Two months before the legislative and municipal elections in Ethiopia, tensions are not diminishing. In March, clashes between Amhara and Oromo, the country’s two main ethnic groups, left more than 300 dead, according to figures from a federal official.
The violence affected two areas from the Amhara region North Shewa and the north of the country. It is the attack on an imam in front of a mosque in Oromo’s special zone that would have triggered these gatherings between communities, according to a local official, Endale Haile, the chief mediator in Ethiopia.
Clashes exacerbated by political instability explain Eloi Ficquet, a researcher at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales: “What we are seeing is a form of division of authority with a resurgence across the country. took place last year, which has been postponed, with a power that one wonders if it is powerless to regulate these tensions.Suddenly, it is the passions, the local jealousy, the religious and cultural divisions that are expressed in the most angry way while there is a society where the units for conflict resolution, negotiation, balance of power exist, but at present they seem to have failed quite a bit. “
