Preventing starvation crimes: Lessons learned from Tigray  – Stimson Center 8h

Exploring how conflict, starvation, and international frameworks are interlinked in order to prevent future systemic crimes against civilians

By  Shane Goetz

Protection of Civilians

  1. Executive Summary
  2. Methodology
  3. Introduction
  4. Institutionalizing Prevention and Accountability Mechanisms for Conflict-Induced Hunger
  5. Ethiopia-Tigray War: A Testing Ground for UNSCR 2417
  6. Conclusion
  7. Acknowledgments
  8. Appendix I

Despite the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 2417 six years ago, conflict continues to drive acute food insecurity around the globe. From Gaza to Sudan, humanitarian access constraints and infrastructure destruction have led to starvation crises. These patterns echo the suffering seen in northern Ethiopia, where the failure to prevent mass starvation in the 2020-2022 Ethiopia-Tigray conflict revealed critical limitations in UNSC Resolution 2417’s implementation.

Moving forward, the international community must adapt and learn from its failures in Ethiopia and develop stronger atrocity prevention and accountability tools to break these cycles of mass starvation.

Editor’s Note: The Atrocity Prevention Study Group (APSG) regularly commissions external researchers to undertake innovative analysis on key and emerging challenges to efforts to strengthen atrocity prevention and prevent mass violence against civilians. In this issue brief, Shane Goetz brings his expertise as a researcher on civilian protection to examine the intersection between conflict-induced hunger and multilateral and regional responses to protect civilians. 

By Lisa Sharland, Senior Fellow and Director, Protecting Civilians & Human Security

Executive Summary

The UN Security Council (UNSC) unanimously adopted Resolution 2417 in 2018, a landmark moment in which the UN recognized for the first time the intrinsic links between hunger, famine, and armed conflict. UNSCR 2417 is understood as a norm-building resolution, both in preventing conflict-induced hunger as part of the UN’s mandate in civilian protection, and in pursuing justice and accountability for victims of intentional starvation during conflict. However, this report argues that as it is currently implemented, the resolution lacks the requisite tools to generate preventative action and early response to conflict-induced hunger crises, or to hold parties accountable for the use of starvation as a method of warfare.

Six years after the adoption of Resolution 2417, conflict remains the primary driver of acute food insecurity around the globe. Civilian populations like those in Gaza and Sudan have suffered from catastrophic levels of hunger, the direct result of humanitarian access constraints and the destruction of infrastructure and objects indispensable to survival. Crises like these echo the suffering seen in northern Ethiopia during the 2020-2022 Ethiopia-Tigray conflict, in which the international community’s failure to prevent mass starvation revealed critical limitations in Resolution 2417’s implementation; in the normative frameworks around the prevention of conflict-induced hunger and famine; and in justice and accountability efforts for starvation crimes.

Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict is a deeply illuminating case study on UNSCR 2417’s effectiveness. The weaknesses in the resolution’s implementation, and in the international community’s capacity to address conflict-induced hunger, allowed the Ethiopian and Eritrean militaries and allied forces to perpetrate a two-year hunger campaign in the region, sinking hundreds of thousands into famine conditions through widespread destruction of objects indispensable to civilian survival and a humanitarian blockade. Since the formal Cessation of Hostilities Agreement (COHA) on November 3, 2022, the Ethiopian government has staved off international pursuit of justice and accountability for war crimes and mass atrocities, including for the use of starvation as a method of warfare.

Two years of conflict in Tigray have demonstrated the following limitations of the multilateral system’s response:

The international community can use these takeaways from Tigray to generate sharper understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of UNSCR 2417 six years on. The following lessons learned may be used to refine and augment the implementation of the resolution in future crises:

Furthermore, while in the past the UN has found the AU to be a critical partner in peace and security affairs on the continent, the widening gulf between the two organizations over the past decade contributed to significant inertia from both sides during the two years of the conflict. Moving forward, questions of the AU’s capacity to hold its members accountable on human rights concerns, and of its limited progress in elevating conflict prevention within its food security and nutrition agendas, portend an uphill climb for improved structural cooperation on conflict-induced hunger prevention and accountability.

Without sharply responsive reporting mechanisms attached to UNSCR 2417, conflict and food security monitoring and early warning systems can be disconnected from the response mechanisms of UN institutions, a critical lacuna that diminishes the ability of the international community to leverage the UN’s atrocity prevention infrastructure.

The issues identified in this case study of the Tigray conflict point to a disheartening reality: under the current implementation structure for Resolution 2417, crises of mass starvation may persist for months, or even years, before its victims, the humanitarian community, and states committed to protecting civilians are able to compel the Security Council, its regional counterparts, and warring parties to take action.

Methodology

A desk review of available literature included contributions from the fields of atrocity prevention, famine studies, and protection of civilians, as well as extant policy and law on protection of civilians and forced starvation within the international community, United Nations, African Union, and regional and domestic bodies. The desk review required insights on the dynamics of the conflict in Ethiopia, and as a result relied on evidence collected or compiled by investigations conducted by nonprofit organizations, news organizations, and formal human rights inquiries. Those investigations are named in this paper, and evidence for atrocities and crimes perpetrated during the conflict are cited from these investigations or other reliable news reporting and testimony provided by humanitarian officials and organizations. In addition, the author conducted 14 interviews off the record or on background during the development of this report, including with UN humanitarian officials; African Union officials; experts working within the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system; and subject matter experts on Ethiopia, famine, and starvation crimes. Interviews were conducted between April 2023 and January 2024.

Introduction

The adoption of UNSCR 24171 in 2018 consolidated a long-gestating normative shift in the international architecture relating to the protection of civilians (PoC) from conflict-induced hunger. A year earlier, over 20 million people had faced acute risk of starvation across northeast Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen.2 Famine3 was formally declared in parts of South Sudan,4 and in each of the four countries, extreme hunger was directly linked to ongoing conflict and protection concerns. This “four famines” threat of 20175 pushed the global hunger crisis to the forefront of the UN’s agenda, and that August, a UN Security Council Presidential Statement explicitly identified the humanitarian consequences and the risk of famine posed by the ongoing conflicts and violence.6 Resolution 2417 subsequently acknowledged the need to strengthen international capabilities in preventing conflict-induced hunger.

In identifying the intrinsic link between conflict and hunger, the resolution was celebrated as a necessary step in formally elevating hunger within the UN’s PoC frameworks.7 As such, the resolution includes a series of norm-setting standards for UN member states and parties to conflict. While “reaffirming the primary responsibility of States to protect the population throughout their whole territory”,8 the resolution requests all parties to armed conflicts abide by international humanitarian law (IHL). In summary, the resolution:

The resolution condemns IHL violations, such as the use of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, underlining that this act may constitute a war crime. It similarly “condemns the unlawful denial of humanitarian access and depriving civilians of objects indispensable to their survival”.10

It also sets in place a series of protocols to ensure more effective reporting and institutional response for areas of concern. Of note, the resolution requests that the Secretary-General “report swiftly to the Council when the risk of conflict-induced famine and wide-spread food insecurity in armed conflict contexts occurs”11 and provide updates on the issue within the annual Protection of Civilians report. It additionally requests that the UNSG include information regarding humanitarian situations and response as part of regular reporting on country-specific situations.12

The importance of including conflict-induced hunger as a key component of the UNSC’s agenda on the protection of civilians in armed conflict cannot be overstated. Conflict remains the primary driver of food insecurity around the world.13 In the UNSC’s 2023 Presidential Statement on conflict-induced hunger, officials reported that 117 million persons across 19 countries suffered from acute risk of hunger over the prior year,14 many located in conflict-affected regions. Reena Ghelani, the first appointed UN Famine Prevention and Response Coordinator, reported that each of the seven countries that faced famine-like conditions15 in 2022 had been affected by conflict or extreme levels of violence.16

