similarly, as per the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (GPI), Ethiopia’s GPI index 0.367 is among the lowest in the world. Its poverty is higher in the rural areas, and as a result more than 20 million (World Bank’s figure is 15 million) Ethiopians are dependent on foreign food aid. On top of this, basic services like electricity, health, and schooling are either limited or they are not available at all in rural Ethiopia.
The World Bank also corroborated SONE’s findings, and according to the Bank’s assessment of the Ethiopian economy, “multiple shocks since 2018 contributed to slower growth, declining external competitiveness, rising inflation and growing macroeconomic and debt vulnerabilities. As a result, living standards have deteriorated for the first time in over two decades.” Moreover, according to the World Bank, Ethiopia’s exports in 2023 was worth $3,616.3 M and imports was $17,888.4 M. that means, a deficit of $14,272.1 M, and the more deficit Ethiopia encounters the more its national savings will be negatively impacted, and the country could be vulnerable to higher interest rates that could, in turn, result in higher inflation that could hinder growth in the long haul.
What is to be done now? What could be the solution to the massive and complex political and economic problems that Ethiopia is currently facing?
SONE proposes several solutions for Ethiopia’s problems to salvage the country and so that the nation and nationalities live ‘in the best of all possible worlds’, to borrow Voltaire’s old maxim. Here below are SONE’s solutions in right order:
1. Ethiopians must wake up in the morning with a specific goal to save Ethiopia from total demise.
2. The art of politics for Ethiopia’s nation and nationalities is the ultimate unity and a collective enterprise to realize a newly (re)established federation or confederation that guarantees the self-determination of all nationalities.
3. Ethiopians should evaluate the political regime or the powers that be in terms of four criteria ala Charles Tilly: a) breadth: the extent to which citizens enjoy rights; b) equality: the extent of equality within the citizenry; c) protection: the extent to which citizens are protected from arbitrary state action; d) mutually binding consultation: the extent to which the state agents are obligated to deliver benefits to citizens. As per SONE’s imagination, the concept of ‘citizenry’ could be subsumed under the broader concepts of ‘nation’ and ‘nationalities
4. SONE’s Vision of Post-Conflict Ethiopia:
• Politics should be participatory and consensus-oriented
• Government should be transparent and accountable
• Government should be effective and efficient
• Government should be equitable and inclusive
• Government should follow the rule of law
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• The federal government and the respective regional state’s governments must ensure access to knowledge, information, and education
• The federal government and the regional states governments should promote political empowerment and foster responsibility, solidarity, and tolerance as part of political culture.
• All governments at all levels should utilize authority and resources drawn from the people in the context of rule of law.
• The prime responsibility of both the federal and regional states is to provide goods and services to the larger society.
Appeal to all Ethiopians: SONE is appealing to all Ethiopian progressive forces to fulfill their historic duty of a mission to the realization of self-determination of the Ethiopian nation and nationalities that could be obtained, registered, and grasped only under a patriotic and democratic regime with its attendant just rule. The latter, in turn, could be acquired if all Ethiopians who love their people do their part and engage themselves in the collective endeavor of meeting this noble mission, and as Frantz Fanon once taught us, “each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.” We at SONE are committed to fulfill our mission, but since politics is a collective enterprise, we appeal to all Ethiopian opposition parties, civic organizations, women’s organizations, youth associations, professional and/or worker’s unions, nation and nationalities combatants, advocacy groups, charities, media outlets and faith organizations to either endorse our mission or support us however they can.
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