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Rapidly after the signing of the cessation of hostilities between the parties in the Tigray War, we revisited the Dogu’a Tembien district in January 2023, a place we know very well from before the war. We made harrowing observations that are consistent with our past findings on failing crop yields, famine, and death toll in the Tigray war. Many major findings hold true across the ten studied settlements and their surroundings. In terms of rainfall, flooding, and deforestation rate, the results vary however per location. Social bonds have become stronger in some communities, while weakening in others.

At the beginning of November 2020, an armed conflict emerged in Tigray, Ethiopia’s northernmost region, in the aftermath of a destructive locust plague and in the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In the conflict, the Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF) and its allies – formal and informal military factions of the adjacent Amhara region, the Eritrean Defence Force – oppose the troops of the Tigray Regional Government, the Tigray Defence Force. The aim in this work is to document and map as much information as possible about civilian casualties, more particularly those killed by military forces and warfare. With communication lines blocked, we document pieces of a bigger puzzle, yet to be fully reconstructed. By providing spatially explicit information, we hope to transfer useful information to human rights organisations and other humanitarian and development actors. This document also serves as an explanatory note to the online database of massacres and civilian victims of the Tigray war (www.ethiopiatigraywar.com).

At the beginning of November 2020, an armed conflict emerged in Tigray, Ethiopia’s northernmost region. The objective of this ‘Atlas of the Humanitarian Situation’ is to document and map the situation in which approximately 6 million Tigrayans currently find themselves. For this, we contacted key informants in different districts of Tigray to collect qualitative and quantitative evidence of the actual situation on the ground. We also confronted these data and testimonies with information disclosed by the Government of Ethiopia and by humanitarian organizations. The 25 maps in this atlas provide detailed information at the scale of districts (woredas) or sub-districts (tabiyas). Besides background information related to administrative divisions, social and natural resources - locations of internally displaced people, massacres and civilian casualties receive due attention. Humanitarian access and needs are particularly addressed; official data on humanitarian aid distribution are mapped, and contrasted to ground evidence related to such distributions. The final outlook, links up the emergency and famine conditions in Tigray to the current crop status and to the blockade and siege of the region.

Despite the high geoheritage value of caves and karsts, northern Ethiopia’s largest cave at Zeyi (13.5586°N, 39.1454°E) in the Dogu’a Tembien district has received little attention so far. We have studied its geological, geomorphic, socio-cultural and historical dimensions in a holistic way. The basal member of the Antalo Limestone, in which the Zeyi cave is located, consists of grainstone and wackestone with subordinate marly interlayers. Over a length of 364 m, the oval-shaped gallery displays stalagmites, stalactites, five columns, dissolution holes (“bell-holes”) following joints, stalagmitic floors and other concretions or speleothems. In the absence of any dating of the cave, we contrasted its elevation above the current local base level with known average incision rates of the northern Ethiopian highlands to reconstruct its age, which was calculated as at least 2 to 4 million years. The palaeo-environmental information that is archived in the Zeyi cave sediment would hence cover the Pleistocene. The graves in the sediment at the bottom of the Zeyi cave further indicate that the place could be an ancient burial site, which gives scope for archaeological research. Zeyi boosts a unique combination of abiotic, biotic and cultural components: the nineteenth c. church under the overhanging cliff; the unique cave; the speleothems, cliffs and gorges; and the cave’s bat colony which has been genetically confirmed to be composed of three syntopically roosting species. Accounting for a good balance between cave research, community-based geotourism, geoconservation and biodiversity conservation, the Zeyi cave has strong credentials to become a top geotouristic site in northern Ethiopia. However, major work needs to be done, including granting access for women and organising community-based geotourism.