Ethiopia: Systematic Repression of Human Rights Defenders Exposes the Failure of Post-2018 Reforms and Reveals the Urgent Need of Protection

The report called « The Illusion of Progress: Ethiopia’s human rights defenders under attack » is based on 41 documented cases of attacks against defenders from 2020 to 2025. The Observatory emphasises that the real scale of violations is far greater than the cases studied. Civil society organisations recorded at least 244 arrests involving 201 journalists since 2019, making Ethiopia one of the most dangerous places in Africa for media professionals. Dozens of HRDs and community leaders have been killed, including 16 leaders of the ethnic minority group Karayu Gadaa executed by regional security forces, while more than 50 journalists and HRDs have fled the country in the past five years. Hundreds more have been detained incommunicado, including in secret facilities where torture is systematic. Within the documented sample alone, seven HRDs suffered torture, and four were victims of enforced disappearance.

The report further highlights the profound disillusion that followed Ethiopia’s post-2018 opening, when early reforms raised hopes for lasting change. Those reforms proved reversible: security agencies retained sweeping powers, patterns of impunity persisted, and ethnic tensions were never addressed. As a result, violations reminiscent of pre-2018 repression have returned with greater intensity.

The re-emergence of torture centres, including the notorious Awash Arba military camp, known as a site for detaining and torturing political prisoners and dissidents, underscores the depth of the crisis.

“Awash Arba is a name that should never have reappeared”, said Gerald Staberock, OMCT Secretary general. “Its return, along with other secret sites, is a chilling reminder that the State is reviving the very darkest tools of repression to break those who dare to defend human rights. The world looks at so many crises everywhere. But nothing, and really nothing, allows us to look away from what happens in Ethiopia. This, too, is the future of Africa and the future of human rights.”

“For more than a decade, UN mechanisms have urged Ethiopia to end torture, arbitrary detention and attacks on civil society,” Alexis Deswaef, President of FIDH added. “These recommendations were ignored even during the reform period. Today, human rights defenders are once again being silenced, tortured, exiled or killed.”

Thee Observatory today calls on the Ethiopian authorities to reclaim the hope embodied by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, a symbol of the peaceful and democratic future the country still deserves. Onthe occasion of International Human Rights Day, Ethiopia must act now to the protection of those on the front lines of defending human rights : by releasing all arbitrarily detained human rights defenders, ensuringaccountability for the violations committed against them, and dismantling secret torture facilities.

Read the full report in English on the OMCT website and on the FIDH website, and on the Observatory website.

OMCT : Francesca Pezzola | fpe@omct.org

FIDH : Maxime Duriez : +33 6 48 05 91 57 | mduriez@fidh.org