AAGE — Amhara Advocacy Group in Europe
Documentation, research and advocacy for civilian protection in Ethiopia's Amhara region.
AAGE — Amhara Advocacy Group in Europe
Documentation, research and advocacy for civilian protection in Ethiopia's Amhara region.
What the database counts, how each entry is graded, why a small number of map points are deliberately imprecise, and the legal instruments against which this record is kept.
The Church Attacks Monitor is a structured record of attacks against the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church — its clergy and monastics, its faithful, and its places of worship — from 2015 to the present, across Ethiopia. It is the companion of our Drone Strike Monitor and is kept under the same discipline: every entry dated, located, attributed to its sources, and graded on a published verification scale. This page describes that discipline.
An incident is a dated, located act of violence or destruction directed at the Church: the killing or abduction of clergy, monastics or lay faithful in or around places of worship, or because of their religious status or service; and the burning, shelling, demolition, desecration, occupation or looting of churches and monasteries, including manuscripts, tabots and liturgical objects.
The database is built on three linked tables. The incidents table records events. The sites table records places of worship as entities in their own right — a church or monastery has a name, a diocese and a history, and a single site can appear in several incidents over time. The sources table records where each fact comes from. Victims are recorded by status — clergy, monastics, lay faithful — because the deliberate targeting of religious leaders carries its own legal significance.
Each incident carries one of three grades, the same scale used by the Drone Strike Monitor. Reported: a single credible source. Corroborated: at least two independent sources. Verified: institutional confirmation — a named-victim list, a diocesan record, or a finding by a human-rights body.
Counting is conservative. Totals are floors, not estimates; an open toll is marked with a plus sign. Where sources give conflicting figures — a diocesan count and a media count, for instance — both are shown and attributed; they are never averaged and never added across overlapping scopes. Entries that cannot yet be graded are held as under review and excluded from the headline figures.
A small number of points on the map — currently in the Arsi zone — are deliberately coarsened: they are drawn as dashed circles rather than exact pins. Congregations still gather at these sites under continuing threat, and publishing precise coordinates could expose them. The exact locations are on file and are graded like any other entry; only their public display is blurred. We accept a less precise map as the price of not endangering the living.
Sources are weighed by family. Ecclesiastical records first — statements of the Holy Synod of the Ethiopian Orthodox Täwaḥədo Church and diocesan tolls, which are often the only named-victim lists in existence. Then institutional findings: the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, the UN human-rights system, and the annual U.S. religious-freedom reporting. Then specialised monitors and conflict data — ACI Africa, Open Doors, ACLED — and the press, from BBC Amharic and international agencies to Ethiopian outlets reporting under severe constraint. Every figure in the registry carries its source; diaspora testimony is used and is marked as such.
The record is kept against named instruments: the 1948 Genocide Convention, which Ethiopia was among the first states in the world to deposit, in 1949; Article 18 of the ICCPR on freedom of religion, binding on Ethiopia since 1993; and the 1954 Hague Convention on the protection of cultural property in armed conflict. International jurisprudence — the ICC's Al Mahdi conviction for the destruction of the Timbuktu mausoleums, and the recognition in Krstić that the destruction of religious heritage can evidence intent — establishes that what this database documents is justiciable.
Whether the facts recorded here amount to religious persecution, or to acts within the meaning of Article II of the Genocide Convention, is for competent investigative and judicial bodies to determine. Our task is narrower and prior: that the record exists, that it is sourced, and that it cannot later be said that no one knew.
The telecommunications blackout imposed on the Amhara region since August 2023, the absence of field access, and the protection of witnesses all constrain this work. The database is therefore certainly an undercount. Its nationwide scope — from the Somali region to Oromia, Amhara and beyond — also means coverage is uneven across periods and places. The four periods used on the monitor (P1–P4) are an analytic reading of the data, not a legal classification.
The registry on the monitor shows, for each incident, the number of distinct sources behind it. Those sources are drawn from the register below — thirty-two in total, weighed by family as described above. Several ecclesiastical sources (diocesan letters, Synod statements) circulate as documents rather than web pages and are held on file.
Institutional and governmental. US State Department — International Religious Freedom Reports (Ethiopia) · ACLED / Ethiopia Peace Observatory (EPO) · Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) · Bureau du Premier ministre éthiopien — déclaration du 5 juin 2026 · ONU — Conseil des droits de l'homme, soumission écrite A/HRC/55/NGO/186 (mars 2024)
Church sources. EOTC Holy Synod — déclarations officielles (on file) · Tewahedo Media Center (TMC) (on file) · Mahibere Kidusan · World Council of Churches (Conseil œcuménique des Églises) · Diocèse d'East Arsi (EOTC) — lettres officielles au Saint-Synode (Mgr Abune Elsa) (on file) · OCP News Service (Orthodoxy Cognate PAGE) — relais ESG · Patriarcat EOTC — Bureau général (Menbere Patriark Teklay Tsihfet Bet), déclarations officielles · Conseil suprême des affaires islamiques d'Éthiopie (EIASC) — communiqué du 1er mars 2026 (on file)
NGO and diaspora documentation. Amhara Association of America (AAA) · Amhara Professionals Union (APU) (on file) · Stop Amhara Genocide — rapport « The Escalating Attacks on Orthodox Christians in Ethiopia » · International Christian Concern (ICC) · Open Doors · European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ) · Documentation Arsi 2023-2025 (pétition + dossier associé) · Drone Monitor (AAGE) — incidents touchant des sites religieux · ·
Press and media. Médias internationaux (AFP, VOA, BBC, Reuters, The Hill, Catholic Herald...) (on file) · Médias éthiopiens et diaspora (Addis Standard, Borkena, The Habesha, Brana Press...) (on file) · The Reporter (Ethiopia) — thereporterethiopia.com / thereportermagazines.com · Wikipedia — 2023 Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church crisis (index de sources) · Borkena (média diaspora) · The New Humanitarian — enquête « Horrific civilian toll » (mars 2024) · Tikvah Ethiopia (chaîne Telegram d'information, AM) ·
Academic and data. Étude académique — « Political reform and religious violence in some Ethiopian regions since 2018 » (ScienceDirect, 2024)
Errors, once established, are corrected on the page within 48 hours and noted. Additions, corrections and testimony: [email protected]. The full registry, the periodised maps and the headline figures are on the Church Attacks Monitor.