Fragile Truce: Why Ethiopia's Tigray faces ‘negative peace' four years after Pretoria pact
Redwan Hussein (left), representative of the Ethiopian government, and Getachew Reda (right), representative of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), sign a peace agreement between the two parties to resolve conflict in Ethiopia at the Department of International Relations and Cooperation offices in Pretoria, South Africa on November 2, 2022.
Four years after the Pretoria Peace Agreement, Ethiopia is grappling with what analysts describe as ‘negative peace’ in Tigray. A new report by the Pan-African Agenda Institute warns that while the truce brokered in November 2022 halted large-scale fighting, it has failed to deliver lasting stability.
The Pretoria Peace Agreement, mediated by the African Union in November 2022, temporarily silenced guns in Tigray. It brought government forces and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) to a halt, a dangerous trajectory. For a conflict that claimed nearly 600,000 lives, displaced two million people, and caused economic losses of up to $145 billion, the agreement was a welcome respite.
