Introduction: When praise hides responsibility
In his recent remarks on current affairs, the Prime Minister told Ethiopians that even when they are arrested and persecuted, they will “lose nothing” if they keep their faith and resilience. That language shifts attention away from the political decisions that have produced war, repression, ethnic conflict, and mass displacement, and places the burden instead on the spiritual stamina of the victims.
This framing is not accidental. It allows a leader who has never openly admitted mistakes or taken responsibility for the suffering of millions to present himself as a moral teacher, while the people who have paid the price of state failure are quietly asked to reinterpret their pain as virtue.
A leader who criticizes the people but never himself
For years, Ethiopians have watched the same pattern repeat itself. When there is a symbolic success, a diplomatic appearance, or a media-friendly achievement, it is offered as proof of bold and visionary leadership. When there is war, economic decline, ethnic violence, imprisonment, or displacement, the blame is shifted outward to extremists, hostile forces, or the alleged weaknesses of the people themselves.
In speech after speech about reform, unity, and renewal, the head of government presents himself as the architect of a new Ethiopia. Yet in practice, the people are repeatedly cast as the obstacle: too divided, too emotional, too tribal, too backward, too incapable of understanding the grandeur of the project being carried out in their name.
What is almost never heard is a sentence of accountability: “I was wrong here.” “My decisions contributed to this conflict.” “My government failed to protect these citizens.” In healthy political systems, such statements are not extraordinary. They are part of the minimum moral grammar of leadership. In Ethiopia’s current condition, they are conspicuously absent.
War and ethnic conflict are not accidents
Ethiopia’s recent history has been marked by large-scale armed conflict, atrocities, and ethnic tensions that have shattered communities from Tigray to Oromia, from Amhara to Benishangul and beyond. The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission has linked arbitrary displacement in Ethiopia to conflict, violence, and insecurity, while analyses published by Broken have tied the displacement crisis to failures of state protection and governance.
These tragedies are not natural disasters. They are the product of political and military choices: choices to launch or prolong war rather than pursue credible political compromise; choices to weaponize identity; choices to narrow political space; and choices to weaken peaceful avenues of dissent until violence becomes the dominant language of power. Brookings’ displacement framework likewise emphasizes that states bear primary responsibility for preventing arbitrary displacement and protecting those uprooted within their own borders.
When a leader who has presided over such choices looks into the camera and lectures the public about how they should behave “even when imprisoned,” without once acknowledging his own role in creating the conditions of fear, detention, and mass suffering, this is not spirituality. It is political evasion wrapped in moral language.
Displacement is not normal suffering
Under this government, millions have been displaced within their own country, often because of the same conflict, insecurity, and governance failures that official rhetoric seeks to portray as regrettable but unavoidable. Brookings treats internal displacement as a matter of justice, accountability, and national responsibility, while Ethiopian commentary has similarly argued that the scale of displacement reflects deep political failure rather than a passing humanitarian emergency.
Displaced people are not merely “going through a test.” They have lost homes, land, livelihoods, community ties, and in many cases family members themselves. To tell such people that they “lose nothing” if they remain faithful, without first saying “we failed you,” “our policies harmed you,” or “we will provide protection, remedy, and durable solutions,” is to add insult to injury.
A leader who does not see mass displacement as a direct indictment of governance, security policy, and political strategy is either refusing to face reality or deliberately hiding from it. Displacement on this scale is not a neutral humanitarian challenge. It is evidence that the state has failed in one of its most basic obligations: protecting citizens from arbitrary uprooting, insecurity, and prolonged vulnerability.
The Kampala Convention and State Failure
Ethiopia’s displacement crisis is not only a humanitarian catastrophe or a political disgrace. It is also a test of legal obligation under the African Union’s Kampala Convention, which Ethiopia ratified through Proclamation No. 1187/2020. By ratifying the Convention, the Ethiopian state accepted that the protection of internally displaced persons is not an act of charity, but a binding commitment under African regional law.
The Convention is clear on a central principle: internally displaced persons remain under the protection of their own state, and the state bears the primary duty to prevent arbitrary displacement, protect those already displaced, and support durable solutions. Its general obligations require states to refrain from, prohibit, and prevent arbitrary displacement, and to enable internally displaced persons to make a free and informed choice about whether to return, integrate locally, or relocate, while ensuring their participation in finding sustainable solutions.