The adoption of UNSCR 2417 has fallen amid two notable PoC trends within the past decade. The first is the international retreat from the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) norm as a policy prescription, most notably following the 2011 intervention in Libya.17 Amid the protracted fallout from Libya and particular objection to the “interventionist” pillar of R2P, UN member state interest in mobilizing in prevention of or response to mass atrocities has dropped significantly. At the same time, deadlocks and strategic rivalry at the UNSC have further stymied PoC responses to many crises around the world, and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has only exacerbated the Security Council’s disconnects on the tools available for protecting civilians. This has placed the UN’s nascent agenda on preventing conflict-induced hunger at an interesting crossroads: In the past decade, the number of civilians suffering from extreme food insecurity due to conflict has risen year over year, while at the same time impactful interventions by the UNSC and wider international community have become far less frequent. For circumstances like those in Ethiopia, Sudan, and Gaza,18 this has revealed a growing normative framework on preventing famine and starvation crimes19 that lacks sufficient international will to enforce it.

This report provides an assessment of the international community’s failures to respond to starvation in the Ethiopia-Tigray conflict,20 assessing the normative and structural weaknesses within the Security Council’s implementation of Resolution 2417. Section I of this report reviews the institutionalization of UNSCR 2417 as a preventative tool and accountability mechanism, and additionally summarizes the UN’s coordination on conflict-induced hunger with the AU. It then provides an overview of the lingering challenges that limit the implementation and effectiveness of Resolution 2417. Section II is a case study of the Tigray conflict. The section first provides an overview of the emergence of the conflict in 2020 and the international community’s failures to successfully prevent starvation. It then provides an analysis of the dwindling pursuit for justice and accountability for starvation crimes in the wake of the COHA.21 In doing so, the issue brief functions as an assessment of the UN’s current capacity to prevent and respond to conflict-induced hunger, in the hopes that the lessons learned in Tigray may inform the creation of stronger mechanisms to confront mass hunger in ongoing and future crises.

Institutionalizing Prevention and Accountability Mechanisms for Conflict-Induced Hunger

The purpose of Resolution 2417 is understood by many to be twofold:22 first, as a preventative tool against conflict-induced famine; and second, as a foundation for accountability measures for the war crime of international starvation of civilian populations. The institutionalization and normalization of conflict-induced hunger response has proceeded forward slowly in both dimensions over the past six years, and recent efforts have created numerous operational arms within the UN to prioritize hunger prevention.

UNSCR 2417 as Preventative Tool

At the international level, there have been several notable preventative developments:

The issue of conflict-induced food insecurity and famine has also seen normative growth at the regional level, as seen in these examples:

Finally, Resolution 2417 can be advanced by state-level efforts to promote further discussion and implementation of the hunger and conflict response mechanisms. In some countries this has taken the form of the establishment of national government positions on famine prevention, like the UK’s Special Envoy for Famine Prevention and Humanitarian Affairs.46 Additionally, countries like Ireland have fostered open discussion and engagement with the wider UN and humanitarian community through hosting forums like the 2024 UN Protection of Civilians Week side event on pathways for further implementation of Resolution 2417 at the international, regional, and local levels.47

UNSCR 2417 as Accountability Mechanism

The intentional starvation of civilians is prohibited under IHL via the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions of 1977.48 Despite its recognition within IHL, the crime of deliberate starvation has historically languished as a “stagnant backwater”49 in international criminal law.50

To date, starvation has never been prosecuted as a stand-alone crime at the international level.51 The resurgence of fears of famine in the past 15 years52 and the rise in both the intentional deprivation of humanitarian relief and the destruction of civilian infrastructure in conflict contexts has shifted the landscape on famine prevention and accountability. Resolution 2417’s adoption in 2018 undoubtedly contributed to the momentum around the adoption of amendment Article 8(2)(b)(xxv) to the Rome Statute in 2019, criminalizing the war crime of starvation in non-international armed conflicts. This amendment aligned the Rome Statute with established principles of international customary and humanitarian law, representing a crucial step toward integrating starvation within international accountability frameworks.53

In addition to stressing that intentional starvation of civilians may constitute a war crime, UNSCR 2417 identified the implementation of UN sanctions as an accountability mechanism “to be applied to individuals or entities obstructing the delivery of humanitarian assistance, or access to, or distribution of, humanitarian assistance.”54 Numerous targeted sanctions regimes since 2018 have been justified, at least in part, by the actor’s obstruction of humanitarian assistance. While it did not explicitly recall UNSCR 2417, the Security Council’s adoption of Resolution 2428,55 which recognized “conflict-induced food insecurity and threat of famine” in South Sudan and activated targeted sanctions and an arms embargo in country, justified targeted sanctions against Paul Malong Awan in part due to his obstruction of humanitarian activities in South Sudan.56 In 2021, the Yemen Sanctions Committee imposed sanctions on two individuals for their roles in exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.57 Similar sanctions regimes continue to grow at the regional and national level as well, further augmenting the normative shift around conflict-induced hunger.

The resolution’s impact has also extended into investigations and accountability responses that include a specific consideration of intentional starvation. The Human Rights Council (HRC) Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen has previously cited UNSCR 2417 in its legal analysis of potential violations of the right to food.58 In 2020, the Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan produced a report59 (the first of its kind) exclusively investigating the use of starvation as a method of warfare.60 The ICC has also seen a notable increase in references to starvation and destruction of food sources and civilian objects and infrastructure. For example, the ICC Prosecutor’s 2019 request to investigate crimes committed against the Rohingya people explicitly referenced the destruction of food sources. The tactics deployed by Russia during its invasion of Ukraine have also prompted fresh discussions61 of the need for investigations62 into starvation crimes. In March 2022, the ICC Prosecutor announced an investigation into the situation in Ukraine, examining crimes from November 21, 2013, to the present day.63 Subsequent additional investigations and appeals have specifically focused on the intentional starvation of Ukrainian civilians.64

More recently, the ongoing conflict in Gaza has brought the crime of mass starvation to the forefront of international legal discourse. South Africa’s application at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and request for provisional measures against Israel65 has included, in its cataloguing of “Genocidal Acts Committed against the Palestinian People,” sections detailing Israel’s intentional deprivation of objects indispensable to the survival of civilians in Gaza.66 In May 2024, ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan requested arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant; the first war crime cited in the arrest warrant was the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.67 This preeminent focus on hunger and humanitarian access by the ICJ and ICC for such a prominent conflict in the public consciousness will undoubtedly reenforce the normative trajectory of UNSCR 2417, but these actions by the ICC and ICJ have also affirmed viable alternative pathways68 through which PoC and accountability might be sought for starvation crimes, outside of the atrocity prevention and accountability tools deployed by the UNSC.

Coordinating with African Regional Organizations on Conflict-Induced Hunger

Differing views from Security Council members on the Council’s responsibility to intervene on the grounds of civilian protection, particularly on matters relating to food insecurity, have led to frequent stalemates on the appropriate response to humanitarian crisis. As a result, cohesive policy structures and approaches must be aligned with alternative regional organizations that can advance critical humanitarian issues and concerns for those scenarios in which the Security Council is deadlocked.69 Early warning systems must prompt early humanitarian, diplomatic, and political action—if not at the Security Council, then within other forums engaged in atrocity prevention and famine response.

