The Ethiopian-Eritrean Rapprochement After Year One: Cycles of Hope and Despair in Eritrea

The stalemate that followed the end of a two-year war between Eritrea and Ethiopia in 2000 was over when new Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed unconditionally offered the implementation of peace to Eritrea in July 2019. As a consequence of this rapprochement, many within Eritrea and observers from the outside expected political and economic changes to take hold in Eritrea. In this article I discuss how the first months after the peace agreement did result in a short-lived period of changing conditions of everyday life in Eritrea, largely triggered by the fact that the border between both countries was now open and could be crossed with relative ease.