By September 2018, Ethiopia and Eritrea had moved from ceremonial diplomacy to concrete steps: troop withdrawals from front-line positions and the reopening of border crossings that had been sealed for years.
Deutsche Welle reported the pullback as the practical face of the peace declaration—families reuniting, trade tentatively restarting, and a symbolic end to the militarized freeze that followed the 1998–2000 war.
Later years showed how incomplete and reversible some of those gains could be. Even so, the 2018 border reopening remains a landmark date for anyone mapping Horn conflict, migration, and the politics of “peace without durable institutions.”
Sources: Deutsche Welle, UN News
