On Wednesday March 2, the Human Rights Council sitting in Geneva validated its establishment and appointed to chair it the former Attorney General of the International Criminal Court Fatou Bensouda, as well as two other members, responsible for documenting the war. in Tigray.
Fatou Bensouda therefore receives the difficult task of documenting all the crimes committed during the Tigray war. The former ICC prosecutor, of Gambian origin, will be assisted by the Kenyan magistrate Kaari Betty Murungi and the American jurist Steven Ratner at the head of the commission decided last December.
Their term of office is one year renewable. as many times as necessary “. Traditionally, UN commissions of inquiry give rise to an oral presentation to the Human Rights Council in June and the filing of a written report in September.
In this case, it will be a question of going back, by collecting evidence, on the acts committed by all the belligerents – Ethiopian and Eritrean army, Amhara and Afar militias, Tigrayan and Oromo rebellions -, during 16 months of a ultra-violent war fought far from any independent witness, and which continues to this day.
Fatou Bensouda and her associates will have to rely on a previous investigation reportco-authored by the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission. This initial work had concluded that war crimes and crimes against humanity had been committed.