This is particularly true for African states, which have been the frequent focus of OCHA’s White Note warnings to the Security Council. Conflict drives hunger on the African continent, with the majority of those experiencing acute food insecurity affected by conflict or extreme violence.70 For effective famine response and atrocity prevention, such coordination efforts need to extend beyond the standard precepts of security to encompass dimensions of food security. This remains difficult given the continuing challenge for humanitarians to effectively integrate food security data and early warning systems with conflict assessments.71 Unfortunately, the AU PSC has yet to fully centralize conflict-induced food insecurity within its policy agenda. Current frameworks to align UN and AU conflict prevention capabilities have elided the issue of hunger entirely.72 The AU has instead primarily focused its policy agenda on improving the underlying resiliency and viability of food systems across the continent,73 with the implicit thinking that improved frameworks on the front end can, to some degree, reduce the need for later interventions on conflict-induced hunger. As a result, the AU’s agenda has not kept pace with the norm-building around famine and conflict-induced hunger prevention at the UN over the last six years, with few formal agenda items and discussions devoted to the principal underlying cause of food insecurity on the continent.74

The AU has also struggled on the technical side with the development of Early Warning-Early Action (EW-EA) mechanisms. The institutional reforms of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA)75 led to a consolidation in 2021 of two separate departments into the Department of Political Affairs, Peace, and Security.76 The consolidation eliminated many of the capabilities of the Continental Early Warning System (CEWS), one of the five pillars of the APSA, and left the CEWS with a skeleton staff split across three regional units.77 This has left regional organizations like the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) to assume the burdens of early warning monitoring and conflict prevention, and has in turn decentralized the duties of early warning and early action on the continent. The Conflict Prevention and Early Warning Division may yet facilitate some consolidation of regional information and analysis, but the reduction of CEWS has significantly impeded the collection of continent-wide data needed in preventing and responding to conflict-driven hunger.78 Recent discussions at the AU PSC79 have acknowledged these concerns in seeking solutions to “unblock” the CEWS, amid larger dialogues on the possible restoration80 of the former CEWS, but it remains to be seen how the PSC will choose to recalibrate its use of early warnings, and on what continental matters.

There have also been minor normative developments in the AU’s rhetoric on hunger and conflict that signal potential growth of UNSCR 2417-related policy alignment in the future. The AU declared 2022 the Year of Nutrition, launching a series of thematic conferences and continent-spanning programmatic agreements focused on improving food systems and addressing the impending and growing risks of climate change to African nutrition. In May of that year, the PSC held its first-ever session centered on Food Security and Conflict in Africa,81 in line with the AU’s declaration of 2022 as the Year of Nutrition. Of note were the PSC communique’s direct acknowledgments of the use of food as a weapon of war and of the responsibility of state governments to prevent starvation crimes.82 The AU’s principled stance of “non-indifference”83 to matters of war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity finds purchase here; identifying the risk of starvation crimes is notable progress in the AU’s agenda against hunger on the continent, one that should be further developed in future discussions at the AU PSC. After all, a comprehensive normative shift around the issue of starvation will require implementation of 2417 at regional and local levels that can filter into the policy frameworks of regional organizations and the states themselves.

Lingering Challenges

Despite the positive normative trajectory in both atrocity prevention and accountability and justice for starvation crimes, there remain significant issues with the implementation of UNSCR 2417.

UNSCR 2417 Reporting Requirements: Outside of the Secretary-General’s annual Protection of Civilians in Conflict report to the Security Council, formal reporting occurs only on an ad hocbasis, via confidential White Notes delivered by OCHA. There is no formal “trigger” for when the Secretary-General must report on the risk of conflict-induced hunger; the timing of OCHA White Notes has varied crisis to crisis and is not publicly tied to any metric of hunger or famine risk. Numerous White Notes over the past six years have been shared with the Security Council when populations of concern have already begun to suffer from emergency levels of acute food insecurity.84

What’s more, the looseness of these reporting requirements means that the UNSG’s actions carry a political valence—he chooses how and when to alert the Security Council on emergent crises. That determination may be impacted by political or diplomatic concerns, or delayed by contexts in which information-gathering and crisis monitoring are difficult. The Secretary-General might also consider broader strategic rivalries and philosophical disagreements on addressing conflict-induced hunger at the Security Council level. Such critiques have arisen before85 from China, India, and Russia, and from the A3, as the bloc of African states has been particularly wary of the appearance of Security Council overreach and interventionism. African states have reportedly shown skepticism of the reporting process, framing it at times as another mechanism by which non-African powers might interfere in the domestic affairs of African states.86

One suggestion for depoliticizing the Secretary-General’s reporting process to the Security Council has been to increase the frequency of these reports to the Security Council. During the May 2023 UN Security Council High-Level Open Debate on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, for example, United States Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield critiqued the current process for reporting:

Five years ago, this Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2417 in response to growing levels of conflict-induced hunger. As a result of this resolution, we now receive reports on instances where conflict is causing acute food insecurity or famine. But let’s be clear: we are not getting all the information we need. The White Notes this Council receives are irregular. Too often they are delayed. Now more than ever, it is critical that we receive OCHA’s White Notes twice a year. There must be a regular reporting cycle. This could depoliticize the issue and ensure that we have timely information to act on.87

Attempts in the last few years to increase the frequency of thematic reporting have found support from numerous states,88 but efforts have stalled in the face of opposition at the Security Council, including from Russia, China, and India.89

Implementing UNSCR 2417 at the regional and local levels: Given the deadlocks at the Security Council level, a comprehensive approach to preventing conflict-induced hunger and pursuing accountability for starvation crimes requires institutionalization of UNSCR 2417 at the regional and local levels. However, there remains a “missing middle”90 layer of humanitarian actors, early warning systems experts, and diplomats to facilitate the technical and political implementation of UNSCR 2417 outside of formal UN institutions. These gaps have been identified by experts91 in both the atrocity prevention and humanitarian fields. OCHA and the Secretary-General have partially contributed to these gaps; of note, the White Notes prepared by OCHA are kept confidential, and the data, structure, and analysis in the reports are not made available for parties beyond the Security Council. There are opportunities here for better information-sharing, as well as additional training and hiring to fill out these “missing middles.” Publishing a version of the White Notes, for example, could broaden engagement with the issues of early warning, atrocity prevention, and accountability for starvation within other forums and communities outside of the Security Council.

Recent efforts by the wider PoC community have begun to address these gaps. Most notably, the May 2024 UN Protection of Civilians Week featured a side event on conflict and hunger, “Addressing Conflict-Induced Hunger: Implementing Resolution 2417 at National, Regional and Global Levels,”92 which capped a year of regional roundtables that explored how UNSCR 2417 might improve peace and security at a regional level and in turn how regional organizations and states might approach further implementation of the resolution. These actors and communities must be engaged to achieve real progress on conflict-induced hunger in the future.

Lack of a focal point to implement UNSCR 2417: Despite the UNSG’s efforts to produce further collaboration, information-sharing, and advocacy on humanitarian crises via the creation of such entities as the HLTF and Famine Prevention and Response Coordinator, there remains no singular focal point through which to address both the preventative and accountability components of UNSCR 2417. The particular focus on the intersection of hunger and conflict is not the specified mandate of the Special Rapporteur for Food, nor of the HLTF, nor of the Famine Prevention and Response Coordinator. These entities routinely grapple with the phenomenon of conflict-induced hunger as part of their broader mandates in humanitarian response or advocacy, but none is equipped to implement the accountability tenets of Resolution 2417.

