Millions of Children out of School and Thousands of Schools Non-Operational in the Abiy Regime's War on Amhara in Ethiopia
- AAA-admin
- 16 hours ago
- 2 min read
April 10, 2025
Millions of Children out of School and Thousands of Schools Non-Operational in the Abiy Regime's War on Amhara in Ethiopia
On April 10th, 2025, the Amhara Association of America (AAA) published a special investigative report on the state of education in the ongoing Amhara war in Ethiopia. This report aims to provide an overview of how war and political violence have impacted the provision of schooling and the educational infrastructure in the region.
At the time of publication of this report the Amhara Region has been embroiled in more than 4 years of unabated ethnic war. Most recently is the war in Amhara which followed region-wide protests in early April 2023 which spanned more than 30 major cities and towns across Amhara Region and neighboring areas. Protesters demanded an end to genocide, ethnic cleansing, political marginalization, travel restrictions, home demolitions and forced evictions, and similar acts targeting ethnic Amhara people across Ethiopia. In late April 2023 rather than addressing the political grievances of the Amhara public, the Abiy Ahmed led Oromo Prosperity Party (OPP) regime announced a law enforcement operation against so-called “extremist elements” leading to almost 2 years of consecutive armed conflict between OPP soldiers (regime forces) and the Amhara Fano self-defense force (Fano). Since the onset of the armed conflict fighting has spread to all administrative zones of the region severely impacting millions of residents.
Over the course of the war, AAA has recorded a pattern of egregious violations of international law in acts of violence against the Amhara civilian population by regime forces throughout the Amhara Region and surrounding areas of Ethiopia. This violence has led to an estimated hundreds of thousands of casualties with daily attacks on civilians and civilian targets including schools by regime forces.
The violence in Amhara has left an estimated 4.4 million students (60%) out of school and over 6,000 schools damaged.
The current report aims to characterize trends of impact on the education system in Amhara with a special focus on 11 zonal administrations across four sub-regions. The report was able to account for over 3.5 million children out of school due to over 5,231 schools being non-operational due to ongoing insecurity, damage to school buildings/property and repurposing of schools as military outposts. The report was produced by AAA’s team of human rights investigators which compiled information from a combination of primary and secondary sources. Data collection was performed in spite of ongoing challenges including communication blackouts and fears of reprisal.
Taken all together, AAA’s latest report demonstrates the deterioration of the regional education system which is projected to have severe implications for the prospects of current and future generations in the country. Based on the findings of this report, AAA has prepared a series of recommendations directed towards international policymakers and other relevant stakeholders whose actions could alleviate the situation. These stakeholders include the African Union, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and broadly global human rights organizations.
Read the Full Report Here.
