“They no longer saw use for her, so they just dragged her out and threw her into the wilderness to die”: an epidemic of sexual violence in Tigray

On this month’s Black Talk, Michele Simpson talks with Maebel Gebremedhin.

Gebremedhin is a co-founder and the president of the Tigray Action Committee and United Women of the Horn. Her recent New York Times Opinion piece, “Looking away from an epidemic of rape” explores the pervasiveness and intense normalization of sexual violence in Ethiopia, especially in regions like Tigray that are warped by other kinds of violence.

Tigray, a regional state in northern Ethiopia, underwent a devastating civil war between Eritrea and the Ethiopian Government from November 2020 to November 2022. The war, that many call a genocide, left close to two million people displaced and more than a half million dead. In this war, combatants used sexual violence to terrorize and destabilize communities, breaking down Tigray’s social fabric.

In this May segment of Black Talk, we hear about Gebremedin’s trip back to Tigray, meeting her family, and the crisis the people in Tigray are continuing to face due to food insecurity, drought, and ongoing violence against Black women and girls.