Measured against that standard, Ethiopia’s record raises serious questions. Borkena’s analysis of Ethiopia’s compliance with the Kampala Convention argues that the country has fallen short in preventing conflict-induced displacement, ensuring effective protection, and providing safe and sustainable solutions for those uprooted by violence and state action.
The first failure concerns prevention. The Kampala Convention requires states to prevent the conditions that lead to arbitrary displacement, including displacement linked to violence, human rights violations, and other prohibited grounds. Commentary on the Convention notes that it rejects displacement used for ethnic cleansing, religious or racial segregation, collective punishment, or displacement caused by generalized violence and human rights violations. When civilians in Ethiopia are repeatedly forced from their homes by conflict, targeted violence, and insecurity, this is not simply misfortune. It is the breakdown of the state’s preventive duty.
The second failure concerns protection after displacement occurs. The Convention does not allow the state to abandon responsibility once families have fled. It requires protection and assistance, and it envisions cooperation with humanitarian and civil society actors in securing long-term solutions and reconstruction. When displaced communities remain in insecurity, dependency, neglect, or prolonged uncertainty, the gap is not merely administrative. It is a breach of duty.
The third failure concerns returns and solutions. The Convention says internally displaced people must be able to make a free and informed choice about return, local integration, or relocation, and that they should be consulted and allowed to participate in shaping sustainable outcomes. A return that is rushed, pressured, politically staged, or undertaken before safety and livelihood conditions exist is not a genuine solution. Reporting and analysis cited by Borkena have raised concerns that return processes in Ethiopia have at times been promoted in conditions that were neither adequately safe nor sustainably prepared.
The fourth failure concerns development-induced displacement. Article 10 of the Kampala Convention states that states shall, as much as possible, prevent displacement caused by projects, and commentary on the Convention notes that even where development-related displacement is contemplated, safeguards and limitations apply. This matters in Ethiopia because urban expansion, redevelopment, and land-centred state projects have often raised concerns about forced eviction, weak consultation, and inadequate compensation. Development that uproots the poor without meaningful process, fair remedy, and lawful protection is not modernization. It is dispossession with official language attached to it.
The fifth failure concerns accountability. The Kampala Convention requires states to prevent arbitrary displacement and, where conduct rises to the level of international crimes, to ensure criminalization and responsibility. Guidance on making arbitrary displacement a crime underscores that states must clearly reject arbitrary displacement as illegal conduct and criminalize acts that amount to international crimes. Mass uprooting cannot be treated as a vague national tragedy with no authors. Where displacement is connected to war crimes, crimes against humanity, collective punishment, discrimination, or large-scale abuse, institutional and individual accountability become unavoidable questions.
This is why the article’s criticism of leadership is not rhetorical excess. A leader who speaks about patience, resilience, and spiritual endurance while avoiding responsibility for mass displacement is not merely offering an incomplete moral reflection. He is speaking in a way that obscures the obligations of a state that has already bound itself, in law, to protect the displaced and prevent arbitrary uprooting.
To invoke resilience without acknowledging Kampala Convention duties is to ask victims of state failure to carry the burden of the state’s broken promises. It asks the displaced to be patient while their rights are deferred, their losses normalized, and their futures negotiated without them. But the Convention says otherwise: internally displaced people are not passive objects of pity. They are rights-bearing citizens entitled to protection, participation, and dignified solutions.
The psychology of leaders who never admit mistakes
Research on political leadership and conflict shows that leaders who never admit mistakes often build narratives in which they are always right and every failure is caused by enemies, saboteurs, or the moral weakness of society. INSEAD’s analysis of war-prone leadership and commentary on neo-authoritarian political styles both describe patterns of blame-shifting, self-justification, and false moral certainty that make accountability increasingly difficult.
This has several dangerous consequences. First, it blocks genuine reform, because acknowledging mistakes is the first step toward meaningful change. If nothing is admitted as wrong, then nothing is truly corrected; policies are simply renamed, defended, or repackaged.
Second, it turns criticism into treason. Once the leader fuses his image with the nation or the state, any challenge to his decisions is presented as an attack on unity, peace, or national survival. Open debate shrinks, public truth becomes dangerous, and citizens learn to censor themselves out of fear.
Third, it encourages even more dangerous choices, because leaders who do not expect accountability begin to believe they can escalate without consequence. The cost of that escalation is not paid by those in power. It is paid by civilians, detainees, the displaced, the bereaved, and the dead.
