Tigray: one year of conflict - Casualties of the armed conflict, 2020-2021 – Tigray (Ethiopia)

Open Access

Abstract

At the beginning of November 2020, an armed conflict emerged in Tigray, Ethiopia's northernmost region, in the aftermath of a destructive locust plague and in the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In the conflict, the Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF) and its allies – formal and informal military factions of the adjacent Amhara region, the Eritrean Defence Force – oppose the troops of the Tigray Regional Government, the Tigray Defence Force. The aim in this work is to document and map as much information as possible about civilian casualties, more particularly those killed by military forces and warfare. With communication lines blocked, we document pieces of a bigger puzzle, yet to be fully reconstructed. By providing spatially explicit information, we hope to transfer useful information to human rights organisations and other humanitarian and development actors. This document also serves as an explanatory note to the online database of massacres and civilian victims of the Tigray war (www.ethiopiatigraywar.com).