Every morning, long before dawn breaks, young men and women flood Addis Ababa’s bus terminals. They board buses bound for Djibouti, Sudan, and destinations beyond Ethiopia’s borders. Many are university graduates whose hopes for a stable future have been eroded by years of unemployment, insecurity, conflict, and displacement. For them, migration is no longer a choice; it is a desperate search for safety, opportunity, and a life they believe is no longer possible in Ethiopia.
Borkena reports that Ethiopia’s greatest resource is not its land or minerals; it is its people. With a population of more than 130 million, nearly 70 percent of whom are under the age of 29, the country possesses a powerful demographic advantage. This young generation has the potential to drive economic growth and transform Ethiopia’s future. Yet over the past eight years, political instability, conflict and governance failures have undermined that potential. Many Ethiopians argue that while young people seek security, jobs, education, and opportunities, Abiy Ahmed continues to invest heavily in destroying the Amhara people, weakening the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, city beautification projects, luxury palace construction, and military spending. As a result, a generation is caught between war and unemployment, with growing numbers choosing exile over a future they no longer believe exists at home.
For many Ethiopians, the crisis extends far beyond political rhetoric, it is rooted in policies and actions that they believe have fundamentally altered the country’s social and political fabric. Senior government officials, including the Prime Minister, the Mayor of Addis Ababa, the President of the Oromia Region, and government-aligned political communicators, have played a role in shaping and amplifying narratives that deepen social and political divisions. State policies have privileged one ethnic identity over others, fueling perceptions of discrimination and deepening divisions among communities that feel excluded from political and economic power.
Victimized communities have stated that, over the past eight years, they have experienced policies of demographic engineering, forced displacement, cultural assimilation, and the reshaping of local identities. They point in particular to policies implemented under Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in occupied territories during World War II, including in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other parts of Eastern Europe, where population transfers, forced assimilation, territorial reorganization, and efforts to make local identities were used to advance political and ideological objectives. Accordingly, the atrocities and policies associated with Nazi Germany and other authoritarian regimes were widely condemned by the international community. Yet iit has not responded with comparable urgency to allegations of mass killings of Amhara people, forced displacement of residents of Addis Ababa, cultural erosion, repeated drone strikes against Amhara civilians, erosion of secular principles, mass detentions, and the imprisonment of opposing politicians, members of parliament, and journalists under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmad’s government.
The international community’s relative silence in the face of Ethiopia’s crisis reflects a troubling double standard. This silence appears to signal a willingness to tolerate the continuation of these alleged abuses and harmful practices in Ethiopia. As a result, many young people are losing hope for their future and increasingly choosing to leave the country in search of better opportunities elsewhere. Such inaction indirectly contributes to growing migration pressures, posing challenges nt only for Ethiopia but also for destination countries particularly in Europe.
