Cries of the victims of mass rape go unheard in Ethiopia’s mountain war | Simon Tisdall

Prime minister Abiy Ahmed opened the way for victimisation of women with disastrous decision to attack Tigray

The use of rape as a weapon of war is as old as warfare itself. In Bosnia in the 1990s, thousands of Muslim women were brutalised by Bosnian Serb forces, who set up rape camps" as part of a policy of ethnic cleansing". In 2001, the UN's Yugoslav war crimes tribunal redefined mass rape as a crime against humanity. Yet there have been many similar atrocities since then, including in South Sudan, Syria, Iraq, and Myanmar.

Now the world looks on - or rather, looks away - as it happens again. Today, in Tigray, in northern Ethiopia, large numbers of women and girls are again being subjected to unimaginable" terror and suffering as a result of pervasive sexual violence. The word unimaginable" is taken from a disturbing new report on Tigray by Parliament's international development committee - a report largely ignored by the British government and media.