While mass killings targeting religious and ethnic groups occur persistently across different areas in Ethiopia, particularly in the Oromia regional state, the attention of the international community—including the various diplomatic missions and multinational organizations based in Addis Ababa- less than 200 kilometers from where the mass killings happen-remains astonishingly low, even in cases too visible to ignore.
The European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ)—a Christian legal advocacy group based in Strasbourg, France—stands out as one of the few international organizations actively monitoring the ongoing massacres targeting Orthodox Christian communities in East Arsi. The ECLJ, which operates as the European affiliate of the US-based American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), holds special consultative status before the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).
The advocacy group has submitted two urgent appeals to the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention within the last three years, warning of a catastrophic surge in targeted ethnic and religious violence in Ethiopia. The first was submitted on August 29, 2023, and a second was recently filed on June 2, 2026, specifically addressing the mass killings and forced evictions of Orthodox Christians in the East Arsi zone of the Oromia Regional State.
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Thibault van den Bossche, an Advocacy Officer for Persecuted Christians at the ECLJ, is the primary official managing this file. He regularly represents the ECLJ before the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, the European Parliament, and the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.
He possesses an extensive background in researching and advocating for persecuted Christians globally, drawing from profound personal exposure to threatened faith communities worldwide, including Iraqi Christians.
“Impunity is not simply the absence of justice; it is also the precursor to the next atrocity,” Thibault notes.
What is the current status of the ECLJ’s urgent appeal regarding the East Arsi crisis, and what concrete outcomes can be expected from such international legal interventions? Is there a structural parallel between the plight of Christians in Ethiopia and those in Iraq? What strategic role does the ECLJ play in breaking the diplomatic silence and pushing for institutional accountability?
The Reporter Magazine’s Bewket Abebe approached Thibault for comments to unpack these and explore the path forward. EXCERPT:
The Reporter Magazine: Could you share with us when the targeted violence (massacres) against Orthodox Christians in East Arsi first came to your attention, and how you subsequently brought the case before the UN Office on Genocide Prevention? What have the steps looked like so far?
Thibault van den Bossche: Our work on Ethiopia did not begin with the Arsi massacres. Since the Tigray war (2020–2022), the European Centre for Law and Justice has documented violence against Christians, the destruction of religious heritage, and advocated for greater international attention to these issues. The January 2023 schism within the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, during which Oromo regional security forces reportedly opened fire around churches, further highlighted the growing religious dimension of the conflict.
The Arsi massacres came to our attention after coordinated attacks in November 2023 killed 36 Orthodox Christians. As similar attacks continued to occur, we concluded that the situation warranted action under the framework of atrocity prevention.
Our first communication to the UN Office on Genocide Prevention submitted on 29 August 2023, focused primarily on the escalating risks facing the Amhara population. As the attacks against Orthodox Christians in Arsi intensified and a broader pattern emerged, we expanded our analysis to include the religious dimension of the violence, which led to our second communication in June 2026.
We provided updated evidence of attacks against Amhara civilians and Orthodox Christians, urged the Office to conduct a country visit, and called for an updated public assessment of the risk of atrocity crimes. We are now awaiting the Office’s substantive response while continuing our advocacy before the United Nations and other international institutions.
As an expert who has closely studied the plight of persecuted Christians, which countries do you view as currently being the most dangerous for Christian communities and what is your overall assessment of the scale and severity of Christian persecution in Ethiopia right now?
Today, the countries where it is most dangerous to be a Christian are generally communist regimes, Islamist states, or countries where religious identity is closely intertwined with national or ethnic identity. This is what led the ECLJ to defend Christians in Nicaragua, a predominantly Christian country that nevertheless suffers under the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega. Likewise, we defend Christians in India against Hindu nationalism (Hindutva), and Christians in Turkey who face the growing influence of the Turkish-Islamist nationalism promoted by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. When persecution does not come directly from the State, it is often carried out by Islamist armed groups such as the Islamic State (ISIS) or Boko Haram.
As for Ethiopia, the situation is grave, and, on its current trajectory, it is worsening. It is difficult to cleanly separate the persecution of Christians in Ethiopia from the country’s ethnic conflicts. The greatest concentration of suffering is in the Amhara region, which is home to Ethiopia’s largest Orthodox Christian population and has been engulfed in conflict since 2023. Although religion is not the primary cause of the war, Christians are among its principal victims, with churches and other holy sites being attacked and clergy and lay Christians being killed.
