Tag Archives internally displaced persons

Humanitarian Observatories Series | Why it’s crucial for internally displaced persons to participate in the peace process following Ethiopia’s Oromia Conflict

Like the conflict in Tigray, one of the gravest consequences of the conflict in Ethiopia’s Oromia region has been the disastrous level of internal displacement it has given rise to. In this blog, Alemayehu B. Hordofa provides an overview of the situation of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Oromia and shows why ensuring their rights should be at the heart of the peace process in the region. He contends that the peace process in Oromia should give adequate space to the viewpoints of at-risk populations, including IDPs, and that including their concerns in a peace agreement is critical for safeguarding sustainable peace and preventing future conflict-induced displacements.

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The political transition that occurred in Ethiopia in 2018 was hoped to bring peace to this deeply divided country; however, guns failed to be silenced, and Ethiopia continues to be ravaged by several conflicts that have uprooted millions of civilians from their homes. One such conflict is the one being waged in Oromia, the largest of the country’s eleven regions stretching across central, western, and southern Ethiopia.

The conflict has its roots in decades-old clashes between the Ethiopian government and the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), a nationalist political party established in 1973 to struggle for the right to self-determination of the Oromo people. The party was proclaimed a terrorist organization under the country’s former draconian Anti-terrorism Proclamation, and its leaders lived in exile in Eritrea until their return following the political transition in 2018. After the transition, the Ethiopian parliament lifted the OLF’s terrorist label and subsequently made significant amendments to the previous repressive anti-terrorism law. The new administration also signed the Asmara Agreement with the OLF and released political prisoners.

All these actions seemed to mark the start of a period of peace and stability for people whose livelihoods had been disrupted because of the decades-long conflict. But despite efforts to peacefully end the conflict, it flared up again shortly after the OLF leadership’s return to Ethiopia. This happened as the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), the military wing of the OLF, accused the Ethiopian government of failing to address major political demands made by the Oromo people. It subsequently refused to lay down arms, severed its relationship with the OLF, and continued its insurgencies, first in western and southern Oromia and then also in its central and northern parts following the military void created by the Tigray conflict.

This led to the short lifespan of the Asmara Agreement, as the government soon reverted to verbal clashes with the OLF and open military confrontation with the OLA. Below, I argue that durable peace can be ensured only by heeding the demands of the millions of IDPs that have not been met by the warring parties in their previous agreement, which has failed to truly resolve anything, and which does not seem to be at the center of the two parties’ ongoing negotiation.

 

How peace was sought—and why it proved ineffective

According to the 2023 Global Report on Internal Displacement, Ethiopia is the country in Africa with the second-highest number of IDPs after the DRC, with some 3.8 million people displaced. Conflict is the main driver of displacement, both at the national level and in the Oromia region. The latest data from OCHA show that over 800,000 people have been displaced in Western Oromia alone due to conflict. The number of people displaced because of conflict in the whole of Oromia is much larger, but displacement data is difficult to access.

The devastating impact of the ongoing conflict in Oromia compelled personalities, both inside and outside the government, to advocate for a peaceful solution of the Oromia conflict in a bid to stop displacement. In December last year, MPs from Oromia called on the Ethiopian Prime Minister to reach a peaceful settlement with the rebels, and opposition parties and independent civil society organizations made the same demands. The conflict in Oromia became such an important human rights and security issue that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stressed the need to end the “ongoing instability in the Oromia region” in his talks with the Ethiopian prime minister earlier this year.

Despite these internal and external pressures, the need to repair the crippled economy, and the increasing intensity threshold of the conflict, efforts to enter into a peace agreement remain futile. The first round of negotiations, mediated by Kenya and Norway, took place between April 24 and May 2 this year in Zanzibar and ended with no agreement having been reached to cease the hostilities. The two parties subsequently released similar statements describing the ‘unfortunate’ situation, claiming that “it was not possible to reach an agreement on some issues” during the first round of negotiations, and vowing to continue the negotiations to resolve the conflict “permanently and peacefully.”

