Before It Is Too Late — A Call to All Ethiopians for Unity, Civilian Protection, and a Shared Democratic Future

Prepared as a scholarly policy and advocacy paper for Ethiopian civic leaders, democratic forces, religious institutions, diaspora organizations, intellectuals, youth, women, human-rights advocates, opposition actors, journalists, and concerned citizens before the June 1 election.

Amsal Woreta

A Call to All Ethiopians for Unity, Civilian Protection, and a Shared Democratic Future

PART I

Ethiopia at the Brink: Why the June 1 Election Is Not Normal

Includes: Executive Summary; I. Purpose, Method, and Scope; II. Ethiopia’s National Crisis: More Than an Election

Executive Summary

Ethiopia stands at one of the most dangerous political moments in its modern history. The approaching June 1 election is not merely a routine electoral event. It is taking place in a country marked by armed conflict, displacement, mass fear, shrinking civic space, weakened institutions, and deep mistrust among communities. In such a context, an election can either open a path toward negotiated national renewal or become a mechanism through which power is combined, dissent is criminalized, and authoritarian rule is given the appearance of democratic legitimacy.

This paper argues that the crisis facing Ethiopia is national, not ethnic in isolation. The Amhara crisis is urgent and must be named clearly because Amhara civilians have faced grave violence, displacement, detention, fear, and political vulnerability. But Ethiopia’s danger does not end with the Amhara. A state that can govern one region through fear can govern every region through fear. A political order that can silence journalists, detain opposition figures, weaken civic organizations, militarize disputes, and treat dissent as treason will not spare Oromo, Tigrayan, Somali, Afar, Sidama, Gurage, Gambella, Benishangul-Gumuz, Wolayta, Harari, or any other Ethiopian community when they demand dignity, justice, or representation.

The central warning of this paper is simple: if Ethiopians stay divided while authoritarian consolidation deepens, no ethnic group will be safe. The tools used today against one community can be used tomorrow against another. The drone, the prison, the propaganda machine, the emergency decree, the party-state structure, the captured institution, the selective court, and the controlled election do not belong permanently to one battlefield. Once normalized, they become instruments of rule over the entire society.

This paper therefore calls on Ethiopians to reject three destructive traps. The first is competitive victimhood, in which communities deny each other’s suffering instead of recognizing a shared danger. The second is ethnic fatalism, the belief that Ethiopia’s peoples are destined to fear and fight one another forever. The third is authoritarian dependency, the dangerous illusion that a strongman can provide stability while dismantling the very institutions that protect citizens from arbitrary power.

The paper proposes a different path: a national democratic covenant rooted in equal citizenship, civilian protection, constitutional reform, transitional justice, freedom of movement, freedom of expression, accountable security institutions, and a political settlement that protects all communities without reducing citizens to ethnic categories. It calls for immediate coordination among Ethiopian democratic forces before the election becomes a turning point toward long-term dictatorship.

The choice before Ethiopia is not between Amhara survival and Ethiopian unity. It is not between Oromo dignity and Ethiopian citizenship. It is not between Tigrayan justice and national reconciliation. The real choice is between authoritarian fragmentation and democratic coexistence.

I. Purpose, Method, and Scope

This paper is written as both a warning and a constructive proposal. It warns that Ethiopia is moving toward deeper authoritarian consolidation at a moment when elections should be opening space for accountability, not closing it. It also proposes a framework for national unity that does not erase the suffering of any community but instead places every community’s security within a shared democratic project.

The paper is not written to defend one ethnic group at the expense of another. It is written from the conviction that Ethiopia cannot be saved by denial, selective outrage, or propaganda. Amhara civilians deserve protection. Oromo civilians deserve protection. Tigrayan civilians deserve protection. Smaller and historically marginalized communities deserve protection. Journalists, artists, religious leaders, youth, women, farmers, teachers, merchants, civil servants, opposition politicians, and displaced families all deserve protection under law.

The method of this paper is analytical and policy oriented. It draws on recent human-rights reporting, election-related developments, conflict analysis, constitutional scholarship, and the lived political experience of Ethiopians since 1991 and especially since 2018. It distinguishes between documented findings, credible allegations, political interpretation, and normative proposals. This distinction matters because a serious national argument must avoid careless exaggeration while refusing to minimize real suffering.

