Hawd Plateau

Hawd Plateau, plateau sloping southeastward and spanning the northern Ethiopian-Somali border, southeast of the northern Somalian highlands. It covers an area of about 25,000 square miles (64,750 square km) and slopes from about 4,000 feet (1,220 metres) in the northwest to about 1,500 feet (450 metres) in the southeast. It is a vast savanna of varying fertility and is a major wet-season grazing area for herds of camels, goats, and sheep kept by the Somali pastoralists. The Hawd Plateau has few permanent wells (except for areas in the west) and is thus mostly uninhabited during the dry season (January to April). Some natural depressions, filled during the rainy season from April to June, provide fresh pasturage for as long as five to six months.

Under the Anglo-Ethiopian treaty of 1897, Great Britain ceded the northeastern part of the Hawd Plateau, a traditional Somali grazing area, to Ethiopia. In 1960 the newly independent Somali government refused to acknowledge this transfer, and a major dispute erupted in 1964. Later Ethiopia decided to continue to allow Somali pastoralists to cross the boundary and use the Hawd Plateau as they had been doing for centuries. In the late 20th century the boundary dispute between Ethiopia and Somalia had not been settled, and Somali nomads continued to move back and forth across the plateau.