Tigray: Continuing Violations, Humanitarian Restrictions, and the Struggle for Accountability

The war in Tigray did not end with the signing of the November 2022 Pretoria Cessation of Hostilities Agreement. While the agreement significantly reduced large-scale fighting, serious violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL) continued into 2025-2026. In 2025 and 2026, forced displacement, restrictions on humanitarian access, arbitrary detention, attacks affecting civilians, and renewed hostilities have targeted Tigray’s civilian population. This article documents continuing patterns of abuses and persistent accountability gap. 

A War That Never Fully Ended

The international community’s attention to Tigray declined after the Pretoria agreement, but the humanitarian consequences of the war remained profound. Close to a million Tigrayans remained displaced, while Tigrayans in Western Tigray continued to face ethnic cleansing.

In June 2025, internally displaced Tigrayans in Mekelle staged a three-day protest demanding the right to return safely to their homes and for greater humanitarian assistance. Their demands reflected a broader unresolved aspects of the war: displacement had continued long after the formal cessation of major hostilities.

The continuing forced displacement cannot be separated from conditions in Western Tigray. Human Rights Watch reported in April 2026 that authorities and security forces in Western Tigray were arbitrarily detaining ethnic Tigrayans and imposing what it described as a siege and ethnic cleansing.

One of the most serious concerns is the continuing blockade on delivering essential supplies to civilians. Restrictions on fuel and cash, have had consequences far beyond immediate humanitarian relief: without fuel and financial resources, hospitals, schools, humanitarian agencies and local communities were debilitated. Continued severe humanitarian needs and restrictions on independent efforts to provide assistance to populations facing food insecurity impact civilians. In 2026, the fuel blockade became particularly acute. Addis Standard reported that fuel supplies to Tigray had fallen by more than 85 percent, causing severe consequences for humanitarian activities.

Reports from Al Jazeera on hunger and deprivation in Tigray likewise illustrate the continuing humanitarian crisis experienced by civilians as Ethiopia explicitly warned against individual and group fundraising for starvation, hindering assistance. The humanitarian situation has also been documented by UNICEF. A Federal Spokesperson have denied starvation again hindering responses.  These state policies have caused the starvation of civilians.

The legal significance of such restrictions is substantial. International humanitarian law prohibits starvation of civilians as a method of warfare and protects objects indispensable to civilian survival. Article 54 of Additional Protocol I expressly prohibits starvation of civilians, while the underlying principle is also reflected in customary international humanitarian law.

Neither did the attacks facing civilians disappear after the Pretoria Agreement. 

On January 30–31, 2026, Ethiopian military drones struck civilian trucks carrying food near Enticho and Gendebta in Central Tigray. One driver was killed and another injured, while other reports indicated additional fatalities. The trucks were transporting commodities including cooking oil and flour. BBC also reported a renewed fighting in August 2026, including a drone strike in Raya Alamata, affecting a school and an attack near a riverbank, amid renewed clashes between federal forces and Tigrayan forces.

Such attacks raise serious questions under International Humanitarian Law because civilian objects and persons are protected from attack. The distinction between military targets and civilian objects is one of the fundamental principles of the law of armed conflict.

The Legal Framework

Ethiopia is bound by international humanitarian and human rights obligations.

The Geneva Conventions of 1949, including Common Article 3 and the Fourth Geneva Convention, prohibit murder, torture, cruel treatment and outrages upon personal dignity and establish protections for civilians in armed conflict. Ethiopia is a party to the Geneva Conventions.

Provisions of Additional Protocol I is also relevant to the protection of civilians and the prohibition of starvation. Although Ethiopia has signed but not ratified Additional Protocol I, a number of its protections reflect customary international humanitarian law.

The Rome Statute provides another important legal framework. Ethiopia is not a party to the Rome Statute, meaning that the International Criminal Court does not automatically possess jurisdiction over crimes committed in Ethiopia. Nevertheless, Ethiopia’s conducts correspond to categories of crimes recognized under Articles 7 and 8, including persecution, forcible transfer, murder, attacks against civilians and other inhumane acts.

Ethiopia is also a party to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The Charter protects fundamental rights including life, security and freedom of movement. The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights previously issued provisional measures concerning the war in Tigray, calling for an end to killings, torture and rape and for humanitarian access.

Command Responsibility

Accountability also requires examining responsibility beyond individual soldiers. The Ethiopian National Defense Force operates within a hierarchical command structure and the MSF investigation identified an order to shoot the aid workers by a local commander, although it did not name the commander.

Further, policies affecting humanitarian access and displacement cannot automatically be dismissed as battlefield accidents where they result from deliberate administrative or governmental decisions. Rather, these are state policies. Under international law, responsibility must therefore be assessed not only by asking who physically committed an act, but also by examining who ordered, authorized, facilitated, knew about, or failed to prevent and punish serious violations. As a result, the state of Ethiopia is responsible.

