Precipitation in awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Abiy Ahmed?

Violence continues unabated in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia. Although Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced the withdrawal of Eritrean troops on Friday, the reports coming from the region are appalling. "Women say they have been raped by armed actors, they also told stories of gang rapes, rapes in front of their own family members and men forced to rape their own family members under threat of violence," said Wafaa Said, UN aid coordinator in Ethiopia. In just five clinics in Tigray alone, 516 cases of sexual assault have been recorded, although the actual numbers could be much higher "as most health facilities are not functioning," Said added. 

These war crimes are part of the fighting between Ethiopian government troops and the Tigray People's Liberation Front. The conflict began in November and has been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. Since then, Abiy Ahmed's government has attacked Tigray militarily. In November it shelled the regional capital, Mekele, with heavy artillery. According to the regional government, it attacked "civilian sites and infrastructure". Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staff working in the area have also reported the killing of civilians by government soldiers. Tigray is also home to a large number of refugees from Eritrea and Sudan, the countries bordering the northern Ethiopian region. The UN and the United Arab Emirates have sent humanitarian aid to try to alleviate the effects of the war on the displaced people.

Since 1991, the Ethiopian presidency has been controlled by the Tigray ethnic group, until 2018, when Abiy Ahmed became prime minister. Ahmed is originally from the Oromia region, the largest ethnic region in the country. Alongside Ethiopian government troops, forces from Eritrea, an ally of Ahmed's government, are also fighting. According to witnesses in Tigray, Eritrean troops have killed, raped, looted and tortured. The presence of these foreign troops in the country has been condemned internationally. From Washington, the State Department has insisted that "the troops must be withdrawn immediately". The UN has also called on Eritrea to withdraw its troops from the region. On Friday, Abiy Ahmed said in a statement on Twitter that Eritrean troops would leave Tigray. 

Abiy Ahmed is a politician who is creating a lot of controversy around his Nobel Peace Prize. In 2019 he received the award for "achieving peace and international cooperation and in particular for his decisive initiative to resolve the conflict with neighbouring Eritrea". However, his latest actions in the Tigray region cast doubt on whether he really deserved such an honourable award. "Abiy Ahmed won the Nobel Prize for his ability to stop the conflict with Eritrea, but that did not stop him from committing war crimes against his opponents in the Tigray region," says Heba al-Bashbishi, a political science professor in Cairo. He also believes that the international community was "misled" by Abiy Ahmed and did not take into account the possibility of internal conflicts caused by the multitude of ethnicities cohabiting in Ethiopia. Abdel Rahaman Abu Kris, a professor at the Diplomatic Institute of the Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, also believes that the international community and Nobel laureates "were hasty in awarding him the prize". 

However, Abiy Ahmed is not the only contemporary politician to generate controversy over his Nobel Prize. Barack Obama's recognition of his commitment to peace was also highly questioned because of his foreign policy in the Middle East. The decision to award the prize to Myanmar politician Aung San Suu Kyi also created controversy over her involvement in the Rohingya genocide.