 

No peace is possible without heeding the demands of IDPs

One of the main reasons for the failure of the Asmara agreement is its top-down orientation and failure to adequately engage the vast number of people who became victims of the impacts of the conflict, including the IDPs.[1] The agreement brought the political leaders of the two warring parties to the negotiation table without heeding the victims’ demands. The current peace process should learn from the failure of its predecessor and take practical measures to address the rights of IDPs, including the right to obtain sustainable solutions in the form of return, resettlement, or local integration; restoration of their damaged properties and livelihoods; and reinstatement of the provisions of social services in displacement or resettlement areas. These measures would break the conflict cycle, realize inclusiveness, ensure local ownership, and address vulnerability that could otherwise led to long-lasting instability and undermine the success of the process.

For example, the conflict between the government forces and OLA in the Horo Guduru Wollega Zone of the Oromia region was intersected with cross-border attacks against civilians by militias and armed vigilante groups from the neighbouring Amhara region, causing the large-scale displacement of civilians and the destruction of civilian properties. Likewise, many IDPs from western Oromia have crossed regional administrative borders to seek protection and assistance in other regions out of the fear of being targeted along ethnic lines. Other IDPs were forced to flee their homes out of fear of human rights violations by the government’s security forces.

The peace process should address the root causes that triggered these cross-border attacks on civilians, ethnic targeting, and human rights violations. It should comprehensively respond to these issues; not integrating the interests and rights of these IDPs in the peace process would detrimentally affect its success and durability.

Indeed, conversations I had with IDPs confirmed the importance of the peace process for the millions of Ethiopians living in or displaced from conflict areas in Oromia. For example, Muluneh (name changed)[2], who used to lead an independent life as a local businessperson and has now become an IDP because of the conflict in Oromia, explained:

“If the peace process is to become a reality, it must provide for some tangible mechanisms to address our [IDPs’] needs and interests. We [IDPs] endure the brunt of conflict in the region, having lost all our belongings and fled to save our lives. Any viable peace process in the region should address the root causes of the problems that made us vulnerable in the first place. We need compensation for our property looted, burned, and destroyed.”

Similar demands were made by other IDPs and human rights organizations to prevent arbitrary displacement, provide protection for IDPs and peacefully end the conflict in Oromia. The Ethiopian Humanitarian Observatory organized its second workshop on the topic of ‘Effective Governance Architecture for Managing Responses to Internal Displacement: The Role of Displacement Affected Communities and Humanitarian Organizations’ in March this year, during which workshop participants confirmed the low level of IDPs’ participation in humanitarian, development, and peace processes and underscored the positive correlation between IDPs’ participation, the effectiveness of humanitarian aid, and the sustainability of peace. Yet, these victims have not been consulted at any stage of the peace process in Oromia, their right to a remedy for their destroyed livelihoods has not been acknowledged, and the restoration of their property rights has not been prioritized.

Thus, it becomes clear that the participation of IDPs in the peace process is a cornerstone in ensuring its sustainability, warranting local ownership, and improving the implementation of its terms. The peace process must involve IDPs at all stages, and any potential peace agreement must include measures to ensure the specific human rights of IDPs and must reflect their interests. It must give a mandate for CSOs’ following up and monitoring of its enforcement.

Lastly, accountability is another cornerstone for lasting peace in the region. Peace becomes durable when it is combined with accountability and reparations. Accountability for causing, contributing to, or failing to address internal displacement should be an integral part of the peace process in Oromia.


[1] The other reasons include a lack of transparency in the negotiation process, as the terms of the agreement remain opaque until today and due to the absence of spaces for CSOs’ engagement in its implementation and monitoring.

[2] I spoke to Muluneh (name changed) in the town of Burayu in the last week of February as part of my efforts to define the focus of the Ethiopian Humanitarian Observatory that forms part of the ISS-hosted ‘Humanitarian Governance: Accountability, Advocacy, Alternatives’ project. Just a few days prior, the president of Oromia at a regional council meeting revealed, for the first time, the government’s intention to make peace with the OLA.


The post is part of the humanitarian observatories series that received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme [Advance grant number 884139].”



Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

 

Alemayehu B. Hordofa is a Ph.D. researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR). He obtained his LLM in International Human Rights Law from the Irish Center for Human Rights (ICHR), University of Galway, Ireland. He is currently working on the role of Civil Society Organizations and Crisis-affected People to shape humanitarian governance ‘from below’ in the context of the humanitarian response to IDPs in Ethiopia. His research interests lie in forced displacement, localization of humanitarian aid, transitional justice, and the development of CSOs in Ethiopia.