In our context, this pattern is unmistakable. The leader speaks constantly about unity, development, spirituality, and vision. But he does not speak honestly about the human cost of his government’s decisions, nor about the systemic failures in security and governance that have enabled massacres, war, and displacement. That silence is not incidental. It is part of the method.
Moral inversion: blaming the victims
Telling people who are being killed, imprisoned, and displaced that they should focus on their inner strength, while the leader refuses to address his own responsibility, is a form of moral inversion. In this upside-down morality, the state that arrests, tortures, or fails to protect becomes the “teacher,” while those who suffer its failures are told to transform their pain into moral discipline.
The victims are expected to be quiet, patient, and even grateful that their suffering has been wrapped in spiritual language and presented as a test of faith. Their pain is rebranded as virtue so that power never has to name it for what it is: injustice.
Meanwhile, any demand for justice, accountability, or political change is portrayed as dangerous, divisive, or ungrateful. Yet durable responses to displacement depend precisely on justice, protection, and accountability, not on rhetorical praise for endurance alone.
This rhetoric is powerful because it blends religious language, cultural ideals of patience, and nationalist slogans. But no amount of spiritual or cultural reference can erase a basic ethical truth: those who hold power have a higher duty to prevent harm, admit failure, and repair injustice. It is not the task of victims to make the conscience of power comfortable.
What real leadership would sound like
Real leadership in today’s Ethiopia would sound very different from what we heard in that video. Instead of lecturing the public about resilience while they are imprisoned, displaced, or terrorized, a responsible leader would say: “We made grave mistakes in how we handled this conflict.” “Our decisions contributed to the suffering and displacement of millions, and I take responsibility.” “We will open political space, involve all stakeholders, and commit to independent investigation and justice for victims.” Such an approach is consistent with the accountability, protection, and remedy frameworks emphasized in displacement scholarship and in the Kampala Convention itself.
Real leadership would also commit to full implementation of Ethiopia’s Kampala Convention obligations: preventing arbitrary displacement, ensuring meaningful consultation, protecting displaced communities, and guaranteeing that return, local integration, or relocation are voluntary, safe, informed, and sustainable. It would speak less about the supposed weaknesses of the people and more about the binding duties of government.
A call to citizens, intellectuals, and media
This moment demands clarity from citizens, intellectuals, and independent media such as Borkena and Zehabesha. These platforms already publish substantial opinion and analysis on displacement, rights, and Ethiopia’s political future, making them important spaces for confronting official narratives that clothe failure in moral and spiritual language.
When leaders use spiritual language to decorate political failure, it must be named. When they praise the people’s “resilience” while expanding the machinery of repression, that praise should be rejected as flattery without justice.
A debt is owed to the displaced, the imprisoned, and the families of those killed in wars that could have been prevented. The principle at stake is simple: no one is above accountability. Ethiopia will not heal through speeches that blame the people and absolve power. It will begin to heal only when those who hold power are willing to say, “We were wrong,” and then match those words with justice, protection, and real political change.
Editor’s Note : Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com
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1). ‘እቴቴ’ አምሳል – “እነዛ የአማራ ቦዘኔ እረኛ ሽፍቶችን [‘የአማራ ፋኖ’ ን] – አንድ ይበሏቸው! ሐገር ያጠፋሉ!” – ያልኮት – አልቀረም! የመይሳውን ደብረ ታቦር አውድመው – ወደ ወረታ ሲገሰግሱ – “እናንት ሽፍቶች – እቴቴ አምሳል አይምሯችሁም!”-ብያቸው-ወረታን አተረፍኩሎት!
2). ይኸውሎት – እነዚህን ቦዘኔ ወሮ በሎች – “የመገጭ ግድብ ይለቅ – እና – የጎንደር ሕዝብ ውኃ ያግኝ”- ብላቸው — ጆሮ ዳባ ልበስ ብለው – ደጋግመው ግድቡን ቢፀናወቱትም – ወንደማችን አብይ – በአብረሃ በላይ አማካይነት – ግድቡን ወደ 75% አጠናቆታል! እንደ ሕዳሴው ግድብ – ርችት – በመገጭ በቅርቡ ይጠበቁ! የጎንደር ሕዝብ – በቅርብ – ውኃ እንደሚያገኝ አይጠራጠሩ!