The scope is national. The Amhara crisis is treated as a major entry point into the condition of the Ethiopian state, but not as the only crisis. The paper therefore examines the Amhara conflict, the broader weakening of constitutional order, the repression of civic space, the dangers of conducting elections under fear, and the urgent need for a multi-ethnic democratic coalition.

II. Ethiopia’s National Crisis: More Than an Election

An election is meaningful only when citizens are free to speak, organize, criticize, campaign, vote, see, and challenge results without fear. Ballots alone do not create democracy. A vote held under intimidation, war, mass detention, media pressure, and institutional imbalance can become a ritual of power rather than an expression of public consent.

Ethiopia’s June 1 election comes at a time when large parts of the country are affected by insecurity, displacement, political exclusion, and unresolved conflict. The National Election Board may administer technical procedures, constituencies, registration systems, and polling processes, but technical administration cannot by itself overcome a deeper legitimacy crisis. When citizens fear the security forces, when opposition parties run under pressure, when journalists are arrested or intimidated, when civil society organizations are restricted, and when communities cannot safely assemble, the democratic meaning of an election is weakened.

The danger is not only that the ruling party may win. In any democracy, parties win and lose. The danger is that an election may be used to convert coercive power into constitutional permanence. When an incumbent controls the security apparatus, dominates state media, captures institutions, weakens independent voices, and governs through fear, electoral victory becomes less a measure of consent than a confirmation of control.

This is why Ethiopians must treat the coming election not simply as a party competition, but as a national constitutional moment. The question is not only who wins seats. The question is whether Ethiopia will still have enough political space after the election for citizens to organize, criticize, negotiate, reform, and resist injustice peacefully.

PART II

The Crises of Amhara, Tigray, Oromo, and the Ethiopian State

Includes: III. The Amhara Crisis; IV. The Tigray Crisis; V. The Oromo Crisis; VI. From Separate Crises to Shared Democratic Struggle

III. The Amhara Crisis as a Warning About the Ethiopian State

The Amhara crisis must be named honestly. Amhara civilians have faced mass displacement, insecurity, detention, and violence in multiple regions. The war in the Amhara region has brought drone strikes, killings, destruction of livelihoods, disrupted education, fear of movement, and severe humanitarian strain. Amhara communities outside the Amhara region have also faced recurrent vulnerability in Oromia, Benishangul- Gumuz, and other areas where constitutional protection has often failed them.

But the meaning of the Amhara crisis is larger than Amhara suffering alone. It reveals the failure of Ethiopia’s political system to protect citizens when ethnicity, state power, and armed conflict intersect. It shows what happens when a state treats political grievances as security problems, when regional disputes are militarized, when communities lose trust in national institutions, and when civilians are trapped between armed actors.

Most Amhara elites favored Ethiopian nationalism over ethnic mobilization. In an ethnic federal system, which left many Amhara communities exposed. As others built stronger institutions and narratives, others had to balance Ethiopianism with self-protection.

Ethiopianism is not failure; empty promises are. A credible Ethiopianism must protect every citizen: the Amhara farmer, Oromo student, Tigrayan mother, Somali pastoralist, Afar trader, Benishangul-Gumuz villager, Gambella teacher, Gurage merchant, Sidama youth,

and anyone else whose dignity is under threat. Ethiopianism that ignores concrete suffering is empty rhetoric. Ethiopianism that protects all communities becomes a democratic covenant.

The Amhara crisis must not be used to separate Amhara from other Ethiopians. It should awaken all Ethiopians. If one of the country’s largest communities can feel existentially insecure, no smaller community can assume lasting safety. If the state can normalize emergency rules, aerial warfare, mass suspicion, and political exclusion in one region, those tools can spread wherever citizens resist centralized power.

IV. The Tigray Crisis as a Warning About the Collapse of Constitutional Trust

The Tigray crisis is another central warning about the condition of the Ethiopian state. It showed how quickly a political dispute can become a devastating humanitarian catastrophe when constitutional restraint collapses, dialogue fails, armed force becomes the primary language of politics, and civilians are treated through the lens of collective suspicion.

