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12-03-2025
AWRA AMBA, ETHIOPIA: Aregash Nuru pointed at the rolling green landscape in Ethiopia’s central Amhara region. “We used to watch sunset from the hills,” she said with a sigh, “but no more.”
These days, it is too dangerous to risk leaving the safety of the village, according to Nuru, a 30-year-old accountant and local tour guide. Gunshots can sometimes be heard from afar. Locals have been kidnapped. Schools have been forced to shut.
“The political situation has changed everything,” added Nuru, staring down at the ground in sadness.
For decades, violent insecurity and conflict have struck many parts of Ethiopia none more so than during the Tigray conflict between 2020 and 2022, which led to the deaths of some 600,000 people in the East African nation, estimates have found but one place that had remained relatively untouched was the village of Awra Amba, set in the highlands of Amhara. The community, which was founded in the 1970s, is a pioneering utopian project home to about 600 people who live by strictly egalitarian rules, including the equal division of work by gender.
Over the years, Awra Amba has gained recognition for its efforts, winning awards for its approach to conflict resolution which includes special dispute meetings and democratically-elected committees as well as its emphasis on peace. Officials from the Ethiopian government and international bodies such as the United Nations, the Red Cross and Oxfam have come to observe the community’s famed example.
However, during the past two years, a deadly conflict has taken hold in Amhara, a region home to the UNESCO-protected rock-hewn churches of Lalibela and the historic fortress of Gondar as the armed group Fano has violently clashed with federal government soldiers of the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF).
Since the conflict began in April 2023, after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed attempted to dissolve regional forces into police or federal military, there have been reports of mass gender-based violence and thousands of murders perpetrated by both the ENDF and Fano, who are demanding full control of territory they claim is theirs.
The nonprofit International Crisis Group has called the development an “ominous new war”. Amnesty International has called for global attention to this “human rights crisis” while Human Rights Watch has condemned “war crimes” committed by the ENDF.
“There is a trauma now in the region, there has been devastation,” said Bantayehu Shiferaw Chanie, a research associate at the Centre for International Policy Studies in Ottawa, Canada, who is from Amhara and worked in Ethiopia until July 2023.
In turn, the pacifist community of Awra Amba has been caught up in the crossfire of the spiraling conflict.
Economy upturned
Nuru is a member of the community’s cooperative, which pools all of its income and resources together. They use the funds for projects, including a care home for the elderly, support for orphans and a welfare charity to help people in need but the once-thriving, self-sufficient economy has been turned on its head, Nuru said.
Awra Amba once welcomed thousands of visitors a year domestic and international tourists alike, as well as classes of schoolchildren who could stay at an on-site lodge and buy the community’s products, such as handwoven garments and textiles but overnight, that income has evaporated.
“There used to be many foreigners who came to visit,” said Worksew Mohammed, 25, another former tour guide in Awra Amba. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
