By Gabriella Jozwiak
For four years Ashebu Haguzum, 45, has been waiting. When war broke out in the northernmost Ethiopian region of Tigray in 2020, he and his family fled 300 kilometres from their home in Mai Kadra, near the Sudanese border, to the Tigrayan capital of Mekelle. Ever since they have lived in a camp for internally displaced people (IDPs), despite the fact the war ended in 2022. They have survived on handouts in cramped and unsanitary conditions. They are desperate to go back home.
“Before the war, I was rich,” says the father of four. He formerly employed 15 people on his farm, which was well equipped with machinery. “I had my own driver. I helped other people.”
Ashebu’s family occupies a section of a classroom at the May Wenyi IDP camp, which used to be a high school. Some 3,600 people are currently residing here, with up to 40 people crammed into each room. There are no bathrooms. The beds are infested with bed bugs and fleas. Viruses spread easily.
Ashebu saved his family by sending them to Mekelle in a lorry. He followed later on foot. “I saw 50 dead bodies on the way,” he recalls. “It’s something I will never forget.”
His wife Letehewat, 32, sits to one side of him cradling their four-month-old son Ma’rk. Her father may be among the dead, Ashebu says. He has been missing since militia came to his house and took him away. Letehewat says little but looks out of the dirty window and tips her chin up, as if trying to stop the flow of tears down her cheeks.
Meanwhile, another son, three-year-old Amanuel, lies on a bed almost motionless. His two older siblings are elsewhere in the school. Throughout our conversation, Amanuel barely moves – so unlike most tearaway toddlers. But he has been born into a situation of waiting, with little space for playfulness.
“Living here – it is not something I can compare to my life before,” Ashebu tells Equal Times. “Now we live in a place where there is nothing. If the children ask for bread, we cannot provide it. To see my children in this situation makes me wish I had never been born.”
"Wellsprings of Bitterness and Resentment"
The war displaced 2.5 million Tigrayans from their homes; to date, only 1.5 million have returned. But the Western Zone, where Haguzum’s family used to live, remains occupied by forces from the neighbouring Ethiopian region of Amhara. The Tigray conflict was fought between the Ethiopian federal government and Tigray’s ruling political party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), but other countries and regions joined both sides. Troops from Eritrea and Somalia, as well as the regions of Amhara and Afar, backed the Ethiopian National Defence Force amongst other warring parties. These allied troops did not sign the November 2022 peace agreement.
The reasons for the war differ depending on who you ask. In the 2023 book Understanding Ethiopia’s Tigray War, Martin Plaut and Sarah Vaughan describe the war’s causes as drawing “on wellsprings of bitterness and resentment deep in collective memories of the history and politics of the region”. A pro-federal government argument holds that the TPLF was looking to reinstate its power (from 1995 to 2012 Ethiopia had a TPLF prime minister, Meles Zenawi). But relations between the party and current non-TPLF Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed soured after he was elected in 2018. Meanwhile, a pro-Tigrayan argument claims the federal government launched a genocidal war against the region, intending to wipe out the ethnic group.
Whatever the reasons, the violence that followed left an estimated 600,000 people dead. Since the ceasefire, Tigray has struggled to recover. Fighting damaged and destroyed infrastructure, including industries, health services and education settings. Ethiopia’s finance minister has estimated the cost of reconstruction to be US$20 billion.
As a result, poverty levels have soared from 27 per cent in 2019 to 92 per cent of the population in 2022, according to the Tigray Statistical Agency (TSA). The total crop harvest for the region has reduced by almost three quarters, which has caused high inflation of food prices.
Unemployment has more than quadrupled since the beginning of the war. Current levels are unknown as the TSA has not yet completed its assessment survey, but it sent Equal Times statistics showing the unemployment rate had risen from 17 per cent in 2019 to 74.1 per cent in 2022.
To make matters worse, climate change in the Horn of Africa had caused the region’s worst drought for 40 years. Agriculture traditionally provides a living for 80 per cent of Ethiopia’s population. As well as farms, equipment and essentials such as seed and fertilizer being decimated by the war, the lack of rainwater has turned pastures to deserts. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network currently categorises almost all of Tigray as ‘emergency’ or ‘crisis’ for food insecurity. The regional government estimates that 4.5 million people are dependent on food aid.
Factories Destroyed and Thousands of Jobs Lost
In 2020, just before the start of the war, Ethiopia had one of the fastest growing economies in the world. At that time it published a national Plan of Action for Job Creation to deliver jobs to the more than two million youths entering the labour market each year. For over a decade there has been a lot of focus on Ethiopia’s burgeoning position as a hub for global textile and garment factories but the war has had an impact on the sector (which in 2021 represented over 45 per cent of all manufacturing earnings in the country), particularly in Tigray.
Paule France Ndessomin, IndustriALL Global Union regional secretary for Sub Saharan Africa, tells Equal Times that the textile and garment factories in Tigray need investment and reconstruction. “The war in Tigray caused anguish amongst the workers as their factories were destroyed while others closed shop and thousands of jobs were lost,” she says.
