When a Nobel Peace Prize winner wages war, who loses?

When Mulugeta Gebregziabher heard in October 2019 that the Nobel Peace Prize had been awarded to Abiy Ahmed, the new reformist prime minister of Ethiopia, his reaction was immediate dread.

“I thought, this is going to give this guy the legitimacy internationally to do whatever he wants,” says the Ethiopian professor of biostatistics, who now lives in the United States.

For Yonatan Fessha, an Ethiopian legal scholar at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, the choice betrayed a startling lack of research.

“Someone closely familiar with the political dynamics of that region wouldn’t have given this award to Abiy,” he remembers thinking.

Nearly two years later, the chorus condemning the decision to give Mr. Abiy the award has swollen. Since November 2020, the prime minister – hailed by the Nobel Prize committee for giving Ethiopians “hope for a betterone of his own provinces, Tigray. There have been multiple documented massacres of civilians and the region is experiencing widespread starvation, much of it as a result of troops blocking humanitarian aid. Earlier this month, Mr. Abiy’s party was declared the winner of an election boycotted by two major opposition parties, and in which about a fifth of the country’s regions haven’t yet voted, poising him for a second five-year term.