– The biggest loss of reputation for the Peace Prize to date – VG

Many now point to Prime Minister and Nobel laureate Abiy Ahmed as responsible for the deadly chaos.

What we see is a sitting Nobel Prize winner who goes to war against his own people. The UN now fears genocide in Ethiopia, and the development may be directly related to the prime minister’s policy. Of course, last year’s award ceremony, no matter what the Nobel Committee says, is a scandal.

This is what Kjetil Tronvoll, professor of peace and conflict studies at Bjørknes Høyskole, tells VG. He has studied conditions in Ethiopia for 30 years and was arrested as recently as September while visiting the country as an investigator on the events in Tigray.

More than 40,000 people have been displaced in northern Ethiopia in recent weeks, and 2.3 million children are in need of emergency assistance as a result of the ongoing conflict.

Last week, UN special advisers reported a high risk of genocide, war crimes and ethnic cleansing if conflicts are not resolved quickly.

On November 4, the Ethiopian government ordered a military attack against the Tigray Liberation Front (TPLF). The party has power in the northernmost region of the country, Tigray, which has five million inhabitants. The Tigray are a minority in Ethiopia, but they dominated Ethiopian politics for decades until the spring of 2018.

Following popular protests, Abiy Ahmed became prime minister, the first of the country’s largest ethnic group, the Oromos.

Communication with the Tigray region has now been cut off, and it is therefore difficult to know what is happening there and how many people have been killed and injured in the fighting. There have been reports of ethnically motivated killings on both sides of the conflict.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Ahmed gave the Tigray rebels 72 hours to surrender, but they vowed they would rather die in combat against the Ethiopian army. Ahmed has threatened to crush the rebels if they don’t surrender.

The Peace Prize is used in the conflict

Last year, the Nobel Committee awarded Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed the Peace Prize “for his efforts for peace and intergovernmental cooperation and, in particular, for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighboring Eritrea.” According to the committee, the award was also “a recognition to all forces working for peace and reconciliation in Ethiopia and East and Northeast Africa.”

Now, a year later, the same man is charged with war crimes and inciting ethnic conflict.

Professor Tronvoll, who follows the international debate on the Ethiopia conflict, says that the Nobel Prize is used by both opponents and Ahmed supporters, and is a big part of the narrative surrounding the country’s conflict at the moment .

– The Nobel Prize has given Ahmed a moral “boost”. Throughout this year, Nobel Prize supporters, among other things, have used to support Ahmed’s policies.

Tronvoll believes that the Nobel Committee was warned in advance about the high risk of presenting the award to the acting prime minister.

– That the Nobel Prize is now linked to Ahmed’s current actions is the greatest loss of reputation the Peace Prize has ever had. This war delegitimizes the price more and more with each passing day, he says.

The director of PRIO: – I knew they were taking risks

Henrik Urdal, director of the Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO), says the current situation illustrates a huge dilemma for the Nobel Committee.

For one thing, he says, it is always safe to go to an election without controversy. On the other hand, the award can sometimes serve as a recognition of the initiative and as a push to continue.

Urdal mentions the award to the president of Colombia in 2016 as an example that the award may have been an extra push that the peace process needed.

– While that award worked, for example, Barack Obama, who was a controversial choice, ended up with a lot of blood on his hands after receiving the award in 2009.

While the controversial peace awards are nothing new, Urdal agrees with Tronvoll on several points.

– The committee knew that they took a risk to present the award to Abiy Ahmed. Ethiopia is one of the countries in the world with the most internal conflicts, and Ahmed is also the leader of a one-party state and is not democratically elected. At the time he received the award, there were a lot of things that were not in place and a lot of uncertainty, he says.

– What do you think of what is happening in Ethiopia now?

– I’m very worried.

Reject suffering as propaganda

Lemma Desta, an Ethiopian activist based in Norway, praises Prime Minister Ahmed’s handling of the conflict and claims that it is the TPLF rebels who are at the core of everything that is now going wrong in their home country.

– They have oppressed the Ethiopian people for so many years and have committed so much violence. We have asked for help, but we have not been heard. Now Ahmed is doing something about it, he tells VG.

– But the UN reports that 40,000 people have fled. Are you not worried about the suffering of civilians?

– Much of the criticism of our prime minister is based on propaganda and false accusations from the rebels. Currently, there is no civil suffering as a result of the conflict in Ethiopia, he says.

Although Desta disagrees with Tronvoll’s assessment of the conflict, he agrees on one thing: In the debate on the conflict, the Nobel Peace Prize and its importance are central.

Nobel Committee: – Deeply concerned

On Monday, VG contacted the Nobel Committee to answer the criticism, but they did not want to answer our questions.

Rather, the committee referred to a statement they made last week, signed by the head of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, Olav Njølstad:

“The Norwegian Nobel Committee is closely following developments in Ethiopia and is deeply concerned. The Committee today reiterates what it has said before, namely that it is the responsibility of the parties involved to end the escalation of violence and resolve disagreements and conflict peacefully. “