If he had finished his education, Aregawy Tekle Birham, 23, believes he never would have left Tigray. Sitting on a stone step outside his old primary school in the mountainside village of Gendefru, Northern Ethiopia, Aregawy regretfully recounts his decision to migrate.
“I couldn’t get a job here because I only studied to grade 4,” he says, tugging dry stalks of grass from the ground and snapping them. “This school didn’t teach any further, and it was too expensive to travel to another. I thought I would find work in Saudi Arabia. But when I reached the border, they imprisoned me for three years.”
The only unusual part of Aregawy’s story is that he came home. The rest is common to thousands of young Tigrayans who are streaming out of the country. One regional survey found 29,600 15 to 35 year olds had left since Tigray’s war ended in November 2022. But this assessment only covered just over half of the region’s districts. There are 750,000 Ethiopians in Saudi Arabia of which 450,000 entered illegally, the UN estimates. From Arab states some try to reach Europe.
Many Tigrayan youths have lost all hope of a future. During the catastrophic two-year military operation launched by the Ethiopian Federal Government against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), invading forces pounded, burned and looted the region, decimating its infrastructure. Some 600,000 people died and 2.5 million were internally displaced.
The Federal Government imposed a de facto blockade over Tigray. It denied people access to banking services, fuel, telecommunication, electricity and limited humanitarian aid. In 2023, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and UN World Food Programme (WFP) suspended deliveries for five months after supplies were stolen. Officials later confirmed 1,400 people starved to death during this time.
The 2022 Pretoria Peace Agreement has not met all its aims. The Amhara regional government occupies Tirgay’s Western Zone, as well as areas in the south. Eritrean forces, which allied with the Ethiopian government, control Tigray’s northern border. A Tigrayan regional government officer, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of damaging relations with the federal government, told the Telegraph Tigray was effectively still cut-off as only one access corridor exists.
