Ethiopia
Since 2021, International Alert has been working on peacebuilding and conflict prevention in Ethiopia, tackling key drivers of violence that destabilise communities.
Our work strengthens cross-border collaboration on security and management of resources like water and land, supports livelihoods’ resilience to climate change, builds accountable and fair institutions, and creates conditions for inclusive economic growth and investment.
We champion approaches that consider local conflict context and gender issues, placing affected groups at the centre of all solutions. We support government, the private sector, civil society, and communities to:
- improve policies and practices around management and governance of natural resources, such as land, water and pasture,
- promote responsible business conduct, and
- design and implement initiatives that address links between climate, conflict and gender inequality.
Our ongoing work is based in southern Ethiopia, along the Turkana-South Omo borderlands – one of the Horn of Africa’s most fragile regions, home to pastoralist communities. There, we focus on resolving and preventing conflicts induced by climate change, while ensuring women – one of the most marginalised and underserved groups – have a meaningful role in shaping solutions.
Understanding conflict context in Ethiopia
Ethiopia, a diverse nation of over 120 million people, navigates a complex conflict landscape. Although the large-scale civil war in the north (2020-2022) has formally ended, its underlying causes remain unresolved and continue to drive instability.
A fundamental source of tension is the struggle over how power and authority are shared between the central government and Ethiopia’s ethnically organised regions. Control of territory carries deep political and cultural significance and is tied to identity, historical grievances, and group survival within the Ethiopian federal system. This directly fuels conflicts over fertile land, borders, and critical natural resources like water.
In the south, communities in the Turkana-South Omo borderlands – including the Dassenech and Nyangatom in Ethiopia, and the Turkana in Kenya – have historically managed access to water, pasture and fishing areas and pasture through movement and negotiation. But climate change has made this increasingly difficult. Prolonged droughts, erratic rainfall, varying water levels in the Omo River and Lake Turkana have reduced access to natural resources they depend on. Competition intensifies, and cross-border movement becomes out of control, raising the risk of violent conflict. Resource scarcity in the borderlands is therefore not only a humanitarian concern but a climate security challenge with regional and global implications.
Economic instability compounds these challenges. Low-income and conflict-affected communities have been hit hard by high inflation, youth unemployment, and the sharp drop in the value of the national currency, Ethiopian birr, in mid-2024. Locally, cattle raiding, cycles of revenge, the radicalisation of young people, and a growing availability of weapons are all features of this context.
The wider consequences are significant. Instability disrupts security and local economies and has cross‑border implications, with impacts extending into neighbouring areas of Ethiopia, Uganda, and South Sudan. Differences in how Kenya and Ethiopia govern their border regions and approach peacebuilding, combined with uneven state presence in these remote areas, make it harder to build joint responses that are genuinely shaped by local communities’ needs.
More broadly, this region illustrates how climate change compounds existing vulnerabilities, deepening poverty, driving displacement, and threatening ecosystems of international importance, such as Lake Turkana.
How women are driving peace and climate resilience in Kenya and Ethiopia
Climate change is reshaping conflict in the Kenya-Ethiopia borderlands. As weather gets more unpredictable and water and pasture shrink, communities that depend entirely on these resources are being pushed into competition and, too often, violence. Women and girls feel these pressures most acutely yet remain systematically left out of the solutions.
In this blog, we explain how we are working to change this – and why climate action in fragile places cannot ignore gender dynamics.
Connect with our team in Ethiopia
