SUMMARY

The Anuak (also spelled Anwak, Anwaa and Anyuak) are agriculturalists, hunters and fishers indigenous to present day Gambella region in south-western Ethiopia. While only constituting around one percent of the total Ethiopian population, the group was until the early 1980s by far the largest one in Gambella.

The Anuak faced considerable repression under the Mengistu era (the military regime ruling the country between 1975 and 1991). Land belonging to the group was seized by the authorities and many Anuak were forcibly conscripted for service in the army and on collective farms. Furthermore, the regime changed the demographic composition of the region by forcefully resettling some 60 000 highlander peasant from other parts of the country. This led to tensions as competition over resources increased.

Apart from competing with the newly arrived so-called highlanders, the Anuak have traditionally been enemies with the other large ethnic group in the region, the Nuer. Long-standing patterns of eastward migration among the Sudanese Nuer have led to a steady increase in Gambella’s Nuer population during the 1900s. The pace of the migration accelerated greatly due to the Sudanese civil war and by the early 2000s, the Anuak had become a minority in the region. The majority-minority issue became increasingly important when Ethiopia became a federation in the mid-1990s. Around the country ethnic groups scrambled to secure territorial claims, which in turn ensured representation at all levels of government. With power based on ethnic composition, numbers count, and the more Nuer moving into the region, the more power they gain in local government. Thus, the Anuak view is that they are both losing their land and their political influence to the Nuer.

Apart from the escalation of ethnic conflicts, which occurred mainly after the fall of the Mengistu regime, the Anuak has over the last few years claimed that they are the target of a government campaign aiming to marginalise them and to settle their own ethnic group in the region to guarantee them the access to the region’s natural riches, such as oil and gold. While the government denies all such accusations, human rights groups have noted a pattern of human rights abuses against the Anuaks since 2003.

The Anuak have been involved in the non-state category of UCDP organised violence.