3). የመገጭ ግድብ ተጠናቆ – የጎንደር ሕዝብ ውኃ ማግኘት – አማራን ይጎዳል ወይ? ባለፈው ጥምቀት – ለአራተኛ (!?) ጊዜ – ከአዲስ አበባ የኼዱ ፈረንጆች [ጀርመኖች (!?)] – ለጥምቀት ወደ ጎንደር ለኼዱ ጎብኚዎች – በፕላስቲክ በርሚል ከወሰዱት ውኃ – ውኃ በኩባያ ሲያደሉ ነበር! ይኼ ነው ወይ – ጎንደርን የሚያኮራው? Why not water fountains along the thoroughfare?
4). የምወዳትን “አያል በዝና”ን [youtu.be/WQOP9F_27uA?list=RDWQOP9F_27uA] – በዘረኝነ መርዘዋታል። Elementary School ሆኜ Theatrical Arts Club ውስጥ ሰለነበርኩ “የኔ አያል [ youtu.be/WMxG_2pPdTU?list=RDWMxG_2pPdTU ]” እና “አያል በዝና”ን – የኢትዮጵያ National Heritage Songs – ሆነው ሁሉም ሕፃናት – ዘፈኑን እና እስክስታዉን እንዲማሩት እፈልግ ነበር! የሐገር ባሕልን ዘፈን – በዘረኝነት መመረዝ – ነውር አይሆንም ወይ!
5). ‘እቴቴ’ አምሳል – እየውሎት – አስተያየት ሲሰጡ – ከ15 ሚሊዮን በላይ አማራ በኦሮምያ እንደሚኖር አይርሱ [ youtu.be/IXBVqbOe9uY?t=2320 ]! በአንፃሩ ደግሞ – እኔ – ጎጃም እና ጎንደር ውስጥ – ምንም ኦሮሞ አይቼ አላውቅም! ዘረኝነት እኛን እየከፋፈለ – የሚጠቅመው – ለኢትዮጵያ ጠላቶች ብቻ አይደለም ወይ? እኔ – ኦሮሞ – ደግ ይሁን – ክፉ ይሁን – አላውቅም! የOLF-IFLO ኦሮሞዎች ግን – በምዕራብዋያን ዩኒቨርሲቲ ሳለሁ – ብዙ ችግር ፈጥረውብኝ ነበር! ነገር ግን-እነሱ ኦሮሞን ይወክላሉ ብዬ አላምንም!
Dear Amsal,
The article presents a compelling and timely critique of the moral language increasingly employed in Ethiopian political discourse. Its central insight—that appeals to resilience and faith can serve as a substitute for accountability—is both analytically persuasive and normatively significant. Particularly noteworthy is its progression beyond rhetorical critique to a legal and institutional foundation through the Kampala Convention (truthfully, I did not think about that; thank you), revealing that the issue at hand transcends mere tonal considerations and encompasses unmet state obligations and accountability deficits within a binding legal framework.
One dimension that further enhances this discussion is the role of political incentives. The lack of self-criticism should not be interpreted solely as a personal failing; rather, it is often embedded in a system in which the loss of power poses an existential threat. In such contexts, the acknowledgment of errors may be viewed as a sign of political vulnerability rather than as an indication of responsibility. This perspective elucidates the persistence of rhetorical deflection, even amidst widespread suffering, and emphasizes that accountability must be structurally institutionalized rather than left to individual disposition.
Additionally, the article’s concept of “moral inversion” can be contextualized within a broader politics of narrative control. Narrative control facilitates moral inversion by deploying manipulative language to reframe harmful acts as virtuous deeds—disguising oppression under triumphalist slogans such as “Beltsegenal” (we have prospered), “flying like an eagle,” or “Mekenawen honolenal” (we have become the vehicle of progress)—according to the regime, everything is sunshine and rainbows, while establishing rigid victim/oppressor hierarchies that grant favored groups inherent moral superiority regardless of their conduct.
Through “narratives of neutralization,” those in power deny responsibility while preserving a positive self-image, portraying victims as undeserving, suppressing natural empathy, and normalizing conditions that should instead elicit institutional responses and structural reforms. Once this corrupted moral language is adopted within social networks and state media, it scales from personal justification into systemic policy distortions that institutionalize inverted values, shielding leadership from scrutiny and reshaping public expectations.
By asserting that resilience cannot supplant justice, your article and framework contribute significantly to ongoing debates on accountability, governance, and Ethiopia’s political future.
Acknowledging the effort that went into creating this outstanding article, I express my sincere gratitude.
Sirak Zena