The suffering of Tigrayan civilians must be acknowledged clearly. The war brought mass death, displacement, sexual violence, hunger, family separation, destroyed infrastructure, and profound trauma. These wounds cannot be erased by political disagreement with the TPLF or by anger over the conduct of any armed actor. A serious national democratic movement must be able to say two things at once: political elites and armed organizations must be held accountable, and civilians must never be punished as a people.

The Tigray war also damaged constitutional trust across Ethiopia. It taught many citizens that when political conflict reaches the point of militarized confrontation, constitutional guarantees may become meaningless. It weakened confidence in federal institutions, regional autonomy, humanitarian neutrality, and national dialogue. It deepened fear that any community that falls out with the center can be isolated, demonized, or destroyed.

For this reason, Tigray’s tragedy should not be treated as a separate northern event that belongs only to Tigrayans. It is a national warning. When law is replaced by war, when political disagreement is treated as existential treason, when humanitarian access becomes politicized, and when atrocities are filtered through ethnic loyalty, the entire country loses its moral and constitutional foundation.

The lesson is not that one group is innocent and another group is guilty. The lesson is that Ethiopia cannot survive repeated cycles in which ruling elites, regional forces, and armed movements gamble with civilian life. Tigray’s suffering must therefore be part of a national transitional justice process that recognizes all victims, investigates all perpetrators, and rebuilds trust through truth rather than propaganda.

V. The Oromo Crisis as a Warning About the Failure of Liberation Politics

The Oromo crisis is equally important to the national argument. Oromo people have long raised legitimate grievances about political exclusion, cultural suppression, land questions, displacement, and state violence. Oromo protests played a key role in weakening the old EPRDF order and opening the political transition that brought Abiy Ahmed to power.

The Oromo citizens expected dignity, representation, and freedom. But a centralized party- state does not become popular just because their leaders speak Oromo or claim Oromo identity.

It belongs to those who control coercive power. Oromo civilians have suffered from multiple pressures: conflict between state forces and armed insurgents, insecurity in rural areas, displacement, arrests, political intimidation, restrictions on opposition organizing, and the silencing of independent Oromo voices who refuse to give either to say propaganda or extremist narratives. The continued imprisonment, harassment, or exclusion of Oromo opposition figures and activists proves that authoritarian power does not spare Oromo citizens simply because the prime minister comes from an Oromo background.

This distinction is essential. Criticizing Abiy Ahmed’s government is not an attack on the Oromo people. Rejecting authoritarian rule is not anti-Oromo. On the contrary, Oromo freedom itself requires democratic institutions, accountable government, freedom of expression, genuine regional self-government, and protection from both state abuse and non-state violence.

The Oromo crisis therefore warns Ethiopia that liberation language can be captured by centralized power. A movement that begins with demands for justice can be used by ambitious elites to build a new hierarchy unless it is anchored in rights, accountability, and institutional limits. If Oromo democratic forces are silenced, if Oromo civilians are trapped between insurgency and counterinsurgency, and if Oromo identity is used to shield one- party rule from criticism, then the promise of Oromo liberation is betrayed.

The path forward requires Oromo democratic actors to join other Ethiopian communities in rejecting both ethnic demonization and authoritarian centralization. Oromo dignity and Ethiopian democracy are not enemies. They depend on each other.

VI. From Separate Crises to a Shared Ethiopian Democratic Struggle

The Amhara crisis, the Tigray catastrophe, the Oromo crisis, and the suffering of smaller and marginalized communities are not isolated tragedies. They are symptoms of a deeper national breakdown: the collapse of accountable governance, constitutional trust, civilian protection, and democratic institutions.

Each crisis reveals a different part of the same danger. The Amhara crisis warns Ethiopia that a major community can be made insecure inside its own country when ethnic

federalism, militarized governance, and hostile narratives combine. The Tigray crisis warns Ethiopia that political conflict can become a humanitarian catastrophe when constitutional restraint collapses. The Oromo crisis warns Ethiopia that even a community associated with ruling power is not necessarily protected when authority is centralized under one leader and one party.

Together, these crises reveal one national truth: dictatorship does not permanently belong to any ethnic group. Once arbitrary power is normalized, no people will be spared.

This is why Ethiopians must move from separate grief to shared democratic struggle. Shared struggle does not mean equalizing every experience or erasing the specific suffering of each community. It means recognizing that the security of each person depends on a political order that protects all people. It means refusing to let the ruling class use Amhara pain against Oromo pain, Oromo pain against Tigrayan pain, Tigrayan pain against Amhara pain, or the suffering of smaller communities as bargaining material.

