Nearly a month after the ceasefire signed in South Africa, Abiy Ahmed is trying to restore his image with the international community.
Abiy Ahmed's Nobel Peace Prize is a long way off. In December 2019, the Ethiopian Prime Minister received the prestigious award in Oslo, "for his efforts to achieve peace and for international cooperation, in particular for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with Eritrea”. At the time, this prize did not suffer from any challenge in the upper echelons of the Nobel committee.
However, some NGOs had already warned the international community about Ahmed's breaches of freedoms. Thus Reporters Without Borders deplored the lack of freedom of journalists. As for Amnesty International, the NGO assured that the work of the Ethiopian Prime Minister was "far from being finished" and that Abiy Ahmed must "urgently ensure that his government tackles the persistent ethnic tensions which threaten the country. 'instability and new violations of human rights'.
Events proved Amnesty International right, which had almost anticipated the events in Tigray. Awol Allo, a law professor at Keele University, says Abiy Ahmed “expelled all members of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) from the cabinet. He then postponed the elections. The TPLF then organized elections in Tigray. They claimed not to recognize him. He in turn claimed that he did not recognize them, and that is what led to the war”. A war that the Ethiopian Prime Minister has continued to fuel.
Interviews with his ex-partners
Since then, the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize winner has become a pariah for the international community. The United States, for example, sanctioned Ethiopia in May 2021. Step by step, the ruler has lost most of his allies, despite an attempt to hold talks with Russia. In addition to Washington, Europe has sided with Sudan and Egypt, both at odds with Abiy Ahmed.
But the ceasefire agreement, which was signed on November 2 in South Africa, should allow Abiy Ahmed to try to renew ties with his former Western partners. Ethiopian diplomacy took advantage of this agreement to relaunch its relations with European capitals and the United States.
Abiy Ahmed has indeed multiplied meetings with Western leaders, including US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The Ethiopian Prime Minister also held talks with his Israeli counterpart, Netanyahu. But the high point of this takeover operation remains Monday's meeting with United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
All of Abiy Ahmed's former partners are waiting for the Ethiopian Prime Minister to keep his promises. Even he knows it will be difficult: “Now we have to keep our word, he explains, and work hard to avoid problems”. Underlying his statements, Ahmed warned that the ceasefire would not settle the territorial disagreements around Tigray.