However, the religious dimension of the violence is most evident in Oromia, particularly in the East Arsi Zone. It is there that the faith-based targeting of Christians is most unmistakable.
In both cases, the severity and scale of the violence are deeply alarming. In the absence of effective mechanisms of accountability, there is every reason to fear that the situation will continue to deteriorate. It would be naïve to expect such violence to decline, let alone come to an end, so long as those responsible are able to act with impunity.
You have closely studied the situation of Iraqi Christians—both individually in your thesis and through your work with the ECLJ, what does the current reality tell about the future of Christianity in Iraq, given the ever-declining population and what you describe as a “triple marginalization” involving land dispossession and cultural genocide, fragile institutional and political representation, as well as the severe socioeconomic pressures jeopardizing their survival in the country? What common elements do you see between the Iraqi case and other similar global examples and the current situation in Ethiopia?
The current reality is deeply worrying. Christianity in Iraq is not simply declining; it is being pushed to the edge of disappearance. In two decades, the Christian population has fallen by around 85 percent, from about 1.5 million before 2003 to roughly 250,000 today. This is not only a demographic loss, but the possible extinction of one of the oldest Christian civilizations in the world.
What we call a “triple marginalization” explains why so many Christians no longer see a future in Iraq. First, they face territorial and cultural dispossession, especially in the Nineveh Plain, where their ancestral lands remain exposed to competing political and armed influences. Second, their political representation is fragile and largely symbolic, both in Baghdad and in the Kurdistan Region. Third, severe socioeconomic pressures make daily life increasingly unsustainable, particularly for young people who struggle to find work, security, and prospects.
Yet the future is not entirely closed. Local initiatives, church institutions, NGOs, and diaspora-led projects show that staying or returning can still be possible. But this will only become a real choice if international actors help create conditions of security, political representation, economic viability, and cultural survival. Iraqi Christians should not have to choose between their faith, their homeland, and their safety.
As for the parallels with Ethiopia, both are ancient, indigenous Christian civilizations. In both countries, armed actors operate with impunity, while the central state is either too weak or unwilling to provide effective protection. As a result, persecution takes place in a climate of near-total impunity.
There are, however, important differences. In Iraq, Christians are a small minority, and their persecution has reached a more advanced stage. They are experiencing a slow but steady process of attrition through emigration, discrimination, and insecurity. In Ethiopia, by contrast, the crisis is more acute. There, the erosion of Christian communities is driven by large-scale violence, even though the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church remains the country’s largest Christian denomination. As a result, the violence is more visible, more chaotic, and harder for the international community to ignore.
From your observations, what best practices for helping such victim communities overcome such serious dangers could you share? How would you break down the responsibilities between the local communities, governments, international actors, and other key stakeholders?
There is no single solution, because the causes of persecution are both political and social. Protecting Christian communities therefore requires action at several levels.
First, local communities and churches preserve religious life, culture, education, and social cohesion. Supporting local initiatives is often more effective than creating new external structures.
Second, governments have the primary responsibility to guarantee security, protect property rights, prosecute those responsible for attacks, and ensure that Christians enjoy equal citizenship and meaningful political representation. Without the rule of law, no community can survive in the long term.
Third, international actors should move beyond expressions of concern. They should integrate religious freedom and the protection of indigenous Christian communities into their diplomatic dialogue, support local civil society organizations, and help create the conditions that allow people not only to survive, but also to remain or return to their ancestral lands.
Finally, NGOs and the diaspora also have a crucial role to play. Beyond humanitarian assistance, they can invest in schools, healthcare, housing, and economic opportunities. In Iraq, for example, supporting reconstruction and encouraging return are just as important as providing emergency relief. The objective should not simply be to preserve Christian communities, but to enable them to have a viable future in their own homeland.