A national democratic coalition must therefore be built on a simple moral foundation: every civilian life has equal value; every community’s suffering must be heard; every perpetrator must be accountable; and no political leader should be allowed to convert ethnic fear into permanent rule.

PART III

How Dictatorship Grows When Ethiopians Are Divided

Includes: VII. Why No Ethnic Group Will Be Spared; VIII. The False Choice; IX. Structural Roots; X. Abiy Ahmed’s Consolidation; XI. Elite Fragmentation

VII. Why No Ethnic Group Will Be Spared by Dictatorship

Dictatorships rarely announce themselves as dictatorships. It often arrives in the language of reform, unity, development, peace, national survival, or modernization. It asks citizens to tolerate temporary repression for the promise of future order. It tells one group that another group is the real threat. It tells victims to wait. It tells critics they are enemies. It tells the world that only the leader can hold the country together.

This is a familiar pattern in many countries. A leader first presents himself as a national savior. He then weakens institutions that could limit his power. He captures the ruling party. He turns state media into a narrative machine. He pressures civil society. He intimidates journalists. He divides opposition groups. He uses war to justify emergency measures. He presents elections as proof of legitimacy while narrowing the field of real competition. Over time, the state becomes less a neutral institution and more an extension of one man’s political survival.

Once this process matures, no community is protected by proximity to power. Today’s loyal region can become tomorrow’s suspected region. Today’s favored elite can become tomorrow’s imprisoned elite. Today’s silent intellectuals can become tomorrow’s target. Authoritarian power does not permanently respect ethnicity, friendship, party loyalty, military service, religious identity, or past usefulness. It respects only obedience.

This is why Ethiopians must not ask, “Is my group safe today?” They must ask, “Are institutions strong enough to protect anyone tomorrow?” The safety of Oromo citizens cannot depend on the silence of Amhara citizens. The safety of Amhara citizens cannot

depend on the suffering of Tigrayans being forgotten. The safety of Tigrayans cannot depend on others ignoring atrocities committed against them. The safety of smaller communities cannot depend on bargaining with whichever elite controls Addis Ababa. Durable safety requires law, rights, institutions, and accountability.

A dictatorship may begin by targeting one group, one opposition party, one media house, one region, one activist network, or one-armed movement. But its final enemy is always the independent citizen.

VIII. The False Choice Between Ethnic Survival and National Unity

One of the most damaging narratives in Ethiopian politics is the claim that defending one community’s survival is automatically anti-Ethiopian. This false choice has weakened democratic solidarity for decades. It has allowed suffering to be ranked rather than addressed. It has encouraged communities to compete over recognition instead of building a common front against abuse.

Amhara civilians should not be asked to deny their suffering to prove they believe in Ethiopia. Oromo civilians should not be asked to ignore abuses in Oromia to prove they are not extremists. Tigrayans should not be asked to forget the horrors of war to rejoin national life. Smaller communities should not be expected to disappear into the narratives of larger groups. Ethiopia will not be rebuilt by silence. It will be rebuilt by equal truth.

The correct principle is simple: every community has the right to name its suffering, and every community has the duty to recognize the suffering of others. This is not a moral weakness. It is the foundation of democratic coexistence.

For Amhara political actors, this means framing Amhara protection as part of a national rights agenda, not as revenge or domination. For Oromo democratic actors, it means rejecting both state repression and extremist narratives that justify civilian targeting. For Tigrayan actors, it means demanding justice for Tigray while acknowledging that other communities also face grave threats. For all Ethiopians, it means refusing to let the ruling class weaponize pain.

National unity does not require forgetting identity. It requires building a political order in which identity is not a death sentence, a prison sentence, a displacement order, or a barrier to citizenship.

IX. The Structural Roots of Ethiopia’s Crisis

Ethiopia’s crisis did not begin with one leader, one election, or one war. Its roots are structural.

First, the post-1991 ethnic federal order organized political life around collective identity rather than equal citizenship. Although the system recognized Ethiopia’s diversity, it also hardened ethnic boundaries, territorialized identity, and created competition over land, administrative control, historical memory, and political representation.

