Ethiopia’s security situation remains volatile and fractured by multi-front internal conflicts. Despite federal efforts to project normalcy around the June 2026 general election, persistent instability severely impacts localized communities. In the Amhara region, intense clashes continue between federal forces and the Fano militia, which controls large rural areas and disrupted numerous polling stations. Concurrently, the Oromia region faces a severe security deficit driven by the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) insurgency. The OLA has been linked to attacks on Christian communities, including church shootings, property destruction, forced displacement, targeted killings, kidnappings for ransom, and assaults on worshippers. In the north, the fragile peace of the 2022 Pretoria agreement remains vulnerable following a brief reigniting of clashes between federal forces and the TPLF in early 2026. For vulnerable populations, including Christian communities, this systemic instability manifests as targeted regional violence.
Strategic Recommendations
Enhance Community Protection & Resilience in Areas Affected by Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) Activity:
- Support initiatives that enhance the safety, resilience, and recovery of communities impacted by insecurity and armed violence. Prioritize programs that improve local security coordination and protect places of worship.
Establish Community Security and Resilience Training: Partner with major church umbrella organizations, including the Ethiopian Council of Gospel Believers’ Churches (ECGBC) and the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY), to strengthen community preparedness and resilience.
- Security awareness and crisis-management workshops for church leaders and community representatives.
- Training in community alert systems and rapid-response communication networks.
- Emergency preparedness planning for churches, schools, and community centers.
Support Trauma Healing & Rehabilitation: Many affected communities have experienced violence, displacement, sexual violence, and the loss of family members and livelihoods.
- Partner with women-led prayer networks, church-based ministries, and faith-affiliated clinics that already serve as trusted sources of community support.
- Provide professional training in trauma counseling, post-crisis care and reintegration services, including for survivors of gender-based violence (GBV).
- Provide reintegration services for displaced families.
Counter Muslim extremism: Extremism has driven localized violence, particularly near regional borders and during Christian construction projects. Additionally, the conversion of an estimated 400,000 Muslims to evangelical Christianity has resulted in intense social pressure, economic hardship, and family-level retaliation.
- Create Safe Economic & Agricultural Refuges: Persecuted converts frequently face severe economic isolation and hardship.
- Collaborate on practical local development projects: Support agricultural techniques or vocational training programs to build self-sustaining economic cooperatives for displaced or marginalized converts.
Empower Pastors as Peace Mediators: As trusted community leaders, pastors are often asked to help resolve local disagreements.
- Sponsor leadership and conflict-resolution training to help calm tensions, settle disputes and address land-related conflicts before they escalate into violence.
Rebuild Destroyed Infrastructure & Parallel Welfare Systems: With at least 25 churches burned down or looted by armed groups in 2025, local congregations face severe structural displacement. Because these churches function as parallel welfare providers that operate vital schools and clinics, the destruction of a church building directly cripples the local community’s social safety net.
- Sponsor physical reconstruction of destroyed educational, medical, and community structures in affected regions.
- Leverage Global Diaspora Bridges to aid in funding reconstruction.
- Assist churches in deploying their adaptive hybrid infrastructures. Providing equipment for low-bandwidth audio delivery, recorded educational tools on USB drives, and secure digital platform capabilities ensures that community welfare and schooling can continue even under active security constraints.