A New Frontier in the Inter Ethnic Relationship in Multi Ethnic Ethiopia: A Study on the Role of Religion in Promoting Social Integration in Beni Shangul
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Date
2006-06
Authors
Hassen, Uthman
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Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
One of the greatest challenges of Ethiopia is to promote wider societal development because the
notions of ethnicity are fall prey to atomized competitions, hostility or conflicts. These fraudulent
competitions are directed in the struggle for political power, public offices, and socio-economic
opportunities by mobilizing their constituencies to think except ‘their own members’ are in power,
they are unable to secure the national benefits. Nevertheless, ethnicity does neither inherently
revolutionary nor impermeable, as many multiethnic nations do not have major troubles with their
diversities but a potential factor for cultivation. The problem lies on political elites who emphasis those
things that separate Ethiopians to organize ethnicity as a determining variables, if not inevitably a
problem, in a democratic government where supreme loyalty is fully submitted to the collectively
agreed constitution while every citizen feel loyal to a specific ethnicity without making divisive
demands. At this time, regional states are the center for archaic competitions against the arithmetic of
‘historic territory vis-à-vis numeral calculus that does not sustain political peace and tolerance, as is
not the cardinal virtue on which the pluralistic Ethiopian society bases its collective interests.
Therefore, for a viable society, we must begin with the practical recognition that all citizens are where
they are and what they are in position by good worth of how they actually live and how they
potentially rich to reshape their existence. Otherwise, if we are obsessed in politicizing our conflictual
historical relations, we should put them in their own contexts to avoid sociological-historical
distortions. Secondly, we, Ethiopians, have been undeniably multiethnic society, at least for the grass
root population, with apolitically constructed social spaces that promote the complementarities of
different ethnic or agro-ecological communities for millennia. These are enormously rooted in our
cultures of inter-marriage, population settlements, religious solidarities and ceremonies, conflict
transformations, economic exchanges and patriotic-coalitions against frequent colonial aggressions.
Therefore, the findings showed that, if renovated, these institutions could be a paramount importance for social workers in cross-cultural policy analyses, policymaking and practicing. Eventually, they
could have an instrumental role in sustaining a non-violent political formula for mainstreaming
development by the continual need to live with others of different identities while maintaining own
identity without trespassing upon the wellbeing of others
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Keywords
Social Work