Looking at the situation in Ethiopia, a critical missing link is the persistent failure to bring perpetrators to justice. Instead, news of a massacre breaks, it receives brief attention for a few days, and then no practical accountability follows. Perpetrators continue their targeted violence with impunity—a trend we have seen against Christians in East Arsi, and against people of Amhara descent in Oromia’s West Shewa and East Wollega zones, among other cases nationwide. From your global experience, what observations can you share regarding this cycle of impunity? What best and worst practices have you seen in other countries trying to break it? And, what role does the ECLJ play in terms of pressuring federal governments and pushing for international legal accountability?
Impunity is not simply the absence of justice; it is also the precursor to the next atrocity. When killing, displacing, or dispossessing a community carries no consequences, those crimes are repeated, refined, and eventually normalized. Unfortunately, we have observed this pattern in several countries. In Nigeria, Christian communities have endured repeated massacres for years. A similar dynamic exists in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) have repeatedly targeted Christian civilians, villages, and churches.
Ethiopia risks following the same trajectory. Each massacre generates a few days of media attention, followed by promises of investigations that rarely produce visible results. This sends a dangerous message that those responsible can continue committing atrocities with impunity.
Breaking this cycle requires first and foremost the credible documentation and preservation of evidence relating to all violations. This is why the ECLJ has consistently advocated for the establishment of a United Nations-led fact-finding mission or independent investigative mechanism. Effective accountability—whether before international courts or national jurisdictions exercising universal jurisdiction—depends on the ability to identify perpetrators, preserve evidence, and establish individual criminal responsibility.
It was precisely for this reason that, in 2023, the ECLJ called not only for the renewal of the mandate of the International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia (ICHREE), but also for an expansion of its mandate to cover all major human rights violations committed throughout Ethiopia, with particular attention to the Amhara and Oromia regions. Unfortunately, the Commission’s mandate was not renewed, depriving victims and the international community of one of the few independent mechanisms capable of documenting crimes and laying the groundwork for future accountability.
More recently, we have also brought our concerns directly to the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention. Through two formal communications, we urged the Office to monitor the escalating risks facing the Amhara people and Orthodox Christians, to request a country visit, and to issue an updated public assessment of the risk of atrocity crimes. Our role as the ECLJ is not to replace prosecutors or judges, but to ensure that credible evidence reaches international institutions, that early warning mechanisms are activated, and that these crimes do not disappear from the international agenda until genuine accountability is achieved.
In your experience representing the ECLJ at institutions such as the United Nations Human Rights Council, the European Parliament, and the Council of Europe, how do you view the overall understanding and level of commitment of these bodies when it comes to initiating practical actions against these issues?
In reality, these institutions have very limited means of taking direct or coercive action. However, they can exercise significant political pressure by adopting resolutions, publicly condemning violations, holding States accountable for the persecution of Christians, and questioning the actions of the relevant executive bodies.
For example, the European Parliament can call on the European Commission to clarify its position on the European Union’s relationship with Ethiopia in light of the human rights violations taking place there. This type of action falls within the realm of soft power, but the cumulative effect of such resolutions and political pressure can encourage other States to take more concrete action.
That said, some regional institutions can go further when dealing with their own member States. For example, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) temporarily suspended the credentials of the Azerbaijani delegation because of serious breaches of its obligations, including in the context of the offensive against the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh. Although Azerbaijan remains a member of the Council of Europe, this decision demonstrates that regional institutions may, in certain circumstances, employ stronger institutional measures against their own members.
What real-world impact has the ECLJ’s advocacy achieved for victims so far, and what can we expect to see moving forward with the case in Ethiopia? From the ECLJ’s perspective, what actions are needed from different stakeholders to successfully bring an end to the persecution of Christians in Ethiopia?
The impact of human rights advocacy is often difficult to measure in the short term. Our role is not to stop atrocities overnight, but to ensure that victims are heard, that violations are documented, and that international institutions cannot claim they were unaware of the warning signs.
Looking ahead, ending the persecution of Christians in Ethiopia requires action from several stakeholders. The international community must investigate attacks impartially and bring those responsible to justice. The United Nations and regional organizations should strengthen independent monitoring and accountability mechanisms, while international partners should make human rights a central part of their engagement with Ethiopia. Civil society, churches, and the media also have a vital role to play in documenting abuses and keeping international attention focused on the victims.
Ultimately, preventing future atrocities depends on breaking the cycle of impunity. Without accountability, violence is likely to continue.
