In February 2019, residents of Badme—the flashpoint town at the heart of the Ethiopia–Eritrea border ruling—told Deutsche Welle they feared the human cost of implementing territorial handover even as leaders celebrated peace.
Many locals were veterans or families who had lived with the war’s aftermath; legal title on maps and lived community on the ground were not the same thing. The EEBC decision awarding Badme to Eritrea had been a core Ethiopian grievance for years.
The report remains useful reference for the unfinished business of the 2018 thaw: peace declarations do not automatically settle displacement, identity documents, or who administers a town that symbolized the entire conflict.
Sources: Deutsche Welle, EEBC background
