In November 2020, as war broke out in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, the scale of the suffering was already apparent to anyone on the Ethiopian-Sudanese border. As the Ethiopian National Defense Force and allied Amhara militias and Eritrean soldiers swept through the region in a pincer movement, Tigrayans began to flee en masse, walking for days without water to get to safety in neighboring Sudan.
Hundreds of refugees made an almost biblical sight as they traversed the Hamdayet River crossing that separates the two countries. Small boats laden with men, women, and children pushed against the current, ferrying people to safety every few minutes.
