Statement on the Abiy Ahmed Regime’s Escalating Campaign of Mass Forced Conscription
- AAA-admin
- May 1
- 2 min read
Statement on the Abiy Ahmed Regime’s Escalating Campaign of Mass Forced Conscription
The Amhara Association of America (AAA) strongly condemns the ongoing and unlawful mass forced conscription campaign being carried out by the Abiy Ahmed led Oromo Prosperity Party regime across the Amhara Region, parts of Oromia Region and Addis-Ababa city of Ethiopia. In recent weeks, AAA field investigators have documented widespread and indiscriminate military roundups of young men and minors, often under the threat of violence, beatings, and arbitrary detention. These actions constitute grave violations of both Ethiopian domestic law and international humanitarian and human rights law, including the prohibition against the recruitment and use of child soldiers.
Reports from Woldia, Debre-Tabor, Ibnat, Shewa-Robit, Hayk, Bahir-Dar, Addis-Ababa and Nazreth indicate a coordinated effort by regime forces—including federal police, militias, riot dispersal units, and local administrators—to forcibly conscript civilians into the military. Young people have been abducted from public spaces such as streets, coffee shops, markets, and religious institutions. In some cases, entire neighborhoods have been cordoned off and searched house-by-house. In Hayk city, AAA received verified reports of children under the age of 18 being among those forcibly taken. Parents who dared to plead for the release of their sons were reportedly beaten by local officials, including identified military commanders and state militia leaders.
These conscription drives are not acts of national defense. They are acts of desperation. After suffering catastrophic battlefield losses over the past two years of its genocidal war on the Amhara people, the Abiy regime is scrambling to replenish its decimated ranks by coercing civilians—including students, day laborers, religious scholars, and even street vendors—into military service. In parts of the Amhara Region like South Gonder, West Gojjam, and South Wollo, young people are fleeing their homes en masse or going into hiding to avoid abduction. Those without money to bribe their way out of conscription are being locked up in makeshift detention camps and later transferred to military training centers without due process.
This campaign amounts to a war crime, particularly in light of the regime’s deliberate targeting of minors and its use of coercion, deception, and violence to fill its ranks. It also reflects the broader pattern of crimes against humanity being committed by the Abiy regime, which include drone strikes on civilians, the destruction of educational infrastructure, and mass starvation tactics. In every case, it is the Amhara population that bears the brunt of these atrocities.
International silence in the face of this campaign is not neutrality, it is complicity. Despite ample documentation of these abuses, international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have continued to disburse billions in budgetary support to the Abiy regime, effectively underwriting a war of extermination. The failure of global powers to take action has emboldened the regime to escalate its brutality and push Ethiopia further toward disintegration and civil collapse.
We urge global governments, media, and human rights organizations to stop turning a blind eye. The mass forced conscription of civilians is not a sign of state strength, it is a desperate attempt to prolong a genocidal war that has already taken the lives of hundreds of thousands.
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