Ximena Borrazas 2024 Tom Stoddart Award for Excellence & The 2024 Gentex Corp Personal Safety Award
10-year-old Eskedar Hailu shows her scar on camera as her mother narrates the event: During the war, in May 2022 4 Eritrean soldiers were raping the woman, the girl started screaming for help and as a result the men stabbed her and threw boiling water on her stomach and chest to silence her. Currently they both live in a compound run by the NGO Don Bosco for women victims of gender-based violence.
Askal Barki is 80 years old and lives alone in Adi Giba Village. The octogenarian suffers from malnutrition and no longer has the strength to beg for money or food in town, she depends on the charity of her neighbors. She knows that her future is not very bright, so she spends her days waiting for death. In a period of 6 months, according to the testimony of residents of this rural village, 22 people died of hunger.
Eden is 6 years old and she is from the centre of Tigray. One year ago she had to flee her home with her mother because of the war. At one of the checkpoints Eritrean soldiers captured her and took her to the military base where one of them sexually abused the 5 year old girl. Since then she cannot hold her urine because of the physical and psychological damage. Her mother has no money to pay for the treatment in a privat center and the wait for the public hospital is too long. Currently, she lives with her mother and brother in subhuman conditions in an IDP center in northern Tigray without food, water or electricity.
In a rural village near the town of Samre Roman Deslagen (55), Tsegabrhane Mulaw (32) and Berihu Mulaw (24) and Brkitteka (1) recall that during the war they had to flee their home because of life-threatening crossfire. When they returned after the signing of the agreement to end the war, they found their home completely destroyed; their crops burnt, their house partially destroyed and their animals had been stolen.
Gidena Gebru, 65, lives in a rural village near the city of Samre and had to walk long distances in search of food. Today, she no longer has the strength to move, so in the context of the humanitarian crisis and the lack of humanitarian aid, she simply waits for death in her home.
Seven Teklehaymano (45) poses in front of the camera in an IDP centre where she lives with her 2-year-old son in Abiy Addi City.
A prosthetic leg with the image of Meles Zenawi at the raDo rehabilitation center. Zenawi was Prime Minister of Ethiopia from 1995 until his death in 2012 and co-founder of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) political party.
2 fathers sit on a hospital bed in Mekele listening to the diagnosis of their 4-year-old Embeba, who weighs 10 kilograms, 6 kilograms underweight, and was diagnosed with child malnutrition.
Gidayn Gebreslaise (25 years old) and her children Hiya Lijale (6) and Dagmawi (2) live in an IDP center since the beginning of the war During the pregnancy of her second child, the young mother was imprisoned during the war because of her birthplace; Tigray. They survive by begging in the city. Due to the lack of food, the woman is no longer able to produce milk from her right breast.
One of the IDP centers in the city of Aksum houses a large number of orphaned children under the age of 13; Pictured here posing for the camera is the woman who takes care of the orphans; Shewit Gebrewahd (25), Merhawit Nuguse (12), Haymaot Gebrewhad (13), Liyunesh Khsay (12), Natnael Atalay (12), Robel Getachew (9) and Adyam (5). Some lost their parents in the war, others have them in Sudan but due to the current armed conflict they do not know if they are still alive or not. To survive, the children go out on their own to beg in the streets of the city.
Ashenafi Alem (2) sleeps on the floor with flies perched on top of him in the IDP centre where he lives with his mother Seven in Abiy Addi city. According to health professionals, malnutrition affects motor skills and reflexes, causing people to lose the ability to ward off insects that land on their skin.
Starving to death is a slow and tortuous process because you are aware of what is happening and you also witness how your body is weakening day by day until you no longer have the strength to breathe. Many people in Tigray, especially in rural areas, have no money to pay for medicines. It is practically a death sentence that has already claimed the lives of hundreds of people because of hunger. This is another case, Tsiray Desalegn is 47 years old and has not eaten anything for more than a week.
About the work
The Tigray war is currently the bloodiest of the century with around 600,000 people killed and around 120,000 women and girls raped according to local health authorities.
Today, the genocide continues slowly and torturously, because of the two-year blockades due to the armed conflict + extreme poverty, the theft of labour supplies by Eritrean troops and a host of other reasons, dozens of people die of malnutrition.
During the war period the UN had set up a committee of investigators called ICHREE to gather information on possible war crimes committed in Tigray, however the mandate was not renewed at the UN General Assembly in September 2023 meaning that these crimes will go unpunished.
About the Photographer
Ximena Borrazas (32 yrs) Female, Uruguay
Ximena Borrazás is an Uruguayan freelance photojournalist based in Barcelona who has focused her work on covering armed conflicts, migration crises and human rights violations in Europe and Africa.
Her work has been published by media and agencies such as National Geographic, The Guardian, BBC, CNN, DW, UNHCR, among others, and exhibited by UNESCO and IOM.