Murders, looting and kidnappings: Sudanese refugees “in great danger” in Ethiopia, HRW warns

Fighting in northwest Ethiopia is putting tens of thousands of Sudanese people who fled their war-torn country in “great danger,” Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned Thursday, documenting “killings,” “kidnappings,” and other “forced labor.”

Since April 2023, the Ethiopian federal army has been fighting the Fano, traditional “self-defense” popular militias of the Amhara ethnic group. A state of emergency was declared by the government in April 2023 in the Amhara region, the country's second most populous with around 23 million inhabitants.

The state of emergency expired in June, but fighting continues, and large numbers of Ethiopian federal forces were deployed there in September.

The region borders Sudan, which has been the scene of a war since April 2023 between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo and the army led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country's de facto leader.

Several tens of thousands of Sudanese have fled to two refugee camps in the Amhara region “where armed men and local militias have committed killings, beatings, looting, kidnappings for ransom and forced labor,” the NGO said in a report in a HRW report.

Sudanese refugees in Kumer camp in northwestern Ethiopia on March 1, 2024 © AFP – Michele Spatari

“Since June 2023, unidentified armed men and local militias have repeatedly targeted refugees in the Awlala and Kumer camps (…) committing serious abuses, including at least three killings,” the human rights NGO accused.

HRW also accused the government of establishing the camps in areas where “criminality and skirmishes between local communities were commonplace” and of providing only “limited security.”

A 45-year-old Sudanese refugee interviewed by HRW said he was “hit in the ribs five times” by Ethiopian security forces, adding: “My children were crying. Someone asked the army and police to stop hitting me in front of my children. They started insulting us, saying that if we didn’t want to stay in Ethiopia, we should go back to our country, to Sudan.”

HRW’s deputy Africa director, Laetitia Bader, said Sudanese refugees “have been the target of abuse for over a year by various armed actors,” saying they “urgently need protection.”

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