Ethiopia after the Pretoria agreement: Red Sea geopolitics and the challenges of fragile peace

Peace agreements do not always fail through collapse. Some remain formally in force while conflict is reorganised through political and institutional processes. Ethiopia’s post-Pretoria trajectory illustrates this problem. The 2022 Pretoria Agreement ended large-scale fighting in Tigray, but its peacebuilding function has been weakened by unresolved territorial control in Western Tigray, incomplete political reintegration, and renewed Ethiopia-Eritrea tensions around Red Sea access. Based on triangulated secondary sources from November 2022 to June 2026, the study develops the concept of conflict consolidation to explain how a peace agreement can remain in force while being applied selectively, strategically delayed, and used to preserve authority. Western Tigray shows how unresolved territorial control sustains displacement, competing claims to administration, and delayed disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration. The 1 June 2026 election extends this pattern into the political system by proceeding without Tigray’s participation and without the TPLF’s reintegration into lawful political competition. Red Sea competition further narrows the space for accommodation by linking Tigray’s unresolved status to border security, Ethiopia-Eritrea rivalry, and wider regional tensions. These pressures generate four possible scenarios: institutional erosion, prolonged stalemate, conflict-driven centralisation, and conditional de-escalation. Unless territorial and political claims are addressed through a binding political process, the Pretoria Agreement is likely to remain vulnerable to selective compliance and renewed conflict.