OCHA’s reporting can relay humanitarian data and risk of famine to the Security Council, but these reports are kept confidential and only obliquely contribute to the public record and agenda of the UN. Likewise, the organizations and agencies comprising the humanitarian ecosystem—UN agencies like the WFP, and the international and local NGOs working to operationalize early action and humanitarian response—are often forced to choose between short-term goals in negotiating humanitarian access, and long-term goals of achieving accountability by naming and shaming actors in conflict environments.93Calling out violations of human rights can have significant repercussions for operational agencies. A belief that these agencies are using or transmitting humanitarian data to inform accountability processes (e.g., investigations and fact-finding missions) “can create distrust and lead to limits on their access, put staff at risk […], or lead to their expulsion from the country.”94

As a result, the fulfillment of UNSCR 2417’s mandate would be strengthened through the appointment of one entity to provide clear leadership, securely collect evidence, transmit information, and produce analysis and recommendations on conflict-induced hunger response for the Security Council. A focal point could also engage on the issue of conflict-induced hunger in both atrocity prevention and accountability in a public capacity at the international level. The need for such a focal point has been advocated for by UN experts and entities95 and individual states,96 and echoed by the Special Rapporteur on Food.97

State-level compliance: Perhaps because of these challenges, state-level compliance with the existing normative frameworks around mass starvation remains weak. Extreme hunger due to conflict has increased year over year, with tactics explicitly resulting in mass starvation adopted by warring parties around the globe. For as much progress has been made in normalizing the matter of conflict-induced hunger within the UN’s PoC agenda, these efforts have not resulted in tangible behavioral shifts at the state level.

Accountability for starvation crimes remains limited, as well. Sudan’s and Gaza’s concurrent hunger crises have brought starvation crimes within the considerations of international bodies like the ICC and ICJ, but further normalization of UNSCR 2417 should occur at the state level, reserving these international courts as a measure of last resort. The amendment to the Rome Statute has still been ratified by only one state, New Zealand. Including elements in domestic legal regimes related to the criminalization and prohibition of humanitarian access obstruction and starvation of civilians is a necessary step in localizing UNSCR 2417’s accountability dimension. Transitional justice measures for victims will likewise depend on augmentation of domestic and regional legal regimes to provide credible, local forums for communities of victims subjected to starvation during conflict.

Ethiopia-Tigray War: A Testing Ground for UNSCR 2417

The outbreak of hostilities on November 4, 2020, led to the immediate escalation of a humanitarian crisis in northern Ethiopia. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the head of the Government of Ethiopia (GOE) and its federal military forces, announced a mobilization of the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) into Tigray, after accusing forces of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) of attacking the Northern Command of ENDF in the early morning hours on November 4.98 A state of emergency immediately followed, with the Federal Council of Ministers declaring that “illegal and violent activities within the National Regional State of Tigray are endangering the constitution and constitutional order[.]”99

Evidence now suggests that Prime Minister Ahmed had anticipated a conflict in Tigray for weeks, if not months, in advance,100 coordinating his forces with those of Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki101 and the Eritrean Defense Force (EDF). Concerns of such an operation were explicitly raised by TPLF leadership prior to November 4.102 Once the conflict began, the ENDF and EDF, along with Amhara regional militia forces, implemented a widespread, deliberate campaign of violence and destruction against the Tigrayan civilian population. Those hostilities would not officially subside until the Pretoria Agreement two years later.103

What lends this conflict a particular weight as a road test for Resolution 2417 is the central role that hunger played in the wartime strategy of the federal Ethiopian government and its coalition.104 In short, starvation tactics worked: The weight of the humanitarian crisis in Tigray forced the TPLF into an agreement in November 2022 that carried with it severe concessions to the federal government.105

The scale of the conflict is unprecedented in this century. An official number of casualties is still undetermined, but estimates by AU envoy and former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo placed total losses at as high as 600,000.106 Researchers from Ghent University suggested that civilian deaths alone may have reached that figure, 60% of those due to starvation.107 Two years of humanitarian blockades, destruction of foodstuffs and looting of storage facilities, and ethnic cleansing and displacement left the Tigrayan population spent, with hundreds of thousands suffering in extreme hunger conditions108 through 2021 and 2022.109

There is widespread consensus across international investigators and humanitarian officials110 that the destruction of civilian objects and infrastructure, the humanitarian blockade, and the ensuing mass starvation of the Tigrayan population were not byproducts of combat operations in northern Ethiopia. Rather, this was a deliberate, protracted strategy of intentional starvation of the region by GOE, the ENDF, and its aligned forces. Investigations and reporting from the United Nations, the EU, and various news and non-governmental organizations have since identified a systematic commitment by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces to depriving the Tigrayan population of humanitarian relief while destroying critical infrastructure necessary for survival.111

If implemented fully, UNSCR 2417 might have functioned as a load-bearing PoC mechanism in the Tigray conflict, promoting early diplomatic and technical interventions to prevent famine, as well as accountability for any starvation crimes perpetrated during the conflict. As evidenced below, UNSCR 2417 failed in both dimensions. Early warning systems for hunger and conflict pointed to a nexus of concern in Tigray from the first days of the war, but failed to produce effective diplomatic or policy interventions from the Security Council or its regional partners. Over the course of the conflict, UNSCR 2417’s promise in accountability and justice also faded, with the transitional justice process and hopes for post-conflict accountability for victims undermined by a lack of commitment among member states to ensuring formal investigations and credulous justice processes for atrocities committed during the conflict.

Failures to Prevent and Ameliorate Conflict-Induced Hunger

The first warning signs of extreme food insecurity emerged not with the opening of hostilities on November 4, 2020, but rather in the months prior. A years-long uptick in political hostilities between the TPLF and GOE112 spilled over when Abiy moved to postpone federal elections during the COVID-19 pandemic.113 When the Tigrayans refused, conducting their own regional elections in defiance of Abiy’s postponement, the federal government froze funding to the TPLF. This was a particularly worrisome development, as part of the budget funding allocated to the TPLF directly supported the Productive Safety Net Programme114 in Tigray, a donor-funded food security social safety net program designed to increase resilience among the chronically food-insecure.115 The freezing of funding in September thus portended significant risk to regional food security.116

Shortly before the war began, early warning systems had classified most of Tigray as food-secure.117 The latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis118 had concluded119 that a majority of Tigray was in Phase 1 (Minimal), with about a third of the region in Phase 2 (Stressed) and 12% of the population experiencing acute levels of food insecurity (10% in Phase 3, or Crisis, and 2% in Phase 4, or Emergency).120 The IPC projection for January to June 2021 had foreseen a rise in food insecurity in Tigray due to an extended lean season, drought, and desert locusts, which had affected harvests in October.121 Across Tigray, the IPC assessment projected that 17% of the population would enter Crisis (Phase 3) and that 5% would reach Emergency (Phase 4) levels of food insecurity in this period.122 An analysis conducted by the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET)123 shortly before the conflict produced similar findings, with more optimistic projections of food security in the region for early 2021.124

To the outside world, Tigray went dark in November 2020. Almost immediately at the start of hostilities, the Ethiopian government cut off internet, electricity, telecommunications, and banking services,125 leaving humanitarian operations in the dark as to the extent of the crisis in the region. By only the second week of the conflict, concerns were raised about the prospect of famine and a severe humanitarian crisis.126 Access rapidly deteriorated in the areas in conflict,127 leaving the humanitarian community with few avenues through which to conduct regular monitoring of conditions on the ground.128

