Ethiopia preparing vote to resolve – Tigray-Amhara conflict

The government says that the conflict between Ethiopia’s Amhara and Tigray regions will be resolved by holding a vote where people can decide on the result.

The group has promised to disturb the delicate calm after the war in Tigray ended a year ago.

Before the conflict in 2020, Tigray had control over the rich and fertile lands. However, the Amhara forces took over and gained control of these lands.

Rights organizations have accused the forces of clearing out particular ethnic groups in the areas that they are arguing over.

The Amhara regional government said the accusations were not true.

The disputed areas, that are close to the border between Ethiopia and Sudan, caused a lot of problems during the two-year conflict between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the government of Ethiopia.

The fighting stopped after a peace deal was signed in South Africa last November.

Many of the one million people who are forced to live in temporary camps in Tigray have left the areas where there is fighting.

The Amhara government says that Tigray took control of the territory in the 1990s without permission when the TPLF was the main political group in Ethiopia.

Last year, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch wrote a long report. In the report, they said that after talking to people, they found proof that the fighting in the disputed places caused some of the worst crimes. These areas were mostly not paid attention to.

Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who is representing the African Union, stated that approximately 600,000 individuals lost their lives throughout the conflict. Scientists believe that the large number of civilian deaths can be attributed to conflict, hunger, and limited access to medical treatment.

In Monday’s statement evaluating the year since the peace deal, the government said that the people who were forced to leave their homes would be able to go back, and the national military would be in charge of keeping the local area safe.

The government says they have made a decision on how to solve the problem of the disputed areas that will benefit everyone involved.

The government’s communication service said that they have set up a plan for a referendum to take place, following the rules of the constitution.

We don’t know when the referendum will take place.

The message, which was published in both Amharic and English, also praised the advancements made in the past year. These advancements include the establishment of a temporary administration in Tigray. However, it claimed that the government has been moving slowly in fully implementing the peace agreement.

It also indicated that the government was still keeping fighters even though they agreed to give up their weapons.

The Tigrayan forces have given up their big weapons, but they still have small and light guns. The TPLF said last week that the ceasefire was not fully followed because many people were still forced to leave their homes.

This is happening while there is a lot of fighting between soldiers from Ethiopia and local groups in many areas of the Amhara region.

The fighting started in April when the national government told regional forces and armed groups to give up their weapons.

Soldiers from the Fano militia claim that they have taken control of a number of towns in Ethiopia’s second largest region. The government has not said anything about the claims yet.

In August, armed groups took over some of the region’s big cities for a short time. They even managed to capture an airport in the old town of Lalibela, but the military forced them to leave.

The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) says that the government forces have done bad things to people’s rights when fighting with Fano rebels.

The Ethiopian government disagreed with the EHRC report and said it was not fair.

Western countries like Britain and the US have asked for a conversation to happen.