25/11/2025
GSTS Systematic Review of the Second Tigray Interim Administration’s Eight-Month Performance – JULY 2025
Summary
GSTS’s systematic evaluation of the Tigray Interim Administration (TIA) reveals that, despite initial commitments to establish an inclusive administration, promote genuine dialogue and reconciliation, embark on healing and recovery, consolidate peace and facilitate the return of IDPs and refugees through the full implementation of the CoHA, and create conditions for a smooth transition to an elected government, the current TIA has moved in the opposite direction, including reversing several modest gains achieved by the prior interim administration in creating an enabling environment for press freedom, the right to assemble and protest, open public debates and conferences, decoupling of party politics from state institutions, ensuring equitable access to public mass media for diverse voices, maintaining the non-partisanship of the security forces, and reconstituting an inclusive cabinet.
The administration has become increasingly exclusionary, carried out political cleansing across public institutions, responded with force to legitimate community demands, and enabled escalating tensions within the Tigray security forces (now divided into two groups). Political and military actors have dominated decision-making, politicizing the security apparatus and the administration itself, while citizen-centric initiatives, including healing and recovery efforts and the implementation of CoHA, have been sidelined.
Inflammatory rhetoric has intensified, threatening the Pretoria Agreement and heightening tensions with Addis Ababa. These developments have deepened mistrust, intensified social and political polarization, and increased public fears of a return to conflict.
GSTS cautions that without immediate corrective measures, Tigray risks accelerating internal fragmentation and faces the real danger of sliding back into war. Accordingly, GSTS calls for the urgent reconstitution of the TIA, ensuring that the new interim administration decisively departs from the shortcomings of previous and current interim administrations, is mandated to revitalize and implement the CoHA, deliver essential public services, and guide the transition to a legitimate government through free, fair, and transparent elections.