The emergence of conflict caught the attention of both the AU PSC and UN Security Council in the early days, but ineffective regional engagement with the Ethiopian government failed to limit the scope of the conflict and to protect civilians. A team of three AU envoys was dispatched within two weeks of the outbreak of hostilities to engage with both the TPLF and GOE and to seek a resolution to the conflict.129 The UN simultaneously held informal talks at the Security Council, but objections by African states that the AU be given a chance to lead the meditation prevented the convening from releasing a public statement.130The AU’s mediation effort was a failure: Abiy refused to acknowledge the conflict as anything other than a “law enforcement operation”131 and closed the door to AU engagement with the TPLF as a negotiating partner. In these opening weeks, Abiy twisted the principles of the AU to insist on non-interference in what he called a domestic “law enforcement operation,” demanding that international observers step in only if the federal government requested assistance on the matter.132 By doing so, the government managed to stave off international pressure in the critical days at the start of the conflict.133

After nearly a month of fighting, Abiy announced that military operations in Tigray had been “successfully concluded” and that the federal government had established full control of Mekelle, Tigray’s capital city.134 The conflict continued on as the TPLF retreated from Mekelle and population centers, and details slowly trickled out of the region around the information blackout, unveiling a partial glimpse of the atrocities in Tigray. Amid the cutting off of telecommunications, internet, and banking services, the ENDF and Eritrean forces subjected Tigrayans to horrific, systemic violence that directly impacted food security in the region. Numerous massacres of civilians were reported in the first few months,135 and accounts from survivors indicated that rape and sexual violence, as well as ethnic cleansing, were widespread.136 Foodstuffs were destroyed alongside ubiquitous pillaging and looting of health, food, and water infrastructure.137 A survey138 by Medicin Sans Frontier between mid-December 2020 and March 2021 found only 13% of health facilities functional, with over 70% looted.139 The destruction of Tigray was comprehensive: Livelihoods, critical infrastructure, and civilians themselves were targets for the ENDF, EDF, and regional militias.140 The UN reached agreements with the Ethiopian government to open up access to the affected regions in November, January, and February, where no aid had reached since the conflict began,141 but these agreements proved largely meaningless;142 humanitarian actors continued to face massive administrative impediments by the Ethiopian government, hindering an effective humanitarian response while civilians continued to suffer from a campaign of violence.143

Much of the humanitarian and food security monitoring infrastructure was cut off by the blackouts; as one expert with the IPC observed, “As soon as the Ethiopian government shut off the data, the technical side collapsed.”144 FEWS NET released the only publicly available food insecurity analyses of Tigray during this time, and its updates between December 2020 and March 2021145indicated a ballooning humanitarian crisis, with large swathes of Tigray assessed to have reached Emergency (Phase 4) levels of acute food insecurity. By February, conditions clearly warranted UNSCR 2417-required alerts to the Security Council about the risk of famine. The FEWS NET Food Security Outlook for that month identified the conflict as a primary driver of predicted Emergency (Phase 4) levels of hunger in central and eastern Tigray through September 2021.146

Amid the growing urgency of the crisis, the need for effective action within alternative UN and regional organs (i.e., outside of the mandate of the Security Council) had quickly become apparent. After the first informal UNSC dialogue on the conflict failed to result in a public statement, the conflict remained outside of the public agenda for the Security Council through the next five months. Numerous discussions under AOB (prompted by Ireland and the United States) allowed OCHA and other UN officials to debrief Council members on the growing risk of famine, but these efforts failed to compel the UNSC to formally address the matter.147 OCHA and the humanitarian community had raised alarm bells on the needs for humanitarian access, but there needed to be diplomatic follow-through to act on these efforts.

In the March 2021 UNSC meeting discussion under AOB, the fourth on Tigray since the conflict began, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Mark Lowcock, explicitly raised OCHA’s concerns around the access constraints crippling the humanitarian response in Tigray.148 These concerns on humanitarian access were accompanied by statements by Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, calling for attention to be given to widespread reporting of attacks on civilians and human rights violations, including sexual violence.149 Soon after, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) announced a joint investigation with the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) into the human rights violations and abuses committed by all parties in the Tigray conflict.150

Yet even with the dual track of these concerns gaining speed, it would take until late April for the UNSC to release its first public statement on the conflict,151 calling for investigations into alleged human rights violations and atrocities by all parties to the conflict. The UNSG finally submitted a White Note to the Security Council on May 25, 2021,152 nearly seven months after the conflict began. By then, an IPC analysis update showed over 350,000 people in Tigray experiencing Catastrophe (IPC Phase 5) levels of food insecurity, the largest number recorded since the 2011 famine in Somalia.153 If it was not apparent before, the IPC’s update made it explicit: The hunger crisis in Tigray had spiraled beyond the control of the humanitarian community, to the point of mass starvation and death at a scale not seen in a decade.

Nevertheless, Abiy still continued to deny the existence of hunger in Tigray a month later.154 After a TPLF counteroffensive successfully recaptured Mekelle and pushed the ENDF out of Tigrayan territory, the federal government declared a unilateral ceasefire on June 28, claiming the ceasefire would persist through the end of the farming season.155 The Security Council held its first open briefing on the conflict four days later, during which the acting Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs reported that 400,000 people “had crossed the threshold into famine.”156 Some may have hoped that a ceasefire would provide space for a renewed commitment to humanitarian relief for the population, but instead the government and ENDF tightened the constraints around Tigray’s borders into a de facto humanitarian blockade.157 Civilians starved en masse while the humanitarian community was boxed out by both administrative hurdles and physical barriers along critical lifelines into Tigray.158 All the while, a near-total media blackout prevented the wider international community from fully countenancing the horrors on the ground.

If the intention of UNSCR 2417’s reporting requirements was to prompt early action to prevent conflict-induced hunger, or to intervene before famine loomed, then the process resolutely failed in Tigray. By the time of the White Note submission in May, FEWS NET had been reporting large swathes of the region in urgent need of humanitarian assistance for over half a year, and reporting and testimony from those in the region had confirmed the intentional, systemic attacks on civilians’ means of survival. The IPC’s Famine Review Committee (FRC) activated in July, providing projections for the near and short term if the conflict escalated and there was no humanitarian access within or into Tigray.159 In their projections, the FRC concluded such a scenario would produce a high risk of famine.

The blockade held through the summer, but despite an obviously worsening crisis and increasing desperation in Tigray, the UN’s public estimate of the 400,000 in “famine-like conditions” remained unchanged between July 2 and August 26.160 This was not because the crisis had stabilized, but because the UN had no data through which to formally update its assessments. The FRC similarly had lacked the requisite data161 to formally conclude that famine was actively present, ruling out the UN’s de facto mechanism by which to induce a global groundswell for humanitarian aid, funding, and intervention. To all, though, the reality was obvious: A region that had already been suffering from the most severe hunger crisis since the Somali famine in 2011 was under siege. Starvation was rapidly spreading, and famine had taken root in Tigray.

