SUMMARY

Highlanders (or Degegna) is a communal group that resides in Ethiopia’s Gambella Region, which is located in the southwestern part of the country. Gambella has always seen migration from other parts of Ethiopia, including people from the northern parts of the country. During the 1980s, the Government of Ethiopia resettled – oftentimes forcefully – large sections of the population to different parts of the country. As a part of this process, more than 60 000 people from the northern parts of Ethiopia were resettled to Gambella; as such, the influx of northerners was accelerated. As Gambella is considered a “lowland” region, the resettled and migrated people from the more mountainous northern regions became generically known among the local Gambela population as “highlanders”. Rather than representing a homogenous ethnic group, the Highlander population include various different ethnicities, such as Amhara, Tigray, Oromo, Kembatta, and Keffa. Most of the Highlanders speak Amharic, Ethiopia’s official language. Presently, the Highlanders constitute approximately 28 percent of Gambella’s population of 436 000. A majority of the Highlanders live in urban areas, particularly in the regional capital Gambella.

Despite being ethnically heterogeneous, the Highlanders still constitute a socially and politically salient communal identity group in Gambella. The “indigenous” population – that is, groups that has not recently migrated or been resettled in the region – consider the Highlanders as a strictly separate group. For example, the Highlanders are distinguished by their skin color, as they tend to have lighter (“red”) skin tones than the local (“black”) population. Among Gambella ethnic groups (such as the Anuak and Nuer) it is also common to ascribe a political dimension to the differentiation of the Highlanders from the local population. Indigenous groups consider the Highlanders as closely – albeit mostly symbolically - linked to the authorities in Addis Ababa, as the group includes members of the historically dominant Amhara and Tigray ethnic groups. This is also reflected by Amhara and Tigray Highlanders’ practice of referring to themselves as “Habesha” (or “Abyssinians”), which was the communal identity associated with the royal Solomonic Dynasty the ruled the Empire of Ethiopia until 1974. Consequently, tensions between the Government of Ethiopia and the Anuak or Nuer groups have tended to spill over into communal tensions between these groups and the Highlanders. Nevertheless, the Highlanders have suffered from political marginalization. As Gambella is considered a “minority state”, Highlander participation in local elections has been restricted in favor of the indigenous population. The Highlanders have generally occupied an economically favored position in Gambella, which has caused tensions with other less endowed groups; many civil service jobs are also occupied by Highlanders.

The Highlanders have on occasion cooperated with the Government of Ethiopia in targeting other communal groups. For example, in 2003 a joint force of Highlanders and Ethiopian troops massacred Anuak civilians in Gambella town (for more information on this, see Government of Ethiopia – Civilians).