Nobel committee voices concern over Ethiopia conflict

The Nobel committee that awards the prestigious Peace Prize voiced "deep concern" to AFP on Wednesday over renewed fighting in northern Ethiopia, whose Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won the award in 2019.

After months of tensions, heavy fighting broke out on September 23 between Ethiopian forces and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), raising fears of a return to the devastating 2020-2022 civil war that killed an estimated 600,000 people.

Until now, clashes had been reported outside Tigray, near its borders in the neighbouring states of Amhara to the south and Afar to the east.

"Clearly the developments in Ethiopia since 2020 onwards have been very negative and the last outbreak or conflict is, of course, of deep concern," the secretary of the Nobel committee, Kristian Berg Harpviken, told AFP.

In 2019, Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to bring about reconciliation between Ethiopia and neighbouring Eritrea, following two decades of conflict and subsequent acrimonious relations.

But the war Abiy led between 2020 and 2022 against the TPLF has tarnished his reputation as a man of peace.

"I don't think the committee has seen the (Nobel) prize as a mistake, by no means," Harpviken said.

"But if you go back and look at our records, the committee did issue a statement which implicitly encouraged Abiy Ahmed as a state leader to act in accordance with the values that underpinned the Nobel Peace Prize that he was awarded," he added.

Abiy is grappling with multiple armed conflicts of varying intensity across Ethiopia, a nation made up of 80 ethnic groups.