Evaluating the genocidal character of the massacres against the Amhara people in Oromia region of Ethiopia

Abstract

It is evident that the Amhara ethnic group has faced systematic ethnic-based human rights violations, including the killing of tens of thousands of people, in the Oromia region of Ethiopia since the 1990s, escalating sharply in the post-2018 period. The aim of this mini dissertation was to assess whether these ethnically motivated perpetration of human rights violations against the Amhara people constitute genocide. The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention/the 1948 Convention) served as the primary legal framework for analysis, supplemented by other global, regional, and national laws and case precedents. Per these frameworks particularly the 1948 Convention, genocide involves three key elements: (1) the victim group must be identified as a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group; (2) the victim group must experience one or more of the five genocidal acts enumerated in Article 2; and (3) these acts must be committed with the intent to destroy the group in whole or in part. This thesis evaluated the situation of the Oromia-based Amhara people against these criteria and arrived at the following conclusions. First, the study establishes that the Amhara people, sharing a common language and culture, constitute a protected ethnic group under the Convention. Second, it determines that the Amhara people have faced at least three acts enumerated in Article 2 of the 1948 Convention since the 1990s on a massive scale: (a) tens of thousands ethnic Amhara people killed through massacres; (b) tens of thousands physically harmed and hundreds of thousands psychologically traumatized; and (c) conditions imposed that seem calculated to bring about their partial or total physical destruction. Finally, the study argued that these acts were carried out with the intent to destroy the Amhara ethnic group, as inferred from the nature and context of the massacre, the presence of plans or actions, the scale of actual destruction, the repeated discriminatory and destructive acts, forced displacement under deplorable conditions, and ethnically charged utterances. Overall, this study presents compelling evidence that the Amhara people living in the Oromia region of Ethiopia experienced violations meeting the threshold to constitute genocide. The systematic assessment of the protected status, enumerated acts, and genocidal intent builds a compelling argument that these ethnically motivated violations against the Amhara people in Oromia Region warrant classification as genocide.