Nefas Mewcha is a town in northern

Ethiopia Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...

. Located in the

Debub Gondar Zone South Gondar (Amharic: ደቡብ ጎንደር) (or Debub Gondar) is a Zone in the Ethiopian Amhara Region. This zone is named for the city of Gondar, which was the capital of Ethiopia until the mid-19th century, and has often been used as a name ...

of the

Amhara Region The Amhara Region ( am, አማራ ክልል, Åmara Kilil), officially the Amhara National Regional State (), is a regional state in northern Ethiopia and the homeland of the Amhara people. Its capital is Bahir Dar which is the seat of the Reg ...

, this town has a latitude and longitude of and an elevation of 3150 meters above sea level. It is the administrative center of

Lay Gayint Lay Gayint ( am, ላይ ጋይንት, lit=Upper Gayint) is a woreda in the Amhara Region of Ethiopia. Part of the Debub Gondar Zone, Lay Gayint is bordered on the south by Tach Gayint and Simada, on the southwest by Misraq Este, on the west by Fa ...

woreda Districts of Ethiopia, also called woredas ( am, ወረዳ; ''woreda''), are the third level of the administrative divisions of Ethiopia – after ''zones'' and the '' regional states''. These districts are further subdivided into a number of ...

. Nefas Mewcha lies on the main

Debre Tabor Debre Tabor ( am, ደብረ ታቦር, lit. "Mount Tabor") is a town and woreda in north-central Ethiopia. Located in the Debub Gondar Zone of the Amhara Region, about 100 kilometers southeast of Gondar and 50 kilometers east of Lake Tana, ...

Weldiya Weldiya or Woldia () is a town, woreda, and capital of the North Wollo Zone in northern Ethiopia. Located north of Dessie and southeast of Lalibela in the Amhara Region, this town has an elevation of 2112 meters above sea level. A notable landma ...

highway (also known as the Chinese road), providing it with an all-year link to the Zonal capital of Weldiya.

History

One of the earliest mentions of Nefas Mewcha is in the ''Royal chronicle'' of Emperor Susenyos, where the Emperor stopped during his campaign against the rebel Yona'el in 1620. The Scots explorer

James Bruce James Bruce of Kinnaird (14 December 1730 – 27 April 1794) was a Scottish traveller and travel writer who confirmed the source of the Blue Nile. He spent more than a dozen years in North Africa and Ethiopia and in 1770 became the first Europ ...

, who visited Ethiopia in the early 1770s, described Nefas Mewcha as "in the farthest limits" of the province of

Begemder Begemder ( amh, በጌምድር; also known as Gondar or Gonder, alternative name borrowed from its 20th century capital Gondar) was a province in northwest Ethiopia. Etymology A plausible source for the name ''Bega'' is that the word means " ...

at the time, with the

Wollo Oromo Wollo ( Amharic: ወሎ) was a historical province of northern Ethiopia that overlayed part of the present day Amhara, Afar, and Tigray regions. During the Middle Ages this region was known as Bete Amhara and had Amhara kings. Bete Amhara had ...

ruling the territories "behind this". James Bruce mentioned that the area south-east of Nefas Mewcha was a natural Barrier against the

Oromo expansions The Great Oromo Expansions, also known as the Oromo migrations, were a series of expansions, outlined by a Ethiopian monk named Bahrey, in the 16th and 17th centuries by the Borona segment of the Oromo people from southern Ethiopia. Who expanded ...

and prevented them from settling in Begemder. In the last years of his reign, emperor

Iyoas I Iyoas I ( Ge'ez: ኢዮአስ; died 14 May 1769), throne name Adyam Sagad (Ge'ez: አድያም ሰገድ) was Emperor of Ethiopia from 27 June 1755 to 7 May 1769, and a member of the Solomonic dynasty. He was the infant son of Iyasu II and Wubit ...

fought a

battle A battle is an occurrence of combat in warfare between opposing military units of any number or size. A war usually consists of multiple battles. In general, a battle is a military engagement that is well defined in duration, area, and force ...

against the governor of Begemder, Ya Mariam Bariaw, who had killed his uncle Birale in an earlier battle. Ya Mariam Bariaw was defeated, and severely wounded; he fled to the nearby Wollo, who handed Ya Mariam Bariaw back to the half-Oromo Emperor for punishment. By 1964, Nefas Mewcha was the administrative center of Gayint ''awraja''.

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and sup ...

reported that between 12-21 August 2021, during the

Tigrayan People's Liberation Front The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF; ti, ህዝባዊ ወያነ ሓርነት ትግራይ, lit=Popular Struggle for the Freedom of Tigray), also called the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, is a left-wing ethnic nationalist paramilitar ...

(TPLF) occupation of the Amharan town of Nefas Mewcha. Fighters from Tigray committed heinous crimes against humanity against women including

mass rape Mass sexual assault is the collective sexual assault of individuals in public by a group. Typically acting under the protective cover of large gatherings, victims have reported being groped, stripped, beaten, bitten, penetrated and raped. Egy ...

, gang rape, physical and verbal assaults, on top of looting medical facilities and private property.

Demographics

Based on figures from the

Central Statistical Agency The Central Statistical Agency (CSA; Amharic: ማዕከላዊ ስታቲስቲክስ ኤጀንሲ) is an agency of the government of Ethiopia designated to provide all surveys and censuses for that country used to monitor economic and social growth ...

in 2005, Nefas Mewcha has an estimated total population of 18,691, of whom 9,009 are men and 9,682 were women.CSA 2005 National Statistics
, Table B.4 The 1994 census reported this town had a total population of 10,808, of whom 4,780 were men and 6,068 were women.

Notes

{{reflist, refs= {{cite web , title= Ethiopia: Survivors of TPLF attack in Amhara describe gang rape, looting and physical assaults , website=

, date = 2021-11-09 , url = https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/11/ethiopia-survivors-of-tplf-attack-in-amhara-describe-gang-rape-looting-and-physical-assaults , access-date = 2021-11-09 , archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20211110053507/https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/11/ethiopia-survivors-of-tplf-attack-in-amhara-describe-gang-rape-looting-and-physical-assaults , archive-date= 2021-11-10 , url-status=live Populated places in the Amhara Region