The Ethiopian and Ukraine-Russia conflicts accounted for 89 percent of battle-related deaths worldwide in 2022, according to a new report from the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO).
The institute’s annual conflict trends report found that last year was the deadliest in four decades, with 204,000 battle-related fatalities.
The two-year war in northern Ethiopia resulted in approximately 100,200 deaths before an African Union-brokered ceasefire was reached in November 2022. In comparison, the Ukraine-Russia war that began in February led to 81,500 deaths.
“While the war in Ukraine captured most attention, the parallel war between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front was more lethal,” the report states.
The Ethiopian conflict, already the third deadliest in 2021, drew in forces beyond the two warring parties.
The report counted an additional 22,300 deaths from other conflicts in 2022, accounting for 11 percent of the total.
About half of all casualties due to military conflict worldwide in 2022 happened in Ethiopia.
According to the report, battle-related deaths in Tigray have reached alarmingly high levels while the world’s attention has focused on Ukraine.
With the continued ceasefire in Ethiopia, the Institute predicts significantly fewer casualties in 2023. “The level of violence in Ethiopia appears to have reduced dramatically following the ceasefire two years after the outbreak of the civil war,” the report stated.
Six other countries were also embroiled in conflict in 2022, each surpassing 1,000 battle deaths: Somalia, Yemen, Burkina Faso, Mali, Myanmar and Nigeria.
Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who led peace efforts in northern Ethiopia, previously estimated total casualties resulting from the north Ethiopian war could reach as high as 600,000.
The bloodshed continues and and has a very likely potential to be worse than these numbers in the upcoming near future primarily because of the current Shanae government that is incompetent, ineffective, maleficent, inhuman , ethnic based and ruthless. Oromuma, Abiy and co must not only go be be held accountable for the current atrocities that are being perpetrated by Oromo Shane, government Shane, Adanech, shimeles… The entire structure needs to be shaken up and a new leadership take over. Journalists must be set free without any preconditions and the kangaroo court be dismissed. Amhara land should continue to resist and continue to form a coalition to separate from Tigre, Oromo and others that are anti-Amhara.
Let’s hope and pray that others have taken a lesson or two from this senseless and destructive war started by reckless and stupid individuals. Does that country have always to go through such bloodletting to gain trust for each other? The cardinal question is what did those noble of Tigray gain from the bloodiest war in their modern history? None whatsoever! In fact they lost everything. Literally everything. Those of you who were fanning the raging war from your comfy homes here among us, you must be ashamed of yourselves. The people you claim to be madly in love with have lost everything they had. Your ridiculous stubbornness and arrogance have been the harbinger for such tragedy that could have been avoided. In your twisted mind you think you are by far more intelligent than anyone else. Shameless, shameless, shameless!!!!
But the rest of us who still hold those Ethiopians close to our hearts without favoring one ethnic group over the others, I call upon you to pitch in the last red penny in our pockets to help those broken people in their trying time. You will be blessed.