Introduction

Internal displacement has become one of Ethiopia’s most pressing humanitarian and governance challenges.[1] Driven by armed conflict, intercommunal violence, and ethnic and territorial disputes, successive waves of displacement have weakened social networks, undermined livelihoods, and increased insecurity.[2] People are often forced to leave their places of origin due to violent conflicts linked to ethnic identity, territorial claims, or a sense of belonging, which is disputed and linked to contestations over natural resources or power. Such displacement has resulted in the loss of life, home, land, and property, as well as the disruption of political and social relationships.[3] These consequences make ethnic-based conflict particularly significant for understanding the persistence and complexity of displacement in Ethiopia. For many communities, displacement is a protracted challenge sustained by unresolved insecurity and structural exclusion rather than being solely the result of continuous violence.[4]

Three solutions to internal displacement include: return to places of origin, local integration, and/or settlement elsewhere.[5] In Ethiopia, existing policy and practice prioritize return as the primary pathway for resolving displacement and achieving durable solutions.[6] However, in conflict-affected settings, renewed attacks, killings, threats, and secondary displacement have often followed return.[7] But less attention has been given to what happens after physical return, and even less to the conditions that determine whether return and resettlement are sustainable. This study examines why physical return of displaced persons to their communities has not produced sustainable solutions for IDPs in Ethiopia.

The study uses a transformative peacebuilding lens that brings together adaptive peacebuilding and agonistic peacebuilding, as well as the IDP agency, to interrogate the experiences of IDPs who initially returned to their homes after conflict but later returned to IDP camps in six locations in North Shewa and South Wollo, Amhara Region of Ethiopia. The region was selected because it hosts a large number of IDPs from other parts of Ethiopia. The research results are based on the analysis of data from 24 in-depth interviews with returnees, 8 key informant interviews, and 6 focus group discussions.

The following sections present the seven interconnected limitations to the return of IDPs to their ancestral communities, propose integrating transformative peacebuilding into return and resettlement as a durable solution, and examine the prospects for the future.

Limits to Return as Durable Solution
Technical Framing and Institutional Responsiveness

A critical challenge facing the return of displaced persons to their ancestral communities are limitations linked to technical framing and institutional responsiveness. Evidence from the interviews and FGDs shows that return is institutionally preferred over relocation and local integration. A key informant reported that the return of displaced communities is implemented through predefined systems, targets, schedules, and measurable outputs. The informant further stated that the government’s objective of achieving “zero IDP” by the 2019 Ethiopian Calendar gave IDPs’ return to their communities of utmost administrative importance because it directly reduced the officially recognized IDP caseload. Alternative pathways, such as local integration or resettlement elsewhere, do not provide the same administrative closure because they cannot reduce the IDP caseload in the same way. Interviewees and FGD participants reported that the government’s approach placed emphasis on the number of returnees, shelters that were constructed, assistance that was delivered, and cases that were closed. Important conditions for return, such as security, restored rights and livelihoods, property resolution, reconciliation, and social reintegration, received less attention.

The findings also reveal that returnees reported weak coordination, unclear responsibilities, inadequate livelihood and property support, limited consultation, and insufficient mechanisms for reporting emerging problems. Returnees also highlighted the absence of long‑term planning, weak communication between IDP sending and receiving regions, and inadequate mechanisms for resolving property disputes. They further emphasized that institutional support often failed to evolve with the shifting realities of returnees. Consequently, households remained vulnerable to renewed insecurity and economic fragility.

Return without Security and Protection

Insecurity is another limitation facing the safe return of internally displaced persons to their communities. Participants reported that they were frequently forced to return to their homes before the circumstances that had led to their displacement were sufficiently resolved. In most cases, the return of IDPs was followed by renewed displacement. According to the informant’s account, an estimated number of 600 IDPs were forced to return to their places of origin, after which some experienced further violence and renewed displacement, while others were killed or reported as missing.