Second, the ruling-party tradition inherited from earlier regimes weakened the development of independent institutions. Ethiopia has rarely enjoyed a political culture in which courts, election boards, security institutions, universities, media, and civil society run independently from ruling power. This has made it easier for each new ruling elite to capture the state.

Third, the country has lacked a credible mechanism for transitional justice. Atrocities committed under the imperial era, the Derg, the EPRDF, the Tigray war, conflicts in Oromia, Benishangul-Gumuz, Amhara, Gambella, Somali region, and other areas have not been addressed through a trusted national process. Unresolved trauma becomes political fuel.

Fourth, Ethiopia’s elites have repeatedly failed to build multi-layered institutions capable of surviving the fall of individual leaders. Movements often depend on charismatic figures rather than durable systems. When leaders are killed, exiled, coopted, imprisoned, or discredited, institutions collapse or fragment.

Fifth, propaganda has replaced public reasoning. Political actors often use history not to understand the past, but to mobilize resentment. Communities remember their own wounds and minimize the wounds of others. This produces a cycle in which every group sees itself as uniquely betrayed and every other group as morally suspect.

These structural problems cannot be solved by one election. But an election can either create space to begin solving them or close the space for a generation.

X. Abiy Ahmed’s Consolidation of Power

Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018 with the language of reform, reconciliation, national renewal, and democratic transition. Most Ethiopians hoped that his rise would end decades of repression and open a new chapter. Political prisoners were released, exiled groups returned, and public hope expanded.

But hope is not an institution. Reform must be protected by law, accountability, and democratic checks. Over time, the promise of reform gave way to increasing centralization. The dissolution of the EPRDF and the creation of the Prosperity Party were presented as steps beyond ethnic fragmentation. Yet, in practice, the new party structure concentrated power around the center and weakened regional political counterweights.

The government’s approach to dissent has increasingly relied on securitization. Journalists, activists, opposition figures, media workers, and critics have faced pressure, arrest, or intimidation. Civil society organizations and human-rights actors have run in a restrictive environment. Armed conflicts have been used to justify emergency measures and broaden suspicion.

The April 2023 move to dismantle regional special forces became a major turning point, especially in the Amhara region. Security-sector reform can be legitimate in principle, but legitimacy depends on trust, sequencing, guarantees, accountability, and credible

protection for communities. When disarmament is imposed in a climate of fear, people do not experience it as reform. They experience it as exposure.

The result has been a deepening cycle: fear produces resistance; resistance produces repression; repression produces more fear; and the government uses insecurity to justify further centralization. This is the logic of authoritarian consolidation.

The June 1 election must be understood within this trajectory. If the election occurs while major conflicts stay unresolved, civic space is still restricted, and opposition activity is still constrained, it risks becoming a seal of permanence on a system that is already closing.

XI. Elite Fragmentation: Ethiopia’s Self-Inflicted Weakness

Authoritarianism succeeds not only because rulers are powerful, but because societies are divided. Ethiopia’s democratic forces suffer from fragmentation at multiple levels.

Amhara elites are divided between Ethiopianist universalism, Amhara self-defense, regional loyalties, diaspora organizational rivalry, intellectual disagreement, and personal ambition. Oromo democratic forces are divided between those who support the ruling structure, those who oppose it peacefully, those who prioritize Oromo self-determination, and those who fear being accused of disloyalty if they criticize abuses. Tigrayan politics stays shaped by war trauma, internal divisions, unresolved territorial questions, and distrust toward federal institutions. Smaller communities are often trapped between local survival, ruling-party pressure, and fear of domination by larger groups.

Rather than building disciplined institutions, many diaspora spaces reward outrage, factional media, and personal rivalries. Social media has spawned political entrepreneurs who profit from division while civilians pay the price.

Intellectuals share the blame. Ethiopia has educated people but no organized intellectual leadership. Without organization, analysis is commentary; without strategy, commentary is noise.

The country needs disciplined democratic leadership. That means leaders willing to subordinate ego to survival, faction to principle, and short-term advantage to national rescue.

PART IV

A Democratic Covenant Before It Is Too Late

Includes: XII. What Unity Must Mean Now through XXIII. Conclusion

XII. What Ethiopian Unity Must Mean Now

Unity cannot mean silence. It cannot mean forced assimilation. It cannot mean denying ethnic identity. It cannot mean returning to old domination or preserving current repression. It cannot mean asking victims to forget.

