The European Union on Tuesday announced a new effort to help Ethiopia rebuild from an ethnic-driven civil war that still lingers nearly a year after it was brought formally to an end. Then, yesterday, a United Nations mandate for an inquiry into human rights violations during and since the war expired. Since the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, and arguably further back, individual countries and the international community have embraced truth-telling as indispensable to post-conflict reconciliation and lasting peace. Those investments, starting with an initial EU pledge of nearly $700 million over three years, align with Ethiopia’s own projects to rebuild local economies disrupted by the war. In Ethiopia, the EU may be shaping a new model for reform and reconciliation, one that targets investments toward uniting a country around shared values of good governance.