The findings also show that insecurity extended beyond the immediate risk of renewed violence. Many returnees tried to live with a persistent sense of uncertainty about whether they could safely resettle in their places of origin. Without security guarantees and effective protection, this uncertainty has limited their ability to restore livelihoods, rebuild social ties, and make long-term plans. IDPs cannot rebuild their lives where risks to their existence remain unaddressed.

Return without Material Recovery

Many returnees reported that physical return failed to guarantee the material conditions necessary to rebuild their lives. Participants described a shortage of housing, unresolved land and property claims, disrupted livelihoods, and limited access to essential services. Many returned without their livestock or productive assets including businesses, employment opportunities, grants/assistance, or other resources needed to rebuild household economies. As a result, such returnees remained economically vulnerable and, in some cases, dependent on assistance or exposed to further displacement.

Some returnees also reported facing difficulties resuming farming, livestock production, or practicing other livelihood activities because land, assets, and productive resources had not been restored. Unresolved land claims were particularly important, with some returnees finding their farmland occupied or being used by others. Without secure access to housing, land, livelihoods, and services, returnees lack the necessary resources to rebuild their lives in their places of origin.

Return without Recognition and Belonging

Material recovery alone cannot make return permanent if IDPs do not regain a meaningful sense of belonging to their place of origin. Returning to the place of origin has often meant re-entering communities where relationships, identities, and perceptions of legitimacy had been reshaped by displacement and conflict.

These experiences demonstrate that the return of IDPs is also a social and relational process. Returnees continued to experience uncertainty about their status and acceptance within their original community. Therefore, the return of hither-to displaced people to their home communities requires more than physical re-entry; it involves rebuilding social relationships, restoring recognition, and creating conditions in which returnees can participate as legitimate members of their communities.

Return without Meaningful Participation and Agency

Another important point relates to the role of returnees themselves in shaping return and recovery pathways. The central issue is not simply whether IDPs were consulted but whether their knowledge and preferences could influence policies and actions about when, where, and under what conditions returning home could occur and how recovery could subsequently be managed. To illustrate further, an in-depth interview informant reported, “We were consulted, but our concerns were not considered in decision-making regarding return. We become recipients of decisions rather than actors shaping the conditions under which we return and remain.” Therefore, return without meaningful agency has only produced physical movement without genuine ownership of recovery. Returnees need opportunities to influence decisions, identify problems, monitor implementation, and shape responses as conditions change.

Limited Space for Dissent and Political Contestation

As reported by the IDIs and FGD participants, returning to their homes after being displaced by war was constrained by limited spaces for dissent and political contestation. One returnee noted that concerns could be raised during consultation, but there was little opportunity to challenge decisions once they had been made. This was particularly significant when return involved contested claims over land, identity, rights, and belonging. Such issues were not merely logistical; they reflected competing interests and unresolved political and social claims surrounding return.

Return without Justice, Accountability, and Reconciliation

Grievances resulting from violence and displacement have persisted after physical return, especially in areas where insecurity, loss, exclusion, and unsettled claims remain unaddressed. Interview and FGD participants identified unaddressed grievances including loss, dispossession, violence, and strained relationships. Where such experiences remain unaddressed, physical proximity has not necessarily produced reconciliation. Rather than being accompanied by dialogue or efforts to rebuild relationships with the neighboring communities in their areas of origin, some returnees described being transported back, placed in temporary or contained shelters, and left without meaningful engagement with the surrounding community. As one returnee explained, “The government officials simply brought us back and put us in the shelter. There was no discussion with the community about what had happened or how we would live together again.” Another informant similarly stated, “We were taken to our place of origin, but nobody brought us together with the local people to talk about what had happened. We were just placed there.”

These accounts demonstrate that return has been primarily implemented as physical relocation, without a parallel process of rebuilding relationships or addressing the grievances generated by displacement and violence.