Ireland and the US both utilized their Security Council seats to advocate for expanded UNSC engagement on the Tigray conflict through 2021, but their efforts had little effect.162 While senior UN officials struggled to push the hunger crisis front and center, the humanitarian community on the ground continued to navigate the delicate balance of maintaining operational presence while speaking out on the atrocities committed.163 GOE resorted to suspending humanitarian organizations like the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and MSF,164 and attempts by UN humanitarian officials to plainly identify the intentionality165 behind the blockade gripping Tigray, like those in September 2021 by the new UN humanitarian chief, Martin Griffiths, were met with unprecedented pushback. Just a few days after the comments, GOE expelled seven senior OCHA officials,166 accusing them of meddling in the country’s internal affairs.167 But even that move—a dramatic escalation in the tension between the Ethiopian government and the international community—prompted no intervention or policy response from the Security Council, and had a “chilling effect” on UN efforts for the rest of the conflict.168

Policy action on conflict-induced hunger simultaneously failed at the regional and national levels. The AU had squandered its own opportunities for timely intervention, allowing nine months to pass after the failed entreaty by its three envoys in November 2020 before appointing new mediation for the Tigray conflict. In August 2021, as Tigrayan forces pushed their counteroffensive towards Addis Ababa, the chairperson appointed former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo as the High Representative to the Horn of Africa.169 Although the move was intended to reassert the AU as a primary mediator in the conflict, the selection of Obasanjo as the sole AU diplomat engaged in the conflict did little to bring the TPLF to the table, and Tigrayan trust in an AU-led process remained low through the end of the conflict.170

Meanwhile, the US and EU had paused funding and security assistance for the Ethiopian government by early 2021 and, following the May 2021 White Note briefing on Tigray, used the platform of the June G7 Summit to hold a joint High Level Roundtable on the Humanitarian Emergency in Tigray, during which officials like USAID Administrator Samantha Power explicitly declared that Ethiopian and Eritrean forces were responsible for man-made famine in Tigray.171 As the blockade continued through September 2021, the Biden administration took a harder line on the conflict, announcing new sanctions against the warring parties.172 That following January, the US went a step further, terminating Ethiopia from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade preference program due to “gross violations of internationally recognized human rights being perpetrated by the Government of Ethiopia and other parties amid the widening conflict in northern Ethiopia.”173

A ceasefire in March 2022 finally allowed the humanitarian community to access communities in the region that had seen little assistance over the prior year. While the pressure built up at the UN, AU, and national levels may have contributed to the ceasefire, shuttle diplomacy by the UN, US, and EU Special Envoys in the following months produced little tangible progress toward a peace agreement.174 Abiy continued to use the diplomatic engagements to his own advantage, maintaining a prolonged dialogue with the AU and Obasanjo without holding to concessions or compromises.175

When the conflict exploded back into being in August 2022, a second and final White Note was submitted immediately by OCHA to the Security Council.176 The alert was well timed, demonstrating the awareness of OCHA, Martin Griffiths, and the UNSG of the precarity of the situation and the potential for the conflict to undo the small humanitarian gains of the summer months.177 The breakdown of the ceasefire certainly merited an additional White Note on the conflict, but it also raises the question of why 15 months had passed in between formal alerts to the Security Council.178 In September 2021, UN humanitarian officials had publicly and explicitly blamed famine conditions in Tigray on the government’s humanitarian blockade, and soon after, the Ethiopian government expelled OCHA officials from the country. Decision points like this during the hunger crisis could have warranted UNSCR 2417-mandated alerts to the Security Council, and their absence raises concerns about the notification process.179

The TPLF’s tenor on negotiations changed as the conflict rose quickly back to full military engagements180 and when leadership conceded to an AU-led process, the international community quickly backed the TPLF’s new position. With augmented negotiations, now including former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta and others, an AU-led peace process finally came to fruition with Abiy and the Ethiopian government in November 2022.181 In the end, the conflict drew to a close not because of diplomatic engagements by the AU, the US, or the EU, nor because of successful intervention of the UN on the grounds of its mandate to respond to conflict-induced hunger. The reason, rather, was that the TPLF had been forced to the negotiating table by the humanitarian blockade, attacks on civilians, and the steady reduction of military and humanitarian resources over two years of war.

Failure to Pursue Justice and Accountability for Starvation Crimes

What is left, then, after the formal cessation of hostilities? The conflict in Tigray saw an extensive array of crimes against humanity and grave violations of international law perpetrated against civilians. The use of starvation as a weapon of war by the federal government, the ENDF, EDF, and allied forces was just one dimension of a wider pattern of systemic violence. UNSCR 2417’s accountability dimension obligates the UN to identify and respond to acts that may constitute the war crime of starvation, but to do so in the Ethiopian context depended upon the establishment of independent fact-finding missions from international and regional organizations with sufficient political weight behind them to win important concessions on access and information from the Ethiopian government. Human rights investigations at the international, regional, and local levels were indeed created, and some did produce conclusions on starvation crimes during and after the conflict. But even so, diplomatic and administrative pressure from Abiy’s government dramatically reduced the capacity and scope of these investigations, as well as the impact that the findings of these commissions have had on accountability and justice measures after the COHA.

In March 2021, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, announced the creation of a joint investigation between the OHCHR and the EHRC, with a mandate to investigate suspected war crimes. The Joint Investigative Team (JIT) released its report that November to numerous criticisms of bias in the report’s findings, and observers noted that the report declined to offer any conclusions on the siege in place since June, and on the available evidence of starvation being used as a weapon of war.182 A month after the EHRC/OHCHR JIT was launched, the AU followed suit, standing up an investigation into human rights violations during the conflict under the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACPHR). Predictably, the Ethiopian government immediately lashed out and rejected the basis for the investigation.183 The UN Human Rights Council then stood up the International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia (ICHREE) in December 2021, which would produce the most substantive contributions to fact-finding and investigations of violations of international law, including on the matter of starvation.

The government denied ICHREE and the ACPHR investigation any access to Tigray during the war. ICHREE conducted one trip to Addis Ababa at the start of the investigation and was met with radio silence from the Ethiopian government thereafter.184 For the duration of their mandate, ICHREE representatives never received access to the conflict-afflicted regions, instead collecting data and testimony from in-person consultations in Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda, and remotely from survivors, refugees, and in-country and external reporting and monitoring bodies.185 Even without the support of the Ethiopian government, its initial report in September 2022 concluded that there were reasonable grounds to believe that numerous identified violations, including extrajudicial killings, rape, sexual violence, and starvation of the civilian population as a method of warfare, had amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity.186 The AU Commission’s handling of its own investigation was far worse. The ACPHR quietly ended its mandate in May 2023, closing the two-year investigation without releasing any findings on the conflict and without ever having received access to the Tigray region during their investigation.187 The Commission justified the decision by noting that the COHA was now in place, apparently believing this sufficiently obviated the need for external monitoring and investigations of crimes committed. Ultimately, the AU Commission had no impact on fact-finding and investigating grave violations of human rights during the conflict.

By August 2023, ICHREE remained the last international mechanism standing. GOE had strongly rejected the findings of the Commission’s 2022 report188 and had come close in early 2023 to terminating the investigation entirely.189 Ultimately the investigation was allowed to continue through the end of its mandate in late 2023, with the implicit understanding that the Council would then allow the mandate to lapse. On September 18, 2023, ICHREE published its second comprehensive report, explicitly noting that “the conflict in Tigray has not ended, with Eritrean troops and Amhara militias engaging in ongoing violations,”190 followed by an analysis on October 3 of the acute risk of future atrocity crimes in Ethiopia.191 Ten days later, the final report by the Commission formally closed the book on ICHREE’s mandate. In the report, the Commission identified numerous measures taken to deprive civilians of objects indispensable to their survival, including the “looting and destruction of objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population”; “siege and suspension of essential services”; “attacks against civilian and essential objects”; and “restrictions on humanitarian access”.192 The Commission additionally found a nexus between sexual violence and starvation.193 ICHREE concluded that the ENDF, EDF, and allied regional forces had committed the war crime of “the intentional use of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare”, and that “the EDF had further committed the war crime of directing attacks against personnel involved in humanitarian assistance”.194 As the Commission’s mandate expired, ICHREE’s final comprehensive report signaled an end to active engagement from the UN and its regional counterparts on investigating the crimes perpetrated during the war.