 

 

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The credibility problem of United Nations official statistics on Internally Displaced Persons by Gloria Nguya and Dirk-Jan Koch

Our research, notably Gloria Nguya’s PhD research, which she recently defended at the ISS, focused on Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in urban settings in eastern DRC, particularly Bukavu and Goma. Bukavu and Goma are provincial capitals of the Kivus with about 25 years of instability. According to the latest United Nations figures there are exactly 25.619 IDPs in Bukavu[1]. These very precise figures have surprised us, because when we started our field research we noted that there was a large confusion about who should be counted as an IDP. During our research we found people who considered themselves IDPs, even though they were just regular migrants according to official definitions. Others who thought they weren’t IDPs were actually IDPs according to these official definitions. In this blog we single out one key crucial question to which there are so many contradicting responses: ‘When is somebody no longer an IDP?’.


During the field research, we encountered confusions on when somebody is no longer an IDP. Whereas some actors, such as local NGOs, argued that somebody couldn’t be labelled an IDP anymore if he or she could rent a house, others argued that one remains an IDP as long as one has specific unmet needs related to their displacement. Partly because of this problem of identifying IDPs in urban areas, we noticed that virtually all international organizations stopped targeting IDPs in their urban programming altogether. They would focus only on general vulnerability criteria, such as a housing situation. They omitted specific IDP needs related to their displacement status, such as trauma, access to documents or to remedy. This is worrying, as the plight of IDPs is an important element used by agencies to attract attention and funding.

Overall, the main inconsistency relates to methodologies: whereas in reality there are substantial differences in when an IDP is counted as such by humanitarian actors in the field (especially in urban areas), the UN data gloss over these differences. To arrive at the number of 25.619 IDPs the UN only included people that were displaced in 2016, 2017 and 2018. So, if you are a displaced person from 2015 or before, you are no longer counted in the statistics. This is too bad for you; however, the interesting thing is that as such this cut-off point goes against the definition that the UN itself supports. The Guiding Principles on internal displacement do not mention anything about a duration, quite to the contrary: an IDP remains an IDP as long as no durable solution has been achieved (global report on internal displacement 2019, p. 68). Well, for the IDPs in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) these principles do not appear to hold: IDPs prior to 2016 in the DRC fall hence between stools.

We do not argue that the numbers provided by the UN are too high, or too low: we also do not know. In our research we noticed that to determine if somebody is an IDP according to the UN definition one needs to engage in conversations with the potential IDP in terms of the origin of the move, their needs or issues. The methodology that the UN has used, notably asking key informants, such as neighborhood leaders, instead of potential IDPs themselves, isn’t accurate enough according to us.

Luckily there is an interesting initiative from the United Nations Statistical Commission. They have launched an Expert Group on Refugee and IDP statistics in 2016, who finished their first report. Their sobering finding is that, while agreement on the IDP definition exists, ‘less agreement exists on when an IDP should stop being counted as displaced. Most states do not follow the definition and framework […] variations in state practice are widespread, making international comparability difficult.’ In 2020 they should have finished their guidelines (amongst other on how to measure ‘durable solutions’) and have started capacity building to roll them out (IMDC, 2019, p.56).  So, there is a hope that better IDP statistics will become available in the future if the United Nations and their backers follow through on their intentions.

To conclude, we feel that instead of creating some kind of fake sense of certainty, the United Nations may better admit that they only have rough guesses on the number of IDPs. We argue this because the confusion about IDP numbers does not only affect programming, but it also affects the relationship between the host government and the humanitarian actors, which has repercussions on the sustainability of humanitarian efforts on the ground. The DRC government even boycotted the DRC pledging conference in 2018 because the numbers weren’t correct, ‘the high numbers of displaced people are frightening investors, and the country is much more dependent on investment for development than development aid’ said the DR Congo’s Minister of Communications. By being more transparent about the challenges of IDP statistics, the UN has a clear argument about why more investments are needed in creating better displacement monitoring guidelines and mechanisms. Until these are in place, it is only better to have a moratorium on coming up with specific IDP numbers.


[1] https://displacement.iom.int/node/3911, p.2


About the authors:

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Gloria Nguya has just completed her PhD in livelihoods strategies of Internally Displaced Persons in Urban Eastern DRC at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam.

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Dirk-Jan Koch is professor by special appointment for International Trade and Development Cooperation at the Radboud Univeristy in Nijmegen and Chief Science Officer at the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs.