Addis Ababa, October 19, 2026 (FMC) — Young people in Tigray Region must stop sacrificing their lives for political leaders and redirect their energy towards education, business, agriculture and industry, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has declared, calling on armed youth to surrender peacefully and take part in rebuilding their communities.
The appeal formed a central message of Abiy’s Tigrigna-language interview, broadcast across Fana Media Corporation (FMC) platforms, in which he laid bare the human cost of prolonged conflict and challenged the logic of a war that has repeatedly left young people dead, injured and deprived of their future.
The Prime Minister drew a sharp contrast between the young people sent to fight and the leaders directing the conflict. While young fighters lose their lives, suffer debilitating injuries and endure poverty, TPLF leaders continue to live comfortably, with their children abroad and their families established in Addis Ababa. Abiy questioned why the region’s youth should die or be permanently wounded while those leading the fighting remain removed from its immediate consequences.
The suffering, he emphasized, has accumulated across successive rounds of conflict. Young people have been killed, physically disabled and psychologically scarred. Those who survive face the difficult task of rebuilding their lives after years in which education, work and productive opportunities have been interrupted.
Abiy insisted that young people’s lives belong to them and their families—not to a political organization or its leaders. They should live for their parents, their communities and the future of Tigray Region rather than allow their lives to be consumed by repeated warfare.
His message was unequivocal: young people’s hands belong on computers, in classrooms, on farms and in factories—not on rifle triggers.
Armed youth should lay down their Kalashnikovs, surrender peacefully and enter the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) process. Those forcibly recruited into the fighting should return to civilian life and join efforts to restore peace and rebuild the region.
The Prime Minister urged young people to reject the notion that continued fighting is their only path. Universities, businesses, agricultural enterprises and factories offer opportunities to apply their knowledge, labour and creativity to improving their lives and strengthening their communities.
Abiy also condemned the banned TPLF group’s political conduct, saying the organization had repeatedly drawn young people into conflicts while its leaders enjoyed comfortable lives. He challenged the contradiction between its public rhetoric about serving the people and its actions, which he said had inflicted enormous suffering on the very population it professes to represent.
For the people of Tigray Region, the priority must now be to break free from the cycle of death, injury and deprivation. Peace would enable young people to resume their education and productive work, families to reunite, and communities to concentrate on economic recovery and development.
The Prime Minister’s appeal placed the future of Tigray Region’s younger generation at the centre of a decisive choice: continue sacrificing lives to conflict or channel their energy into rebuilding their communities and shaping a more prosperous future. Their lives, he stressed, must be devoted to building—not to prolonging a war that has already cost them so much.