The Tactics Institute is deeply concerned with the precipitous increase of human rights abuses in East Africa and the Horn as revealed by Human Rights Watch World Report 2025. The report covers general atrocities carried out by state security agencies and rebel opposition forces, with civilians shouldering the consequences of brutal fighting, quashing dissent, and select repression.
During 2024, government and non-state armed actors in Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Eritrea, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda committed gross human rights abuses. It included extrajudicial executions, denial of freedom of expression, forced evictions, and hindrance of humanitarian assistance. In Sudan alone, more than 12 million people were displaced due to continuous conflict. It comprised attacks on civilians and critical infrastructure, heightening a drastic humanitarian crisis.
In Ethiopia, the government forces escalated attacks against journalists, opposition leaders, and human rights activists, targeting also medical workers and health centers in Amhara. In Kenya, security agents abducted and murdered peaceful protesters against the finance bill and intimidated civil society organizations.
Eritrean and Ugandan governments further entrenched their repressive policies. They are limited freedoms and persecuting marginalized groups. Eritrean authorities pursued their policy of indefinite forced recruitment. It intensified repression of Eritreans abroad. Uganda’s Constitutional Court maintained the discriminatory 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Act. It formalizes state-sanctioned persecution of LGBTQ people. Tanzania forcibly displaced Indigenous Maasai communities, and arrested on a large scale opposition supporters before local elections.
These gross violations are a vivid illustration of a disturbing trend of impunity and government-sponsored repression in the region. The international community has to respond forcefully to ensure perpetrators are held accountable, defend human rights activists, and protect civilians under threat.
Tactics Institute urges local and global stakeholders to move immediately to hold someone accountable for such abuses, put an end to further escalation, and protect rights and freedoms of civilians throughout the East African and Horn regions.