Angesom Gebreyohannes, president of the Industrial Federation of Textile Leather Garment Workers Trade Union, which is affiliated to IndustriALL, said some factories have begun to reopen, but that many workers were not returning to their jobs. He gave the example of the Almeda Garment factory in Adwa Town, which formerly employed more than 7,500 workers, but at the time of speaking to Equal Times in December 2024, only 1,200 had returned. “When production is low only 500 workers are asked to report for duty,” he says. “Further, at MAA Garment and Textiles Factory near Mekelle, workers are owed over 41 months in unpaid wages and the court has ordered that the workers be paid but the employer is appealing against the ruling.”
Since the war ended, the federal government is providing little money for reconstruction or job creation, according to regional government officials in Tigray. One, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of damaging relations with the federal government, says his department had reported levels of needs to the capital Addis Ababa, but had not yet received a response. “At the national level, there are not enough resources,” he says. “The economic system has collapsed.”
He adds that getting IDPs back to their homes and back to work is important, as is ending the occupation of previously productive areas of the region: “These productive people are still in camps so this is an additional burden for the region.”
Humanitarian Support
Tigray’s interim government is relying on humanitarian organisations for support, according to the anonymous official. At May Wenyi, the Catholic mission Daughters of Charity (DOC), has supported IDPs since 2020. It delivers psychological support to traumatised residents and tries to help them earn money.
“Currently our biggest work is in rehabilitating and empowering vulnerable women – socially and economically,” says head of DOC Mekelle, Sister Medhin Tesfay. Many women have been left widowed by the war. “We have supported 300 women from IDP centres with basic business skills and entrepreneurship training, and provided them with seed capital to start small ventures that can help them earn liveable wages,” she says.
Tesfay gives the example of one woman who is among an estimated 100,000 to have been raped during the conflict. After six months of intensive psychiatric treatment, DOC gave her training and funding to open a food vending business. But starting an enterprise in the current economic climate is challenging. “The businesses cannot handle even small shocks to the economy and the women are discouraged after months of hard work with little growth,” Tesfay says. “Now with rising inflation rates they find it hard to remain competitive.”
Despite this, providing IDPs with livelihood skills is important. “Getting out of bed every morning and having something to work towards has a significant impact on their mental health,” says Tesfay.
DOC has partnered with the British charity Mary’s Meals International (MMI) to provide school meals since 2017. When the war broke out, schools closed and MMI pivoted its food supply to IDPs.
Director of programme affiliates and partners Alex Keay recently visited the camps and found limited economic opportunities. “Because there are so many displaced people in the camps, it’s a competitive market. There may be situations where people can find work, but it is based a long distance from the camp and so travel costs are prohibitive.”
This situation has forced tens of thousands of young people to leave Ethiopia in search of work elsewhere. One survey by the Tigray’s Youth Affairs Bureau found that 29,600 15- to 35-year-olds had left since the war ended. But this assessment only covers just over half of Tigray’s districts. “Young people will leave the region and there won’t be anyone left to rebuild Tigray,” says its head Haish Subagadis.
The migrants’ journeys are dangerous and often end in disaster, Subagadis explains. Traffickers lead them either to Yemen, with the goal of reaching Saudi Arabia, or through Sudan towards Libya and onto Europe (although this route is rarer now because of conflict in Sudan). The traffickers charge one million Ethiopian Birr (approximately US$8260) for the journey. “If they do not get the money, the traffickers make them stay in a camp,” Subagadis explains. “They are under their control unless they pay.”
Fees rise over time. Migrants have reported inhumane living conditions, beatings and torture. Many simply disappear. Migration has grown so acutely that in June, the International Labour Organization held three days of training on mitigating the risks of irregular migration in Mekelle, in collaboration with the federal Ministry of Labour and Skills.
Tackling Youth Unemployment
Youth unemployment is an Ethiopia-wide problem. Its urban youth unemployment rate is 26 per cent, according to the NGO Amref Health Africa, which leads a scheme called Kefeta that has supported two million young people aged 15 to 29 in 18 cities across Ethiopia. But the challenges facing conflict-affected young people and IDPs are more complex, according to regional programme officer Kellali Tsegay Alemu.
Amref has only operated in Mekelle in Tigray for a year, as a result of the conflict. A study conducted by the Tigray Youth Association found that 81 per cent of people aged 15 to 35 in the Tigray region are currently unemployed. There is a lack of access to financial opportunities and it is difficult to deliver support to young people as youth centres have been looted or damaged, Alemu says.
His colleague, senior youth service advisor Hermon Amare Abay, has supported IDPs living in camps. She says resettlement issues are beyond the organisation’s control: “It lies with the government”. Meanwhile she has tried to respond to people’s basic needs: food, shelter and mental health. One screening of 100 individuals revealed 80 per cent suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. “It’s very complicated to solve mental health issues when one’s livelihood is still in question,” says Abay.
Kefeta chief of party Chalachew Tiruneh Alemu says that more investment is needed to get young people back into economic activity. Factories need rebuilding and business enterprises need to be created. Many young people in Tigray and in the neighbouring region of Amhara, where conflict is still ongoing, want to start small businesses. But the organisation does not have the resources to provide them with the capital. “But what we can do is to try to change their mindset,” says Alemu.
Credit: Equal Times