Addressing these crimes remains critical to the recovery of the region and to the conflict’s victims, but as it stands, Ethiopia and Eritrea face little chance of external inquiries and pursuit of accountability for wartime conduct. Options for accountability on the use of starvation as a method of warfare are limited.195 Neither country is not party to the International Criminal Court (ICC).  The Security Council could refer the matter to the ICC, or it could be pursued under universal jurisdiction, but neither event is likely. What’s more, the Pretoria Agreement has offered little prospect of accountability for victims of starvation crimes. Article 4 of the Agreement concerns the protection of civilians, but includes no explicit mentions of hunger and starvation. Rather, it simply calls on the parties to “protect the human rights of the civilian population and commit to upholding applicable international humanitarian law instruments to which Ethiopia is a party.”196 The article additionally calls on the parties to condemn “any act of sexual and gender-based violence, any act of violence against children, girls, women, and the elderly, including recruitment and conscription of child soldiers,”197 but includes no mention of forced starvation. Article 5 of the Agreement additionally requires the government to facilitate humanitarian access,198 but includes no parallel clause to Article 4(2) to call for the condemnation of deprivation of humanitarian relief and starvation-related crimes, the driving cause of hundreds of thousands of deaths in the two-year conflict.

The Pretoria Agreement does include a clause acceding to a peace process guided by the African Union Transitional Justice Policy Framework, a needed step for external oversight of justice and reconciliation measures. The Ethiopian Criminal Code has statutes199 related to starvation crimes, which renders possible the investigation and prosecution of such actions in domestic courts. But of course, given Abiy’s four years of repeated denials and dissembling about the crimes committed in Tigray, as well as the pressure his government placed on humanitarian agencies to limit the scope of their assessments, it appears the government made the choice early on to head off all possible exposure on starvation crimes during the conflict.

The federal government has touted its domestic justice sector as a viable forum for justice and accountability following the conflict. Accordingly, in the months after the signing of the COHA, the Ministry of Justice created a Transitional Justice Working Group of Experts, which in turn would be responsible for creating a working Transitional Justice policy.200 If the transitional justice and reconciliation process does continue to run through domestic pathways like the Ethiopian Ministry of Justice, the prospects for accountability on starvation (or on any of the other grave violations of human rights, for that matter) appear dim. No international observers interviewed for this report had expected domestic accountability mechanisms to address the various starvation tactics (destruction of fields; looting of health care and food storage facilities; attacks on civilians; denial of humanitarian relief, etc.) perpetrated by the ENDF, EDF, and regional forces. The federal government’s plans for transitional justice have faced massive skepticism from parties in Tigray and beyond,201 and Tigrayans themselves are not supportive of a domestically owned process.202 Surveys by the Transitional Justice Working Group, EHCR and OHCHR, and others have shown a remarkably strong (and predictable) preference among Tigrayans for international involvement in the process, potentially via special or hybrid courts.203

Whether the victims in Ethiopia will see legitimate accountability for Ethiopian and Eritrean crimes will come down to the international community’s willingness to hold the Ethiopian government to account. The African Union’s Monitoring, Verification, and Compliance Mission (AU-MVCM),204 the mechanism formally mandated to track compliance by both Tigrayan and federal authorities to the tenets of the Pretoria Agreement, has shown little promise in this regard. The AU-MVCM played a functional role in witnessing the disarmament of Tigrayan forces after the COHA and the transition of authority from the TPLF, but did little to clear violations of the agreement in the months after the COHA, as humanitarian access remained difficult in many parts of the region and attacks on civilians by Eritrean and regional forces continued. The MVCM is also not required to publicly identify these violations, which has reduced its functional contributions to domestic and international tracking of the government’s adherence to the COHA.

Ultimately, this has left victims of the conflict reliant on the commitment of external actors like the US and the EU to seeing through the enforcement of the COHA, even as they balance their own human rights agendas against national security and trade interests. The US and EU had strong policy options to this effect, such as predicating the resumption of funding and security assistance to Abiy’s government on the implementation of a transparent and comprehensive transitional justice plan, or additionally requiring the inclusion of international elements in the accountability process. In June 2023, however, the Biden administration lifted some aid restrictions, informing Congress that Ethiopia was no longer engaged in a “pattern of gross violations of human rights.”205 And in October, on the same day that ICHREE released its report about ongoing conflict in Tigray and attacks by the EDF and regional forces, the EU unfroze €650 million to advance “Ethiopia’s development in a transformative, inclusive and forward-looking manner.”206 As relationships have continued to normalize, there remain fewer available options to induce Ethiopian engagement in justice and accountability, particularly regarding the matter of forced starvation, on which the US and EU were particularly forward-leaning during the war. Ethiopia’s status for re-entry into AGOA remains a particularly enticing carrot for Abiy’s government, and may be the last real chance for the international community to uphold the accountability dimension of Resolution 2417 and demand redress for crimes committed during the conflict, including the intentional starvation of millions of Tigrayans.

A final note of pessimism must be raised in the wake of the discovery last year of massive food aid theft207 in the country. In April 2023, WFP reported that it had discovered significant diversion of its food aid and halted all distribution in country. USAID followed soon after.208 Though US officials declined to publicly identify those responsible, a briefing paper distributed to representatives from USAID and other organizations stated that the theft “appeared to be orchestrated by federal and regional government of Ethiopia entities, with military units across the country benefiting from humanitarian assistance.”209 Additional reports revealed that some of these food supplies reappeared in local markets210 across the country, and that food aid within Tigray was directed toward military forces.211

Diversion of humanitarian assistance at this scale poses a number of thorny questions for Ethiopian and international parties pursuing recovery in country. Multiple international observers interviewed for this report had shared the same expectations about this food theft:212 that investigations for this level of corruption, when it was suspected at senior levels of the government and humanitarian sector213 would likely be seen as counterproductive by the US. A full accounting of the sectoral rot, beyond immediate assurances of food aid reaching target populations, would likely only further strain relations with GOE, which had promptly rejected the allegations of government and military involvement.214 One senior expert predicted that the US would conclude it was “not in the best interests”215 to continue pushing the matter. Preventing any additional starvation and maintaining a working dialogue with the government as food aid distribution slowly resumed with additional monitoring measures216 was a greater priority.

The Pretoria Agreement may have suggested some legitimate pathways to justice and reconciliation, but the evidence of high-level involvement in the aid theft betrays an extant callousness within military forces and the government toward the severity and scale of the impact of the war in Tigray. It is here that the normative shift around Resolution 2417 feels particularly shallow: Not only did Ethiopian and Eritrean forces engage in starvation tactics for two years, but Ethiopian officials evidently felt so emboldened in their impunity for those actions that many continued to manipulate the humanitarian system in Tigray and across the country in the wake of the COHA. And in doing so, they pushed Tigrayans once more into starvation.

Conclusion

Understanding the Tigray war as a first test for Resolution 2417 can help the multilateral system build better approaches for protecting civilians from conflict-induced hunger. Failure to prevent and respond to mass starvation in Tigray has illuminated the weaknesses of the UN’s atrocity prevention and accountability structures. The UN must recommit itself to the implementation of its mandate to protect civilians from conflict-induced hunger, not only for future crises but for the victims still seeking justice for starvation crimes.  

Normative shifts on the prevention of conflict-induced hunger will require buy-in at the state, regional, and international levels. Even with stronger reporting standards for OCHA and the Secretary-General, the preventative and accountability dimensions of the resolution will remain largely unfulfilled without building response capacities in alternative organizations and UN organs. Effective intervention depends on policy coordination between international and regional actors to produce resilient early warning systems and link early warning to early action. The work undertaken by individual states like Ireland has continued to drive informal engagement on the nexus of conflict and hunger, but the next steps will be integrating this normative shift into the policy frameworks of regional actors like the AU and IGAD.