Unity must mean a shared civic agreement that no Ethiopian community should be targeted, displaced, collectively blamed, or politically erased. It must mean that every citizen has the right to live, work, travel, worship, speak, organize, and take part anywhere

in Ethiopia without fear. It must mean that government power is limited by law. It must mean that no leader, party, army, militia, or regional authority stands above accountability.

A serious unity project must have five pillars.

First, civilian protection must be non-negotiable. Every armed actor, state or non-state, must be judged by its treatment of civilians.

Second, equal citizenship must replace ethnic hierarchy. Ethiopia’s diversity should be protected culturally and linguistically, but citizenship rights must not depend on ethnic classification.

Third, transitional justice must be national and credible. Victims from all communities must be heard. Perpetrators must be investigated. The process must not be a political weapon.

Fourth, constitutional reform must be placed on the national agenda. Ethiopia needs a framework that protects diversity while reducing ethnic territorial competition and guaranteeing freedom of movement, residence, property, political participation, and equal protection.

Fifth, democratic institutions must be rebuilt. Courts, election bodies, media regulators, universities, security institutions, and civil society must be protected from party capture.

XIII. A Pre-Election National Democratic Covenant

Before the June 1 election, Ethiopian democratic forces should rally around a minimum national covenant. This covenant does not require all groups to agree on every historical question or constitutional detail. It requires agreement on basic principles necessary to prevent dictatorship and protect civilians.

1. No election should legitimize repression.

An election conducted under fear, war, mass detention, or severe restriction cannot be treated as a full democratic mandate.

2. Civilian protection comes before party victory.

Every political actor must condemn attacks on civilians regardless of the perpetrator.

3. Political prisoners and detained journalists must be released or given due process.

A country cannot hold credible elections while independent voices are silenced.

4. Humanitarian access must be guaranteed.

Aid workers, medical professionals, schools, religious institutions, and civilians must be protected.

5. Opposition parties must be allowed to organize freely.

Campaigning, assembly, media access, and observation must be protected.

6. Ethnic hatred and collective blame must be rejected.

No community should be demonized for the actions of politicians, armed groups, or historical narratives.

7. A post-election national dialogue must be mandatory.

Regardless of electoral results, Ethiopia needs a credible national process on constitutional reform, transitional justice, security-sector reform, and civilian protection.

XIV. Practical Roadmap for Ethiopian Democratic Forces

Immediate actions before June 1

Ethiopian civic leaders, religious institutions, diaspora organizations, opposition parties, youth groups, women’s networks, and intellectuals should issue a joint declaration stating that the election cannot be used to legitimize authoritarian permanence. The declaration should avoid ethnic insults and focus on constitutional principles, civilian protection, and democratic rights.

A rapid documentation network should be formed to collect verified reports of arrests, intimidation, violence, displacement, media suppression, and election-related abuses. Documentation must be disciplined, evidence-based, and careful. Weak claims damage credibility. Verified patterns build pressure.

Religious leaders should call for restraint, truth, and protection of civilians. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Islamic institutions, Protestant communities, Catholic leaders, and traditional elders all have a role in preventing the moral collapse of public life.

Diaspora groups should coordinate messaging in Washington, Brussels, London, Geneva, Ottawa, and other diplomatic centers. The message should be unified: Ethiopia needs civilian protection, due process, credible elections, humanitarian access, and an inclusive national settlement.

Post-Election Actions

If the election produces contested legitimacy, democratic actors should avoid both despair and reckless confrontation. They should demand a national dialogue, independent review of election conditions, release of political detainees, restoration of civic space, and a timetable for constitutional and security-sector reforms.

A National Civic Coordination Council should be created. It should include representatives from major communities, women, youth, religious leaders, lawyers, human-rights experts, economists, former civil servants, diaspora professionals, and nonviolent democratic

movements. Its purpose should not be to replace political parties, but to coordinate a shared civic agenda.

Medium-term actions

Ethiopians need a structured transition agenda. This should include security guarantees for civilians, independent investigation of atrocities, decentralization of power without ethnic apartheid, electoral reform, judicial reform, media freedom, and economic recovery for war-affected regions.

