For years a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing has been underway in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region. Chilling accounts of rapes, killings and mass displacement have trickled out of the area. But the government has sealed off communication with Tigray, preventing journalists and humanitarian workers from reaching the victims. And it has imposed a draconian law restricting access to the area by citizens from other parts of Ethiopia. The regime claims its actions are in defense of Tigray’s sovereignty and national security. Yet the abuses have all the markings of a war crime.
The term Ethnic cleansing entered common use after the 1992–95 conflict in the former Yugoslavia when Serb militias attacked, raped and killed Bosniak (Muslim) civilians to remove them from territory they claimed for a greater Serbia. The attacks also constituted a form of persecution and, in some cases, genocide.
Since then the ICJ has endorsed the Commission’s definition of ethnic cleansing, including both deportation and forcible transfer, in its judgments on the Genocide Convention and the principle of responsibility to protect (World Summit Outcome paras 138–39; Milutinovic [Trial Judgment] paras 169). The inclusion of ethnic cleansing within the scope of the R2P principle adopted by consensus at the 2005 World Summit confirms this normative shift.
While the ICC’s definition includes a requirement that the persecuting state act with intent to destroy a protected group, determining when an intended removal will cross the threshold of ethnic cleansing remains challenging. The prevailing situation and atmosphere, the vulnerability of the victims, the specific circumstances of their displacement – such as whether they are forced to move across a de facto boundary – may all play a role in this determination.