National Dialogue without inclusion of key armed and non-armed stakeholders is a futile exercise

  Ethiopia is wrapping up preliminary work to launch, in a few months’ time, a national dialogue aiming to find amicable solutions to the multiple layers of the country’s political crises and forge national consensus on its future.
On 29 December 2021, the House of People’s Representatives announced its approval of Proclamation No. 1265/2014, establishing a National Dialogue Commission (NDC) followed by the appointment of eleven commissioners on 21 February 2022.

The NDC was initially met with collective dismissal and skepticism from major political parties, including a request from the Ethiopian Political Parties Joint Council (EPPJC), a coalition of more than 53 legally registered political parties, to “temporarily halt” the process and reconsider steps that will guarantee meaningful participation of key stakeholders and transparency of the process.

The best train for attempting a national dialogue to solve Ethiopia’s transitional political tensions left the station in 2018, when militarized violence broke out between federal and Oromia regional state forces, and then armed members of the opposition Oromo Liberation Front – better known today as the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA). After that, Ethiopia has been nothing but an active scene of multiple violence, almost exclusively driven by bad politics. The culmination of that is the civil war that started in Tigray state in November 2020. Today, Ethiopia hosts multiple militarized violence, from north to south, from east to west. What is urgently needed is therefore a comprehensive roadmap for cessation of hostilities to end this violence involving state and non-state actors, followed by agreements for a ceasefire and genuine political negotiations.

The best experiences from around the world show that national dialogues stand a chance of success when facilitated by neutral parties. The world offers hardly any examples where a ruling party, which is a party to the very same problems dialogues should solve, micromanages the process, let alone chooses mediators in the form of commissioners. Even for such blatant transgression, the ruling party was repeatedly requested by opposition political parties and key stakeholders to ensure a transparent and inclusive process both during the drafting of the bill and the appointment of commissioners; no party outrightly rejected the ruling party’s commandeering of the process, though it is legitimate to do so.

he National Dialogue Commission, despite expressing interest in including armed groups engaged in active fighting with the government in the dialogue, has not taken any practical measures to engage them nor has it provided a clear roadmap on how to ensure their participation. 

It is clear that Without meaningful participation of the elite, demonstrated commitment of individual commissioners, as well as the commission’s commendable work so far regarding identifying participants from the wider population, and agenda gathering endeavors will have minimal impact on the success of the process.