Ethiopia faces renewed child soldier crisis in Tigray

Ethiopia is facing renewed concerns over the recruitment of child soldiers in Tigray, a development that could undermine fragile peace efforts in the northern region.

The concerns were raised in a Human Rights Watch report released on Monday, following earlier accusations by Addis Ababa itself that the Tigray Defence Force had been forcing civilians to join its ranks.

Human Rights Watch said children as young as 15 had been forced to fight since April, when the armed wing of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) resumed clashes with government forces.

Those being forced into the fight include former combatants who laid down their arms after a peace deal in 2022. The campaign has also targeted men and boys on the street, in offices and during night-time house-to-house searches, as well as at gold-mining sites, the rights watchdog said.

“The Tigrayan authorities’ campaign to forcibly recruit men and boys into their forces is creating a climate of fear throughout the region,” said Laetitia Bader, deputy Africa director for Human Rights Watch. “The authorities should immediately end their campaign and allow those unlawfully recruited to return home.”

The clash between members of the Tigray Security Forces (TSF) and the Ethiopian National Defence Forces (ENDF) was the first direct engagement since the end of the 2020–2022 conflict, which resulted in the loss of 600,000 lives and brought the region to the brink of famine. At least two million people were also displaced. Many of them were women and children.

Last month, the US imposed visa bans on TDF chiefs, potentially halting their engagement with the diaspora.

The US State Department targeted a splinter group of the TPLF led by Dr Debretsion Gebremichael, which withdrew from the 2022 peace deal and launched attacks on the government. It also deposed the interim government formed after the peace deal as the country prepared for proper elections.

The US cited this sabotage when imposing the visa restrictions. Yet the group has sustained a series of parallel administrations contrary to the Ethiopian government, even though it has never declared an intention to secede. On Monday, the TDF said it would reject an alternative national exam for Tigray if Addis Ababa was unable to conduct the same national tests around the country. It threatened to conduct its own tests.

When Ethiopia held elections on June 2, Tigray was among three key regions where polls could not be conducted. The National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) cited security reasons caused by renewed clashes.

Recruiting child soldiers, however, could present Ethiopia with a new humanitarian problem because it is still struggling to rebuild Tigray after the 2022 war.

Human Rights Watch said it documented six cases of forced recruitment, drawing on remote interviews with 18 people in June, including relatives of those conscripted, as well as those who escaped the net. Officials of the TDF had previously urged former combatants to re-enlist.

Officials in Addis Ababa have previously accused the TDF of returning to atrocities. However, Bacha Debele, Ethiopia’s ambassador to Kenya, admitted that authorities had discovered forced recruitment into the militia as they also fuelled hatred toward the federal government, in a public decree.

“It is an extremely inhuman decree intended solely to mobilise for an all-out war and to enforce mass forced recruitment into the militia across all parts of the region by the TPLF,” Gen Bacha said.

“It was promulgated by a bankrupt political faction headed by Debretsion Gebremichael to legalise all possible means of compelling people from all walks of life in the Tigray Regional State to join the militia, abandoning their personal plans and life goals.”

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The document, which the TDF defended as protecting their existence, said every healthy man, regardless of age, had “a national duty to respond to and participate in calls for struggle issued by the Tigray government to protect the existence, security and sovereignty of the people of Tigray.”

The TDF has also recruited women to support logistics for the recruited fighters and to raise funds.

Addis Ababa has accused Eritrea of supporting the TPLF’s return to war. Asmara rejected these claims, instead blaming Ethiopia for choosing a scapegoat.

When Ethiopia fought the TPLF between 2020 and 2022, Eritrean troops fought alongside Addis Ababa. But after the peace deal that supposedly brought the TPLF back into the fold, the two countries fell out. Since then, they have engaged in public rhetoric that suggests they are now bitter enemies. In turn, the TPLF faction that refused to continue with the peace deal has inched closer to Asmara.