XV. Message to Amhara Ethiopians

To Amhara Ethiopians: your suffering must not be minimized. Civilian protection is not extremism. Demanding justice is not hatred. Asking for constitutional security is not anti- Ethiopian. But the Amhara cause will be strongest when it is disciplined, evidence-based, morally serious, and connected to the freedom of all Ethiopians.

Do not allow grief to be turned into indiscriminate hatred. Do not allow legitimate self- protection to be framed as revenge. Do not let internal rivalry weaken the people now of greatest danger. Unity must become institutional, not only emotional. Intellectuals, fighters, clergy, youth, women, business leaders, and diaspora advocates must coordinate around minimum demands: protect civilians, release detainees, open humanitarian access, stop collective punishment, investigate atrocities, and reform the constitutional order.

The future of the Amhara people cannot be secured by isolation alone. It must be secured through both self-organization and a broader Ethiopian democratic settlement.

XVI. Message to Oromo Ethiopians

To Oromo Ethiopians: the dignity and rights of Oromo people matter deeply. Oromo civilians have suffered from conflict, state violence, insurgency, displacement, and political manipulation. But no Oromo democratic future can be built on the silence of others. If authoritarian rule is justified in the name of Oromo power, it will eventually consume Oromo society as well.

A centralized party-state does not belong to the Oromo people. It belongs to those who control it. Oromo intellectuals, youth, farmers, religious leaders, and democratic actors must distinguish between the rights of the Oromo people and the ambitions of any ruling elite. The Oromo struggle for dignity should not be used to justify repression against Amhara, Tigrayan, or other civilians. Nor should crimes committed by individuals or groups be used to demonize Oromo society.

Oromo and Amhara democratic forces, along with all other communities, must find the courage to speak to each other outside the language of propaganda.

XVII. Message to Tigrayan Ethiopians

To Tigrayan Ethiopians: the suffering of Tigray during the northern war is still one of the deepest wounds in Ethiopia’s modern history. Mass violence, sexual violence, starvation, displacement, and siege conditions cannot be forgotten or dismissed. Justice for Tigray must be part of any credible national settlement.

But the future cannot be built through permanent isolation, selective memory, or renewed militarization. Tigrayan democratic actors should join a broader national demand for transitional justice that includes all victims: Tigrayan, Amhara, Oromo, Afar, Somali, Benishangul-Gumuz, Gambella, and others. A justice process that serves only one narrative will fail. A justice process that recognizes all victims can rebuild trust.

Tigray’s security, like Amhara security and Oromo security, depends on a constitutional order that limits arbitrary power.

XVIII. Message to Smaller and Marginalized Communities

To Ethiopia’s smaller and historically marginalized communities: your future must not be decided by competition among larger groups. A democratic Ethiopia must protect Afar, Somali, Sidama, Gurage, Wolayta, Gambella, Benishangul-Gumuz, Harari, Agaw, Kimant, and all other communities as equal stakeholders in the national future.

The danger of authoritarian consolidation is especially serious for smaller communities because they often have fewer institutional defenses. When the center becomes unchecked, local autonomy becomes fragile. When identity politics becomes militarized, smaller communities become bargaining chips. When elections are controlled, representation becomes symbolic.

Your voice must be central in any national covenant. Ethiopia cannot be rebuilt by two or three large groups negotiating over everyone else. It must be rebuilt as a shared republic of equal citizens and protected communities.

XIX. The Role of the Diaspora

The Ethiopian diaspora has resources, freedom, education, and access to international institutions. But it also has divisions, ego conflicts, and media environments that often reward extremism. The diaspora must choose whether it will be a force for national rescue or a mirror of Ethiopia’s fragmentation.

Diaspora organizations should create a common platform around civilian protection, release of detainees, media freedom, humanitarian access, credible elections, and constitutional reform. They should set up shared documentation standards, avoid spreading unverified claims, and coordinate advocacy calendars. They should support victims without turning suffering into fundraising theaters.

Diaspora intellectuals should form working groups in major cities. Lawyers should prepare legal briefs. Doctors should document health impacts. Economists should analyze war and displacement costs. Technologists should support secure communication and documentation. Academics should produce policy papers. Youth should lead digital outreach. Women should be central in leadership, not symbolic participants.

