The U.S. determination that Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Amhara forces committed crimes against humanity in Tigray comes despite the U.S. government’s knowledge that these forces had committed the crime of all crimes—genocide—in Tigray. On 9 March 2023, Foreign Policy, citing anonymous U.S. officials familiar with the matter, reported that the State Department had “drafted a declaration in 2021 that the Ethiopian government’s atrocities in Tigray constituted a genocide.”

Secretary Blinken delivers remarks on the release of the 2022 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices at the Department of State, on March 20, 2023.

The Ethiopian government called the announcement “inflammatory” and “untimely.”