Ending mass starvation will also require the international system to build its capacity to activate and sustain investigative mechanisms through which to seek justice and accountability for starvation crimes. Since the end of the conflict, numerous additional investigations have comprehensively reviewed the available evidence and concluded the Ethiopian government’s complicity in starvation crimes that amount to crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide. But in circumstances like Tigray’s, in which the state authority refuses to acknowledge said crimes and interferes with official human rights investigations of the UN and AU, the international system requires a sustainable mechanism to advocate for the accountability dimension of UNSCR 2417. The challenges faced by the investigative commissions of the UN and AU demonstrated as much, and illustrate where the UN’s lack of a focal point for the resolution has resulted in gaps in advocacy, coordination, and evidence collection relating to starvation.

The past six years have seen a normative shift around Resolution 2417 without sufficient improvements made in its institutionalization. The international community can hope this normative shift eventually concretizes into a shared stronger will in the Security Council to stop hunger, but it was not enough to prevent starvation in Tigray, and it has continued to fail victims of conflict in Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, and elsewhere around the world. If Resolution 2417 is going to fulfill its purpose in both preventing famine and bringing those responsible for mass starvation to account, the international community must recommit itself to strategic and creative approaches on further institutionalization and implementation, both at the Security Council level and beyond.

Recommendations

Relating to the Tigray conflict:

Relating to the UN enhancing the atrocity prevention and accountability dimensions of UNSC Resolution 2417:

Acknowledgments

A warm thanks to the subject matter experts, practitioners, and friends who agreed to speak with me to better inform this report. Their perspectives, given on background and off the record, have contributed greatly to my understanding of the state of crisis in northern Ethiopia during the war, as well as the prospects for peace, recovery, and justice in the wake of the Pretoria Agreement. Thanks as well to the reviewers of this report, whose feedback has strengthened this issue brief significantly. Lastly, thanks to the Stimson Center and its current and former staff for their support and flexibility during the development of this report, in particular Lisa Sharland, Jim Finkel, Ryan Fletcher, Ilhan Dahir, and Juliet Weis.

Appendix I

2019-2020Ethiopian president Abiy Ahmed is reported to meet up to 14 times1 with Eritrean president Isaias Afwerki following the Ethiopia-Eritrea peace agreement of 2018. Isaias makes numerous visits to Ethiopia, including to Amhara,2 where local militia will later coordinate operations with Eritrean forces during the Tigray conflict.
September 2020The TPLF holds regional elections in defiance of the mandated electoral postponement issued by Abiy and the federal government.3 In turn, the federal government freezes its monthly budget transfers to Tigray for September, including funding for the Productive Safety Net Program, which provides early warning and food relief for up to a million Tigrayans.4
October 2020Abiy reportedly begins planning for the possibility of conducting an operation in Tigray, stationing troops along the Tigrayan border.5 Tigrayan forces also begin preparing for war, as tensions grow over leadership in the Northern Command.6
October 2020Food insecurity monitoring, including from the IPC and FEWS NET, shows that Tigray is relatively food-secure heading into the lean months.
November 4, 2020Abiy mobilizes troops into Tigray and announces a “law enforcement operation” against the TPLF, accusing the TPLF of attacking the Northern Command post of the ENDF in the early morning hours.7 Framing the conflict as an internal matter, Abiy uses his initial public comments to stymie unwanted intervention from the international community. Concurrently, the Ethiopian government implements a mass blackout of internet, telecommunications, electricity, and banking services on Tigray, severing the region from the international community and humanitarian monitors. Eritrean forces begin attacking the Tigray region in concert with the ENDF.
November 9, 2020The Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, following a November 8 meeting of the AU Peace and Security Council, issues a public appeal for cessation of hostilities, upholding of human rights, and the protection of civilians.8 The same day, hundreds of civilians are killed in the Mai Kadra massacre.9 Early reports are that forces belonging to or loyal to the Tigray Defense Force perpetrated the attack.
November 13, 2020Rockets are reportedly fired from Tigray toward Asmara, Eritrea.10 In addition to reports on the ground of Eritrean troops involved in the fighting and in attacks on civilians and civilian sites, these reports would confirm active hostilities between the TPLF and Eritrea.
November 20, 2024The AU appoints three peace envoys11 to conduct mediation efforts between the federal government and the TPLF.
November 24, 2020The first informal Security Council discussion on Ethiopia is held at the insistence of European countries and over the objections of the A3. No public statements are released, reportedly at the request of the African countries on the Council in order to allow more time for an AU-led negotiation process to bear fruit.12
November 19-29, 2020A massacre in Axum results in the deaths of hundreds of Tigrayans. Eyewitnesses report that Eritrean forces have committed the killings.13
November 27, 2020Abiy rejects intervention by the three AU envoys,14 denying the AU access to Tigray to engage with the TPLF, while maintaining that he is conducting a “law enforcement operation” of a domestic nature.15
November 28, 2020Abiy announces that military operations in Tigray have been “successfully concluded” and that the federal government had established full control of Mekelle, Tigray’s capital city.16
November 29, 2020UN OCHA reaches an initial agreement with GOE to provide humanitarian access, following concerns of extreme access constraints across the Tigray region.17
December 2020FEWS NET continues to conduct early warning assessments of Tigray, and identifies a significant rise in food insecurity driven by the conflict.18
December 8, 2020UNSG António Guterres states there is “no proof” that Eritrean troops are involved in the conflict19 after a meeting with Abiy, despite extensive testimony and reporting from the TPLF,20 humanitarian agencies,21 and eyewitnesses.22
December 14, 2021The Security Council holds its second discussion on Tigray under Any Other Business, where members are briefed by OCHA on the humanitarian situation.23
January 27, 2021US Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemns acts of ethnic cleansing occurring during the conflict, particularly in western Tigray, and calls for an independent investigation into the violations committed. He additionally calls for the removal of Eritrean troops from the conflict.
February 2021FEWS NET reports that large sections of Tigray have reached Emergency (Phase 4) levels of acute food insecurity.24
February 3, 2021The Security Council holds its third off-the-record meeting on Tigray. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Mark Lowcock briefs the members on access challenges and a dire humanitarian situation. Once again, the meeting results in no public actions by the Security Council.25
March 4, 2021The Security Council holds its fourth informal discussion on Tigray. Members are briefed on the humanitarian crisis and the scale of human rights violations being committed. Once again, the meeting results in no public actions by the Security Council.26
March 18, 2021The EHCR and OHCHR agree to form a Joint Investigative Team to investigate human rights violations committed by all parties to the conflict.
March 23, 2021Abiy finally acknowledges that Eritrean troops are operating inside Tigray, after repeatedly denying Eritrean involvement in the war since November.27
April 15, 2021Security Council members hold their fifth informal discussion on Ethiopia since the conflict began. Lowcock again briefs on the humanitarian crisis, which has continued to spiral amid humanitarian access constraints and attacks on civilians.28
April 22, 2021The Security Council issues its first joint statement on the Tigray conflict,29 nearly six months after the initial outbreak of conflict. The statement calls for unfettered humanitarian aid, but simultaneously lauds GOE for recent efforts to improve access to the region, despite the government’s imposition of significant constraints since the beginning of the conflict.
May 24, 2021The US State Department announces economic and security sanctions on Ethiopia, as well as visa restrictions on parties to the conflict, including Ethiopian and Eritrean government officials and security forces, Amhara regional forces, and members of the TPLF.
May 25, 2021OCHA and the Secretary-General submit the first White Note on the situation in Tigray to the Security Council.30 Nearly seven months have passed since the conflict began, and concerns of extreme hunger and humanitarian access constraints have been well known for months in the international community. By this point, acute food insecurity has reached a scale not seen since the 2011 Somalia famine.