The Northern Ethiopia War and the persistence of internal displacement: subnational evidence from a difference-in-differences analysis

Ethiopia faces one of Africa’s most severe internal displacement crises, with over 3.7 million people displaced as of 2023. While the Northern Ethiopia War is widely recognized as the principal driver of displacement in affected regions, whether those regions experienced higher displacement than unaffected regions, and whether this gap persisted after the ceasefire, remains underexamined. This study estimates the effect of war exposure on displacement from April 2020 to March 2025 using a difference-in-differences design, with the November 2022 Pretoria Agreement as the intervention point. The primary specification compares two war-affected regions (Tigray and Amhara) to eleven control regions, excluding Afar. An alternative specification includes Afar as a treated unit. Displacement data come from IOM’s Displacement Tracking Matrix and conflict data from ACLED. Under the primary specification, conflict-attributed displacement was approximately 640% higher than in control regions during active hostilities and 495% higher after the agreement, with Wald tests confirming the two effects are statistically indistinguishable. This suggests that the cessation of large-scale hostilities alone is insufficient to facilitate return, possibly due to the exclusionary territorial arrangements under Ethiopia’s ethnic federal system. Consequently, recovery programs focused solely on conflict cessation may underestimate the duration and resources required for sustainable return.