My observation of the repressive culture of political groups in order to monopolize the political narrative in and around Ethiopia.
As I mostly do, I write this piece to express my frustration, not my surprise.
Recently, starting in mid-August 2022, a few civil society organizations leaders have gathered to consult to make our voices for peace collectively; for sustainable peace. To come up with a shared statement was not an easy task to do. We have done it on the eve of the Ethiopian new year in early September 2021 and it was difficult; it is difficult again a year later even though for the past few months, major warring parties in the Tigray war, have silenced their guns for humanitarian truce after the Ethiopian government unilaterally declared and the TPLF later accepted it conditionally. Even though the guns were temporarily silenced, the war propaganda was escalating slowly. We were worried because if the war starts again, we are going back to the era which is worse than we are in. That time, even though a peacebuilding process didn't start, at least people were not dying on daily basis. Therefore, we wanted to be stronger in our calls. The purpose was to renew the peace call from last year but also to actually encourage involved parties to resume their peace talk and stop the heated exchange of words.
In the planning meeting, everyone has their own interpretation of words and phrases to be used. Everyone is overly concerned about how that party or this party misunderstands our messages; we are worried about the reactions of the media, social media, and every other stakeholder. We didn't want the controversies over anecdotes to cover the message. We thought it is our chance to make 'peace' at the epic center of the political discourse. By doing so, we thought we can make violent conflicts difficult for any party that might choose it.
We have managed to reach the last draft and started to disseminate it to other CSOs who want to endorse it via email. The number of signatories started to grow and we have finally reached 35. Last year, only 24 CSOs have signed on it. This year, on May 3 when we renewed the call to hold on to the humanitarian truce with a call for sustainable peace and unfettered access to media freedom, we have 20 signatories. This is by far the biggest number but we didn't do enough effort, to keep it growing. We were competing with time. We believe people have had enough to reach the fatigue of war.
