In partnership with the Dr. Denis Mukwege Foundation, an international human rights organization, the Center for Human Rights, Gender & Migration at WashU’s Institute for Public Health has recently released a study on sexual violence related to the current armed conflict in northern Ethiopia. Funded by the United Kingdom’s Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office, the report, “Understanding conflict-related sexual violence in Ethiopia” is the only analysis of the sexual violence committed, since the current conflict began.
Along with colleagues from the Mukwege Foundation, the study was a transdisciplinary collaboration between students from WashU’s Brown School and School of Law, and external experts from the U.S. and Ethiopia. While Seelinger had intended to engage local Ethiopian researchers in conducting interviews and gathering hospital data across northern Ethiopia, the escalating conflict posed too many security risks. Ultimately, the team took a safer approach, relying on open source data and more limited key informant interviews. Researchers collected data from February through May 2022, focusing on events from November 2020 through May 2022.
Read the article at Institute for Public Health and download the report: Understanding Conflict Related Sexual Violence in Ethiopia.