None of the local NGOs have condemned — or even acknowledged — new evidence of human rights violations documented by LGBTQ+ advocacy group House of Guramayle.
by Beza Lealem
A dossier of new evidence outlining cases of violence against LGBTQ+ people in Ethiopia was released last week by House of Guramayle (HoG). To gauge the response of local human rights organisations, Fatteh contacted those that routinely speak out on other human rights concerns. None replied.
The evidence includes one video of a victim mutilated with the homophobic slur ‘bushti’ (a term for ‘faggot’ in the Amharic language) carved into their back with their own blood and another of two men being violently assaulted in a hotel room by machete-wielding attackers hurling homophobic abuse. Other cases show victims being humiliated and coerced into forced confessions during an assault.
The silence and inaction of Ethiopia’s human rights groups is disappointing but not unexpected, say activists. There are no publicly available records showing local groups condemning past human rights abuses against LGBTQ+ people. “It’s time to show their solidarity and integrity,” said HoG co-founder Bahiru Shewaye.
The four leading NGOs approached for comment by Fatteh were: the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) led by Berhanu Adello, the Consortium of Ethiopian Human Rights Organizations (CEHRO) led by Mesud Gebeyehu, the Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO) led by Tesfaye Gemechu and the Association for Human Rights in Ethiopia (AHRE) recently led by Meseret Ali.
“What we need to see is human rights organisations from Ethiopia report and condemn violations of human rights. Gay rights are human rights,” said Shewaye, whose advocacy group is one of only a few focusing on LGBTQ+ rights in the country. “Mob justice, doxxing and harming people on real or perceived [sexual orientation] is against human rights.”
Here lies one of the problems: sexual orientation and gender identity are not even listed in the mandates of Ethiopia’s generalist human rights organisations — let alone in their scope of work.
Excluding the Most Marginalised
Ethiopian groups appear to exclude LGBTQ+ people on the grounds that homosexuality is criminalised, resource constraints compel groups to prioritise other persons of concern and that highlighting their plight endangers staff and beneficiaries. While LGBTQ+ activists reject these excuses outright, they acknowledge that safety concerns are not unfounded in a climate of widespread public hostility toward gay people.
A 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 97% of Ethiopian respondents believe society should not accept homosexuality. Attitudes have shifted little since then. In 2022, around 79% of Ethiopians said that homosexuality is never ‘justifiable’ and only 5% said it is completely justifiable with the rest expressing degrees of uncertainty, in a World Values Survey. Last year, around 80% of Ethiopians indicated they would oppose having a homosexual neighbour, according to an Afrobarometer survey.
With public opinion toward gay people so overwhelmingly negative, social hostility contributes to an environment where violence and discrimination often go unchallenged, creating a climate of impunity that reinforces criminalisation. Against this backdrop, HoG has made a direct appeal to Ethiopian society to reject the scapegoating of LGBTQ+ people and the mob justice it fuels and to “embrace inclusive values grounded in dignity, safety and care for all citizens.”
The advocacy group went on to urge the Ethiopian government, NGOs, social media platforms and the wider international community to condemn the latest human rights violations and take action to end the “ongoing coordinated violence against Zega/LGBTQIA+ people in Ethiopia”. ‘Zega’ is a term for ‘citizen’ in Amharic, the working language of Ethiopia, appropriated by some members of the LGBTQ+ community to denote same-sex-attraction in a discreet but poignant way.
The appeal to the government is especially significant. The group calls on the country’s political leadership to publicly condemn all forms of violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity; to investigate and prosecute perpetrators; and to provide immediate protection to individuals at risk.
The Government’s Wall of Silence
The Ethiopian government has never publicly condemned human rights violations against LGBTQ+ people in the country, says Shewaye. To the contrary, “what we have seen in recent years are government officials like the Addis Ababa City Peace and Security Administration Bureau in partnership with Addis Ababa Police having a toll-free number for people to report homosexuals and their activities,” he said.
In 2019, former cabinet minister and then-mayor of Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa, Takele Uma Banti, was quoted by Addis Insight as saying that gay tourists were not welcome in the city. The federal government reveals its stance on the world stage when pressed to do so, such as this year’s vote by Ethiopian diplomats against renewing the mandate of a United Nations expert on LGBTQ+ human rights. For the most part, however, the political establishment expresses its opposition to the LGBTQ+ community by maintaining a wall of silence.
Law is at the heart of the matter. The Ethiopian government criminalises consensual same-sex sexual conduct between men and between women. Under the 2004 federal criminal code, homosexual acts are defined as “indecent” and punishable with “rigorous” imprisonment for at least one year. In cases considered “grave,” the sentence can be up to 10 years while other cases can result in imprisonment for up to 15 years, according to the 2024 ‘Ethiopia Stakeholder Report for the United Nations Universal Periodic Review’ authored by US-based The Advocates for Human Rights and HoG.
