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Paper Short Abstract:

This paper researches sexual violence in Ethiopia's conflict in the regions of Tigray and Amhara, through the work of NGOs and help centres, seeking to examine how sexual violence is a contingent weapon of war and strategy, rather than a natural product of violent conflict.

Paper Abstract:

War stretches beyond the battlefield. Its elements transpire in all spaces of human relations and communications. As such, sexual violence in war is often overlooked. The focus is often set on the socio-political aspects of material and human loss, leaving, however, the sexual question aside. Episodes of sexual violence are often understood as part of wartime violence, often improperly addressed after the conflict, although survivors still bear the marks of it long after the conflict.

This research’s objective is to examine how sexual violence has been shaped throughout the Ethiopian conflict, how it is wielded as a political weapon and strategy, and how NGOs and support societies shape systems for defining gender and sexual violence in Ethiopia. This is done by facing the central question of whether this violence is inevitable, emphasizing the work which argues towards the opposite, that this violence is not (and should not be) inherent to armed conflicts, and is instead dependent on contingent conditions (power, location, and human cultural relations)

Therefore, in this paper, sexual violence is seen as a contingent weapon of war and a strategy towards victory in a conflict. Ethnographically, I focus on the cases of the regions of Amhara and Tigray in Ethiopia, which have been restless and historical centres of military and political confrontations. UN experts also pointed to the high estimates of survivors in health facilities which reported sexual violence (2204 individuals between November 2020 and June 2021), the majority of which (90%), were underage girls.