Abstract:
The study examined a multitude of social, economic and political problems challenging the
Raya community of displaced Raya people in North Wollo. For this purpose, the study pursued
convergent parallel mixed research design. Following this, the researcher employed both
qualitative and quantitative approaches to gather wealth of information. Interview schedule
was used for collecting quantitative data whereas key informant interviews and focus group
discussions were conducted for getting detailed qualitative accounts. Accordingly, ten key
informant interviews and two FGDs were conducted with displaced government officials,
political activists and selected youth members. The researcher applied simple random and
purposive sample techniques to select representative sample from the total population. On top
of that, displaced Raya people randomly selected from the refugee camp. Data were collected
from 240 randomly selected respondents from the study area. Descriptive statistics such as
frequency and percentage were used to analyze quantitative data and thematic analysis,
particularly narration, was employed for qualitative data analysis. The study found out that a
bundle of social, economic and political problems posed grave challenges the Raya
community. The prominent social problems like linguistic discriminations, difficulty of social
life, difficulty to secure social justice, cultural identity based abuses, defiance to Raya dietary
and indigenous belief systems, resistant to cultural costume, unemployment, dwindle of
educational achievement and dearth of infrastructure development actuated challenges the
Raya community. Coupled with these, the study identified that economic problems such as
economic marginalization, inequitable distribution of industrial plant, becoming non beneficiary from natural resource endowment, declined investment flow, and prohibition of
local investors created challenges the Raya community. The study also uncovered that brutal
and oppressive administration, assimilation policy of TPLF, extended corruption, dearth of
human and democratic rights, negligence in the Regional administration and the appointment
of administrators from Central and Northern district of Tigray were among political problems
accelerated challenges the Raya community. From the results, one can conclude that a
combination of problems transpired myriad challenges the Raya community.
