The U.S. has announced new visa restrictions targeting individuals it says are undermining peace efforts in Ethiopia, focusing on hardline members of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and their immediate family members amid rising tensions in the country's north.
The U.S. State Department said escalating friction between TPLF hardliners and Ethiopia's federal government has heightened concerns about a possible return to conflict in the Tigray region, warning that the situation could destabilise security across the wider Horn of Africa.
Officials cited recent clashes involving TPLF-linked forces and Ethiopian government troops as part of the deteriorating security environment that prompted the policy response.
According to the State Department, the visa restrictions apply to individuals "responsible for, or complicit in" actions that undermine efforts to resolve the ongoing political crisis in Tigray. The measures also extend to the immediate family members of those designated.
The move signals a more targeted diplomatic pressure strategy from Washington as it seeks to discourage actions viewed as jeopardising the fragile post-war settlement.
Tensions escalated further after the TPLF moved to reassert control over the region's political structures in May, in a step that appears to challenge provisions of the 2022 peace agreement that ended the civil war between Tigray forces and Ethiopia's federal government.
The party said it had reinstated a legislative council that existed before the 2020–2022 conflict and that the body had elected TPLF chairman Debretsion Gebremichael as regional president.
The conflict in Tigray, which also drew in forces from neighbouring Eritrea, is widely regarded as one of the deadliest of the 21st century. Researchers estimate that hundreds of thousands of people died as a result of direct violence, famine and the collapse of healthcare systems during the war.
Although a peace agreement was signed in 2022, the latest developments highlight how fragile the settlement remains, with international actors warning that renewed political confrontation could once again escalate into wider instability in northern Ethiopia.
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