Whatever happened in Ethiopia: Did the cease-fire bring an end to civilian suffering?

A woman walks in front of a house damaged by shelling in the city of Wukro, in Tigray, Ethiopia. A new report indicates that military forces have engaged in hundreds of sexual assaults on girls and women. Eduardo Soteras /AFP via Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption Eduardo Soteras /AFP via Getty Images

A woman walks in front of a house damaged by shelling in the city of Wukro, in Tigray, Ethiopia. A new report indicates that military forces have engaged in hundreds of sexual assaults on girls and women.

Eduardo Soteras /AFP via Getty Images

The warring sides in the conflict agreed in November to a peace deal, but a finds that widespread sexual violence continues to victimize women and girls in northern Ethiopia.

, one of the groups co-authoring the report. "The cases are very brutal and quite horrifying."

Over the next week, we'll be looking back at some of our favorite stories to see "whatever happened to ..."

The use of sexual violence by armed forces during the civil war in Ethiopia has been reported previously by the and . But this new publication shows that as recently as June, months after the peace agreement was signed, sexual violence against women and girls has not stopped.

"The report highlights the really systematic, widespread and non-random nature of these attacks," says a staff member with the Organization for Justice and Accountability in the Horn of Africa, the other co-authoring group of the report. This woman, who is from Ethiopia, asked that NPR not use her name because she fears speaking out could make her or her family a target of reprisal.

"In the vast majority of the cases," she says, "there were multiple perpetrators. It was often accompanied by [additional] physical violence."

"We are talking about mothers who have been raped in front of their family," says her colleague, who works as a reproductive health researcher at the Ayder Comprehensive Specialized Hospital in Tigray and who asked to remain anonymous for similar reasons.

describing rapes and murders perpetrated by the opposing side as well, the Tigray People's Liberation Front.)

The authors of the new report say the women who have been assaulted require urgent humanitarian aid and medical and psychosocial support.

In addition, "there is a need for much more attention to the brutal violations of international law that are occurring as part of this conflict," says Lindsey Green, a senior program officer who studies sexual violence at Physicians for Human Rights.

She says that the U.N.'s will dissolve in September, and she worries it won't be renewed. She argues that this is one of several organizations that need to continue conducting "independent and impartial monitoring and reporting. There needs to be much more focus and demand for greater efforts for accountability, both from the United Nations and the African Union."

The researchers who compiled this new report say that it captures just a sliver of this kind of violence. The staffer from the Organization for Justice and Accountability in the Horn of Africa says she hopes it will shine a light on the suffering of people in a part of the world she says doesn't get enough attention or help.

"There are some lives and losses that are taken more seriously than others," she says.