Ethiopia’s LGBTQ+ community has long been demonised and dehumanised by state actors and religious leaders who denounce them and encourage vigilantism against them. Since 2023, these campaigns have intensified and taken disturbing new forms.
Inciting Coordinated Attacks
Last year, the Inter-Religious Council of Ethiopia (IRCE), demanded that the government withdraw from the Samoa Agreement — a partnership between the European Union and the Organisation of African, Caribbean, and Pacific States, of which Ethiopia is a signatory — arguing that the agreement could be interpreted as requiring signatories to advance LGBTQ+ human rights, something the council vehemently opposes.
Shewaye described the situation at the time as “fearmongering that is being galvanized by religious institutions and their affiliated death apparatus against [LGBTQ+ Ethiopians],” in an interview with Washington Blade.
The religious council claims to collectively “account for approximately 97 percent of the country’s population” through its seven members: the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Ethiopian Islamic Affairs Supreme Council, the Ethiopian Catholic Church, the Evangelical Churches Fellowship of Ethiopia, Ethiopian Seventh Day Adventist Church, the Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus and the Ethiopian Kale Heywet Church.
In addition to the zealous opposition of the religious establishment, there are new sources of harassment, threats and incitement to violence.
In recent months, saboteurs have started a campaign of deliberately conflating feminism with LGBTQ+ rights, weaponising anti-feminist actors to discredit both women’s rights advocates and LGBTQIA+ people. “It has also emboldened some individuals within feminist movements to target and scapegoat LGBTQIA+ communities, deepening our vulnerability,” said HoG.
Even before the rise of this trend, hundreds of harmful posts and videos targeting the community online had been documented, including online hate speech, non-consensual outings and explicit calls for the assault and killing of LGBTQ+ people. Some posts on platforms such as Facebook, TikTok and Telegram have led to actual violence against individuals offline.
“All of the social media platforms need to do better,” said Shewaye, citing an apparent “change in policy of some sort at Meta” which he believes may have caused the delayed removal of at least one particularly egregious video in August.
HoG’s latest statement appeals to social media and messaging platforms to remove violent and harassing content within 24 hours, strengthen Ethiopian-language hate speech detection and ban IP addresses of accounts posting repeated violent content.
Shewaye’s colleague and HoG co-founder, Faris Cuchi Gezahegn, did however acknowledge recent progress at TikTok. “Our requests have been listened to, and actions have been taken towards taking down harmful posts,” said Gezahegn.
The Spectre of Criminalisation
Beyond the appeal to global tech platforms and the Ethiopian government, HoG leaders are urging the wider international community to act. They call for public statements condemning the attacks on LGBTQ+ people in Ethiopia and for the issue to be raised directly with Ethiopian authorities and UN human rights mechanisms. They also stress the need for resources to support protection, legal aid and documentation.
But on this occasion, the appeal to the international community seems to have fallen on deaf ears. So far, no publicly available records show international human rights groups answering the call to speak out against the latest attacks on LGBTQ+ Ethiopians. A full week after the evidence of human rights violations was released, there has been no apparent coverage in the international media.
HoG’s latest campaign understandably focuses on immediate priorities like condemning new violations, improving security and de-escalating hostilities. But experts warn that without equal focus on long-term change, the movement risks being trapped in paralysis. In other words, Ethiopia’s LGBTQ+ community will remain highly vulnerable until the structural and underlying drivers of homophobia are both tackled head-on.
“Decriminalisation [of homosexuality] is not the whole answer, but it is a key step towards respecting, protecting and fulfilling the human rights of [LGBT] people,” wrote the authors of a landmark Amnesty International report in 2008 called ‘Love, Hate and the Law’.
“Decriminalisation is the first step to achieving social acceptance of the right of [LGBT] people to be open about their sexuality and gender identity or expression without fear of criminal prosecution, where they know that they can obtain recourse to justice when they are the victims of violence by other individuals.”
So long as homosexuality is criminalised, LGBTQ+ Ethiopians will continue to face persecution, with the law serving both as encouragement for violence and as a shield for those who commit it. Or as Amnesty succinctly put it, “homophobic and transphobic individuals or groups take these laws as permission to target [LGBT] people, organisations and events.”
For advocates of the LGBTQ+ community — and indeed for any genuine human rights defender — legal reform in Ethiopia can’t come soon enough. Even after a breakthrough like decriminalisation, the road to equality would remain long and be largely uphill. But for this most marginalised of communities, such a step would be nothing short of life-changing.