Embedding Transformative Peacebuilding in Return Processes

The limitations of returning IDPs to their communities in conflict-affected regions demonstrate that durable solutions require more than restoring people physically to their own communities. Transformative peacebuilding provides the overarching framework for addressing the relationships, institutions, inequalities, injustices, and grievances that shape the effective implementation of resettlement and reintegration policies. It therefore shifts attention from treating physical return as the endpoint of reversing displacement, and a step towards transforming the conditions that enable displaced people to return to and safely remain at home with dignity. Return should be implemented as an ongoing and responsive process rather than as a fixed pathway that ends once IDPs have physically returned home. Adaptive peacebuilding provides a mechanism for continuous learning and adjustment of conditions under which the returning IDPs’ home can change. Institutions should establish mechanisms for monitoring, feedback, learning, and adjustment, so that interventions can respond to changing security, economic, social, and political conditions. This requires sustained institutional engagement with all stakeholders rather than one-time assistance or administrative closure.

Agonistic peacebuilding provides spaces for addressing persistent disagreement and contestation without the assumption that consensus can always be achieved. The aim is not to eliminate disagreement but to ensure that legitimate and constructive processes can be pursued through legitimate and widely consultative processes. These will ensure that returnees are participants in these processes rather than passive recipients of interventions. They need meaningful opportunities to influence decisions on security, property, livelihoods, services, and community relations, identify problems, and shape responses as conditions change. Embedding transformative peacebuilding in return and reintegration processes therefore means moving beyond whether IDPs have returned to whether they can remain home securely, rebuild their livelihoods, exercise their rights, and develop a sense of true belonging.

Conclusion

The findings of this study show that the return of IDPs can only be sustained when it is a transformative process rather than the restoration of pre‑displacement conditions. Transformative peacebuilding helps reframe the question of whether people have returned home to whether conditions exist for them to remain there safely, rebuild their lives, exercise rights, and belonging. The pathway to peace cannot be simply to return IDPs to their former homes, but to transform the conditions that make it possible, safe, and dignified.

Declaration of AI-Assisted Language Editing

To improve the clarity and readability of this paper, the author used AI-assisted tools solely for language editing and copy-editing. These tools were used to improve the wording, sentence structure, readability, and style of author-generated content while preserving its intended meaning, tone, grammar, spelling, and punctuation. The research content, analysis, arguments, interpretation, and conclusions were developed by the author and were not generated by AI. AI assistance was limited to language editing, copy-editing, and formatting. The AI-assisted editing tools used were ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, EditMyEnglish, and Trinka AI.

Endnotes
  1.  Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), Internal Displacement in Africa (2024): An Overview of Trends and Developments (2009–2023) (Geneva: Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 2024), https://doi.org/10.55363/IDMC.VYIL2669
  2. Alemu Asfaw Nigusie, “Unpacking the Current Internal Displacement Crisis in Ethiopia: Root Cause, Governance and Response,” African Identities 23, no. 2 (2025): 444–466, https://doi.org/10.1080/14725843.2023.2284125
  3. Tirsit Sahledengil and Desalegn Amsalu, “Ethnic Federalism, Conflict, and Displacement in Ethiopia’s Metekel Zone,” African Identities 23, no. 1 (2025): 54–71, https://doi.org/10.1080/14725843.2023.2227350; Ajitesh Singh Chandela and Rajesh Kumar, “Spatial Politics of Displacement: Ethnic Conflict, Governance Fragility, and Livelihood Resilience in Southern Ethiopia,” Cogent Social Sciences 12, no. 1 (2026): 2635164,https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2026.2635164.
  4. Alemu Asfaw Nigusie, “Unpacking the Current Internal Displacement Crisis in Ethiopia: Root Cause, Governance and Response,” African Identities 23, no. 2 (2025): 444–466, https://doi.org/10.1080/14725843.2023.2284125.
  5. Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), IASC Framework on Durable Solutions for Internally Displaced Persons (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution–University of Bern Project on Internal Displacement, 2010).
  6. Belayneh Zewude and Gashaw Siraw, “Sustainable Integration of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Ethiopia: Exploring Intentions about Post-Conflict Resettlement Choices,” Cogent Social Sciences 10, no. 1 (2024): 2350116, https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2024.2350116
  7. This statement is derived from the empirical findings of the present study and will be supported by the relevant interview and FGD evidence in the findings section.