Nuer Tribe Man With Gaar Facial Markings, Gambela, Ethiopia

The Killing of Nuer in Ethiopia by Anyuak has been going on for 8 years without any signs of slowing down. There has hardly been a month or sometimes even weeks without Nuer lives being lost in attacks attributed to Anyuak armed actors.

The persistence and recurrence of these killings are more than a series of isolated incidents. They reflect a broader objective by Anyuak of forcing Nuer communities from parts of Gambella.

As a result, this cycle of violence will not end by symbolic gatherings church services, concerts, community meetings or meetings of elderly. Those may provide opportunities for dialogue and healing, but they cannot substitute for effective law enforcement and accountability which the Gambella National and Regional State Goverment has failed to do.

What is required is credible and impartial law enforcement capable of investigating attacks, identifying those responsible, prosecuting organised violence, and protecting civilians regardless of their ethnic identity.

As repeated appeals for protection have failed to produce adequate security, Nuer must meet Lwa chiri insurgents with brute force.

This is a last resort after all avenues for peace were exhausted. Nuer communities in Gambella can no longer rely solely on regional and federal authorities to protect them whose agenda is to kill Nuer.

Nuer should establish an organised local self-defence structures involving more than 100 community members to protect civilians and vulnerable communities. The Nuer should not be made to feel ashamed for demanding the right to protect their families and communities when they believe the authorities have failed to provide effective protection.

Nuer will ensure the initiative of the self defense forces would remain focused on protecting civilians, preventing further attacks, and operating within applicable law. It must not become a vehicle for collective punishment, revenge, or attacks against civilians based on ethnicity but it will deal with armed insurgents which is taking innocent lives.

The fundamental responsibility still rests with the Ethiopian federal and Gambella regional governments. If they expect communities to reject armed self-help, they must first demonstrate that the state is capable of providing credible, impartial and effective protection.

A government cannot repeatedly ask a vulnerable population to remain patient while failing to prevent deadly attacks. If the state wants communities to trust its security institutions, it must demonstrate through action.

But so far, their actions have been clear. To have as Many Nuer Deaths as possible in Gambella. Every approach of preventing violence have been tried, yet produced meaningless change. The central problem is that the very state institutions responsible for preventing the violence and protecting civilians have failed to do so.

In the view of Nuer leaders and community members, elements within those institutions have enabled or supported the violence rather than stopping it. This becomes a question of state accountability and the failure of government institutions to provide equal protection to its citizens.

No community should be expected to participate endlessly in reconciliation meetings while killings continue and perpetrators are left without consequences.

The Ethiopian federal government and the Gambella regional administration must therefore answer a fundamental question: who is protecting Nuer civilians, and who is being held accountable when they are killed?

Until that question is answered through credible investigations, effective protection and genuine accountability, Nuer will establish a local defence force as quickly as possible.

The federal government cannot continue to present itself as a neutral guarantor of peace in Gambella while state institutions fail to stop recurring violence and of allow politically connected actors to remain in positions of power.

Gambella’s history provides ample reason for such distrust. Human Rights Watch documented periods in which federal authorities exercised extensive control over Gambella while regional and federal institutions failed to adequately address ethnic violence and accountability.

More recent reporting has likewise continued to raise concerns about violence, displacement and weak accountability in the region. This is exemplified by abandonment of Itang by the Ethiopian National Defence Force leaving the well armed Lwa-Chiri Anyuaks to evict Nuer from their communities.

For many Nuer, the central concern is therefore not simply the actions of individual perpetrators. It is whether the political system itself is allowing insecurity to become a tool for changing the demographic and political balance of Gambella.

There are allegations that elements of the Oromo political establishment have viewed demographic change in Gambella as a means of strengthening Oromo influence over the region.

If the displacement and the killing of the Nuer communities were ever being deliberately tolerated or encouraged for political purposes, that would represent an extraordinarily serious abuse of state power.

No ethnic community should be driven from its homes so that another political constituency can consolidate control over territory. For that reason and the reason to feel safe in our own homes and region, we must have a defence force to provide our protection.

This article was written by Pam Chuol Joack, a Gambella Vision Contributor and Analyst in Gambella Affairs.