Fatou Bensouda will chair the UN commission of inquiry into crimes committed in Ethiopia

Magistrate Fatou Bensouda, May 3, 2018. AFP

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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.

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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 lawyer Steven Ratner at the head of the

.

Their mandate is one year renewable “ 

 ”.

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

, written jointly by the office of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet and the

.

This initial work had concluded that war crimes and crimes against humanity had been committed.

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