The diaspora must stop confusing noise with influence. Influence requires discipline.

XX. The Role of Religious and Moral Institutions

Ethiopia’s religious institutions have moral authority that political parties often lack. But moral authority is meaningful only when used courageously and fairly. Religious leaders must not become servants of power or prisoners of ethnic fear.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has a major national role, but any national rescue effort must include Ethiopia’s Muslim, Protestant, Catholic, traditional faith, and interfaith communities as well.

Religious institutions should call for the sanctity of civilian life, protection of detainees, truth-telling, reconciliation, and restraint. They should create local peace committees where possible and offer moral protection to communities under fear. They should also examine their own failures: silence in the face of injustice damages spiritual legitimacy.

XXI. Transitional Justice and Historical Memory

Ethiopia cannot move forward by erasing the past. But it also cannot survive if history is used only as a weapon. The country needs a national transitional justice process that is independent, victim-centered, and inclusive.

Such a process must recognize atrocities across regimes and regions. It must examine abuses under imperial rule, the Derg, the EPRDF, the Tigray war, conflicts in Oromia, the Amhara conflict, violence in Benishangul-Gumuz, Gambella, Somali region, Afar, and other affected areas. It must include sexual violence, displacement, massacres, enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention, attacks on religious sites, destruction of property, and starvation as a weapon.

The goal is not collective guilt. No ethnic group should be blamed as a people. Responsibility must be individualized where possible and institutional where necessary. Transitional justice should separate communities from perpetrators, truth from propaganda, and accountability from revenge.

Without truth, Ethiopia will remain a country of competing wounds. With truth, it can begin to become a country of shared responsibility.

XXII. Constitutional Reform: From Ethnic Fear to Civic Covenant

Ethiopia’s constitutional debate cannot be avoided. The existing order has failed to prevent recurrent conflict, territorial disputes, ethnic insecurity, and exclusion of minorities within regions. Yet reform must be careful. Abrupt centralization would deepen fear. Pure ethnic territorialism has already produced instability. The alternative must be a balanced civic federal settlement.

A reformed constitutional order should include:

1. A justiciable bill of rights protecting individuals and communities. 2. Freedom of movement, residence, work, property ownership, and political participation across all regions. 3. Strong protections for minorities within every regional state. 4. Decentralization is based on service delivery, geography, economic viability, and local consent rather than rigid ethnic ownership. 5. A bicameral legislature that balances population representation with regional representation. 6. Independent courts capable of enforcing constitutional rights. 7. Security-sector reform that prevents both centralized tyranny and regional warlordism. 8. Language and cultural protections without political exclusion. 9. Transparent fiscal federalism that prevents economic punishment or favoritism. 10. A credible constitutional amendment process through broad national dialogue.

The goal is not to erase Ethiopia’s diversity. The goal is to prevent diversity from being turned into a system of fear.

XXIII. Conclusion: Before It Is Too Late

Ethiopia is running out of time, but it is not out of possibility. The country still has courageous citizens, moral communities, intellectual resources, religious institutions, youth energy, women’s leadership, diaspora capacity, and a long civilizational memory of survival. But survival now requires organization, not nostalgia. It requires truth, not propaganda. It requires unity, not denial.

The June 1 election could be a decisive turning point. If Ethiopians remain divided, it may entrench centralized authoritarian rule. If they unite around civilian protection and democratic principles, it could mark the moment the country chooses not to surrender its future.

No ethnic group will be spared by dictatorship. No region will be permanently safe under arbitrary power. No community can build freedom on another community’s fear. No leader should be allowed to turn Ethiopia’s diversity into a ladder for permanent rule.

The message of this paper is therefore urgent and simple:

Amhara survival and Ethiopian unity are not enemies. Oromo dignity and Ethiopian democracy are not enemies. Tigrayan justice and national reconciliation are not enemies. The rights of smaller communities and the unity of Ethiopia are not enemies.

The enemy is authoritarianism. The enemy is ethnic hatred. The enemy is silence before suffering. The enemy is the politics that turns citizens into suspects and elections into instruments of control.

Before it is too late, Ethiopians must unite — not behind one man, not behind one ethnic project, not behind revenge, but behind a shared democratic future where every citizen and every community can live without fear.

Editor’s Note : Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com  

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