ADF STAFF
As ethnic violence continues to roil Ethiopia, some believe religious leaders can play a critical role in the peacebuilding process.
Yirga Damtie, a scholar at the Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding, who spoke during a discussion hosted by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars’ Africa Program, says it’s time to empower these leaders to push for peace.
In recent years religious institutions have provided humanitarian aid, offered psychosocial and financial support, helped with public service delivery and acted as mediators between civilians and armed groups in conflict areas where government access is limited.
“Religion is considered as the main instrument for conflict transformation, for just addressing conflict and to transform toward a more peaceful context,” Yirga said. “In Africa, and Ethiopia, as well, the religious have a substantial role, including in private and public lives, and it’s important to take that into consideration. Whenever there is a peacebuilding initiative, it is important to consider religious actors’ inclusion.”
An estimated 98% of Ethiopians claim a religious affiliation. About 45% of the population is Christian Orthodox while 35% is Muslim. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church is one of the largest and oldest Christian Churches in the world, according to Canopy Forum, a digital publication run by the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University.
Yirga, also a doctoral candidate at the Institute for Peace and Security Studies at Addis Ababa University, said it is important for members of different religions to embrace dialogue.
Terrence Lyons, professor of conflict analysis and resolution at George Mason University, noted during the Wilson Center discussion that Catholic Relief Services linked with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Ethiopian Catholic Church and various other religions to create the Joint Relief Partnership during the Ethiopian famine in the 1980s.
“This was one of the first non-state organizations to engage in famine relief in the 1980s,” Terrence Lyons, professor of conflict analysis and resolution at George Mason University, said during the Wilson Center discussion.
Currently, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and Great Lakes region, Catholic and Protestant churches have joined forces to launch a new peace initiative aimed at addressing the conflicts and humanitarian crises that have plagued the region for three decades.
The “Social Pact for Peace and Living Together in the DRC and the Great Lakes Region” seeks to rally citizens, religious communities, and political leaders to end the violence and foster peaceful coexistence, Vatican News reported.
Lyons said the role of religious leaders in peacebuilding has also been considered in Jos, Nigeria, where the security crisis is marked by clashes between pastoralists and herders.
“There is attention among the roles that [religious institutions] can play” in peacebuilding, Lyons said. “On the one hand, they often mobilize people to engage in conflict, but at the same time they can be an actor that promotes peacebuilding and reconnects communities.”
He said religious institutions can effectively promote peace because they often have resources and logistical capacities that other organizations do not. “Churches have buildings, churches have communications systems, churches have networks of people,” Lyons said. “In that way, other than the state, there’s no other organization that can do that.”
Yirga said African religious institutions can also help frame people’s mindsets because they have been a part of families’ daily lives for centuries and are seen as legitimate.
“When war happens, [people] don’t have any other options but to go to church, where they can get some sort of relief,” Yirga said. “Churches are deeply present in the society. Any affairs that people have in a war zone, the daily matters related to food, health or social violence against civilians in war zones, they [often] report to religious actors.”
Yirga noted that religious institutions and elders have also been targeted by violence. Between July 2018 and April 2022, 30 churches were attacked across several regions in Ethiopia. In December 2023, an aerial strike on the grounds of a church in the Oromia region killed eight people and injured five. Two months later, two people were killed in an attack on another church in the region.
Other recent church attacks have occurred in Burkina Faso, the DRC, Mozambique and Nigeria.