Justice and Accountability Pursued Thus Far

Accountability concerns are not limited to newly reported incidents. In July 2025, Médecins Sans Frontières published a review of the June 2021 killing of three of its staff members in Tigray. The review concluded that the aid workers were deliberately targeted and killed by gunfire and noted that an Ethiopian National Defense Force convoy passed the scene shortly afterward. MSF said that Ethiopia had not provided a credible explanation or accountability for the killings.

The significance of the MSF case extends beyond the three victims. Humanitarian workers are protected under international humanitarian law, and attacks on humanitarian personnel constitute serious violations of the laws of armed conflict. The absence of credible accountability years after the killings reinforces concerns about impunity.

The fresh atrocities in 2025 and 2026 build upon extensive findings concerning the earlier phases of the Tigray war. The International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia investigation found reasonable grounds to believe that federal government forces and allies had committed atrocities in Tigray. By October 2025, international atrocity-prevention organizations, including Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect were warning that atrocities were continuing, including those involving starvation and forcible displacement. The continuation of such violations therefore cannot simply be understood as isolated incidents. They form part of a broader unresolved accountability crisis surrounding the war in Tigray.

The African Commission has played an important, although incomplete, role in the search for accountability. In May 2025, the African Commission conducted an oral hearing by Legal Action Worldwide concerning a complaint brought in relation to widespread violations in Tigray, including killings, rape, forced displacement and famine. The complaint followed earlier provisional measures issued in October 2022.

The importance of this process lies in the fact that victims have continued to seek justice even when domestic accountability mechanisms have failed to provide effective remedies. Enforcement, however, remains a significant obstacle. 

The absence of meaningful domestic prosecutions has increasingly pushed survivors and accountability organizations toward courts outside Ethiopia. Survivors have filed criminal complaints abroad for murder, rape and persecution by Ethiopian officials. Universal-jurisdiction mechanisms in countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada and other European jurisdictions can potentially provide avenues for investigation where domestic systems fail.

Why Accountability Has Remained Elusive and The Cost of Impunity

Despite the volume of evidence, accountability has remained limited. No senior Ethiopian military officers or government officials have been prosecuted domestically for the major atrocities documented in Tigray. Ethiopia’s transitional justice process has also been criticized as stalled, partial, and exclusive of victims.

The International Criminal Court faces a jurisdictional barrier because Ethiopia is not a Rome Statute state party. A referral by the UN Security Council remains theoretically possible but politically difficult.

At the same time, restrictions on journalists, civil society organizations and independent monitoring make documentation more difficult. Witnesses fear retaliation, while blocked access to Tigray make verification of incidents extremely challenging. This creates a dangerous cycle: violations are difficult to document because access is restricted, and the absence of documentation can then be used to minimize or deny the violations.

The greatest danger is not simply that past crimes remain unresolved. Impunity creates conditions in which new violations continue. The attacks of 2025-2026, restrictions affecting humanitarian assistance, continued forced displacement and renewed clashes demonstrate that atrocities have not ended; Ethiopia is committing an ongoing violation.

 And, when victims cannot return safely, when humanitarian assistance is restricted, when  perpetrators remain beyond the reach of justice, and when independent monitoring is constrained, peace fails.

What Must Happen Now

The international community should treat accountability and civilian protection in Tigray as continuing obligations rather than closed chapters.

First, an independent international mechanism should be established to investigate ongoing allegations and preserve evidence for future prosecutions. The UN Human Rights Council must establish a fully resourced Commission of Inquiry or Fact-Finding Mission focused on continuing violations.

Second, governments should consider targeted sanctions against individuals credibly implicated in serious violations and stop arms transfers to Ethiopia.

Third, humanitarian access to Tigray should be fully restored immediately. Restrictions on fuel, cash, food, medicine and humanitarian operations should immediately cease.

Fourth, countries with universal-jurisdiction legislation should act. The German proceedings demonstrate that victims are already seeking avenues outside Ethiopia’s domestic system.

Finally, Ethiopia’s domestic justice and transitional-justice processes must include an international aspect and monitored to ensure they are genuinely independent, victim-centered and capable of investigating senior officials and commanders, rather than focusing only on lower-level offenses.

Peace Without Justice Is Not Enough

The story of Tigray between 2025 and 2026 is ultimately a story of unfinished peace.

The Pretoria agreement did not erase the consequences of impunity – mass and forced displacement, atrocities, targeted communities, and deliberate humanitarian deprivation. New reports of attacks and restrictions demonstrate why the protection of civilians cannot be separated from accountability.

The international community has already accumulated substantial documentation concerning the Tigray war. The challenge now is political will.

For victims and survivors, justice cannot remain an abstract principle. It means being able to return home safely. It means recovering family property. It means knowing that those responsible for killing civilians, attacking humanitarian workers, committing systemic, conflict-related sexual violence, forcing people from their homes and deliberately depriving communities of essential resources can be held accountable.

The choice facing Ethiopia and its international partners is therefore not between peace and justice. Sustainable peace requires both. Tigray’s victims should not have to wait indefinitely for the world to decide that their suffering deserves accountability.