Where is Tigray?

Tigray is the northernmost state of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Since 1991, Ethiopia has been a collective of nine states divided predominantly along ethnic lines. This division has been about balancing the need for self-determination while maintaining the border integrity of Ethiopia as a whole.

Ethiopia is made up of more than 80 different ethnicities, with almost an equal division between Islam and Christianity. It shares precariously managed borders with neighbouring countries Somalia and Sudan, and is the only country in the region not to have been colonised by a European power. Certain groups – predominantly the Amhara and Tegaru (Semitic groups in the north) – have forcefully incorporated the south of modern-day Ethiopia. In addition, Ethiopian rulers made arrangements with Italy and England to claim masses of land that weren’t ours from neighbouring countries.