Internal Border Delineations and Contested Lands in Post-1991 Ethiopia: The Case of Tigray-Amhara Border Disputes

Abstract

Post 1995 Ethiopia has become an era of interstate border disputes between regional states of the federation over contested lands. These disputes have become a threat to national cohesion and stability of the country as they are becoming sometimes violent. And, in the last five years the dispute between the Tigray and Amhara regional states over Raya and Wolkait lands is a good example for such sort of disputes. Thus, this exploratory study aimed to investigate how the existing constitutional and institutional frameworks effectively resolve border conflicts between the Tigray and Amhara Regional States, how internal border demarcations affect the relationships, cooperation, and peaceful coexistence of the two communities, how the land/boundary dispute between Tigray and Amhara affects the effective implementation of the Pretoria Peace Agreement signed between the TPLF and FDRE government on November 2, 2022, in South Africa to end the two-year civil war in North Ethiopia as well as how demobilizing and reintegrating paramilitary forces that play a role in minimizing the claim of land in dispute. To this end, an a semi-structured interview was conducted with purposively selected participants as well as secondary sources were thoroughly referred to collect all necessary data to meet the study objectives. Moreover, the FDRE Constitution spells out ethnicity and other social values as a baseline to demarcate the internal border, but there have been some claims and contested lands across the country throughout the years since 1991. One of the core principles instituted by the constitution is the formation of states along ethnic lines where states are delimited on the basis of settlement patterns, language, identity and consent of the concerned people. The findings of this study showed that the mandated body in the HoF is infective to solve the Welkait and Raya case with the existing constitutional and institutional frameworks. Moreover, the question of impartiality and being free from any political influence are another huge factor which could hamper the case to entertain by the institution independently. In addition to this, the Pretoria peace agreement and its effective implementation faced an obstacle by refusing regional forces not to disarm and remain the accord in danger. Therefore, the current political tension and mistrust among people can be addressed through public to public discussion and settle their differences in proper way are the way forward of the study