Ethiopia: UK Aid Should Respect Rights

(London) – A UK High Court ruling allowing judicial review of the UK aid agency’s compliance with its own human rights policies in Ethiopia is an important step toward greater accountability in development assistance.

In its decision of July 14, 2014, the High Court ruled that allegations that the UK Department for International Development (DFID) did not adequately assess evidence of human rights violations in Ethiopia deserve a full judicial review.

“The UK high court ruling is just a first step, but it should be a wake-up call for the government and other donors that they need rigorous monitoring to make sure their development programs are upholding their commitments to human rights,” said Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa director. “UK development aid to Ethiopia can help reduce poverty, but serious rights abuses should never be ignored.”

The case involves Mr. O (not his real name), a farmer from Gambella in western Ethiopia, who alleges that DFID violated its own human rights policy by failing to properly investigate and respond to human rights violations linked to an Ethiopian government resettlement program known as “villagization.” Mr. O is now a refugee in a neighboring country.

Human Rights Watch has documented serious human rights violations in connection with the first year of the villagization program in Gambella in 2011 and in other regions of Ethiopia in recent years.

A January 2012 Human Rights Watch report based on more than 100 interviews with Gambella residents, including site visits to 16 villages, concluded that villagization had been marked by forced displacement, arbitrary detentions, mistreatment, and inadequate consultation, and that villagers had not been compensated for their losses in the relocation process.

People resettled in new villages often found the land infertile and frequently had to clear the land and build their own huts under military supervision. Services they had been promised, such as schools, clinics, and water pumps, were not in place when they arrived. In many cases villagers had to abandon their crops, and pledges of food aid in the new villages never materialized.

The UK, along with the World Bank and other donors, fund a nationwide development program in Ethiopia called the Promotion of Basic Services program (PBS). The program started after the UK and other donors cut direct budget support to Ethiopia after the country’s controversial 2005 elections.

The PBS program is intended to improve access to education, health care, and other services by providing block grants to regional governments. Donors do not directly fund the villagization program, but through PBS, donors pay a portion of the salaries of government officials who are carrying out the villagization policy.

The UK development agency’s monitoring systems and its response to these serious allegations of abuse have been inadequate and complacent, Human Rights Watch said. While the agency and other donors to the Promotion of Basic Services program have visited Gambella and conducted assessments, villagers told Human Rights Watch that government officials sometimes visited communities in Gambella in advance of donor visits to warn them not to voice complaints over villagization, or threatened them after the visits. The result has been that local people were reluctant to speak out for fear of reprisals.

The UK development agency has apparently made little or no effort to interview villagers from Gambella who have fled the abuses and are now refugees in neighboring countries, where they can speak about their experiences in a more secure environment. The Ethiopian government’s increasing repression of independent media and human rights reporting, and denials of any serious human rights violations, have had a profoundly chilling effect on freedom of speech among rural villagers.

“The UK is providing more than £300 million a year in aid to Ethiopia while the country’s human rights record is steadily deteriorating,” Lefkow said. “If DFID is serious about supporting rights-respecting development, it needs to overhaul its monitoring processes and use its influence and the UK’s to press for an end to serious rights abuses in the villagization program – and elsewhere.”

=>hrw

Banned by TPLF Ethiopian Regime, Oldest Oromo Civic Association, Macha-Tulama, Forced to Mark 50th Anniversary in Washington-DC

Some of the Founders of the Macha-Tulama Association; Photo: Public Domain

Dear Colleagues,

The upcoming 50th Anniversary Celebration of Macha-Tulama Association (MTA). This historic event will be held on August 1, 2014 in Washington DC. Please allow us to explain once again why this celebration will be held in Washington DC, thousands of miles away from Ethiopia.

The story of the establishment of the Macha-Tulama Association was an event of great drama and wonder that has captured the imagination of the Oromo public since 1963, while its banning in 1967 is story of epic proportion which demonstrates Oromo powerlessness in Ethiopia. History of modern Ethiopia includes few cases of injustice and open discrimination equal to the banning of the first Oromo peaceful civic organization, which has come to symbolize the condition of the Oromo nation under successive Ethiopian regimes to the extent that in 2014, the Oromo who constitute the single largest national group in Ethiopia, are not allowed even to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the establishment of their oldest civic organization in their own country.

The leaders of the Macha-Tulama Association came together from different parts of Oromia. They have become the symbol of courage and sacrifices that have propelled millions of Oromo into organized motion. Firm as their grasp of reality, they looked upon peaceful resistance with a boldness of imagination unsurpassed in modern Ethiopian history. What spirit was it that moved them, made them accept sufferings, torture, imprison­ment, loss of property, breakup of families and loss of life itself? Without a doubt, it was the spirit of Oromo political awakening that propelled these men and women onto a new historical stage. They became the organizational expression of Oromo national consciousness. Through their struggle and sacrifices, they won a lasting place in the hearts of the Oromo nation. Within four short years the leaders of Association not only united and provided the Oromo with central leadership, but also made them conscious of their unity and their dehumanization as second-class subjects and inspired them to be agents for their freedom and human dignity. The 50th anniversary celebration is organized for honoring the sacrifices made by the leaders and members of Macha-Tulama Association and for keeping alive the spirit of freedom and human dignity for which they struggled.

Without any doubt it was the Macha-Tulama Association that planted the tree of Oromo political consciousness. The limited gains the Oromo achieved since the 1970s was the fruit from that tree of political consciousness. The Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, which has dominated Ethiopian government since 1991, is determined to deprive the Oromo of any independent organization by banning the Macha-Tulama Association, detaining its leaders from time to time and confiscating its property, thereby demonstrating the utter absence of the rule of law in Ethiopia.

We believe that you feel the pain and the daily humiliation of our people who are even denied the simplest right of celebrating the 50th anniversary of their oldest country-wide civic organization in their own country. Those of us who live in freedom beyond the tyranny of the TPLF regime have moral responsibility for supporting the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Macha-Tulama Association. It will give us a wonderful opportunity for informing the Western world that the Oromo and other peoples in Ethiopia are denied their basic human and democratic rights in their own country. What is greater shame for the TPLF regime that beats the empty drum of democracy than denying the Oromo the right to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their civic organization? Together, let us expose the brutality of the Ethiopian regime and lift up the spirit of our people. Now is the time for those of who are interested in freedom, democracy and the rule of law in Ethiopia to rise to the challenge of publicizing the 50th anniversary celebration so that more people will know about the tyrannical TPLF regime.

The plan of the day is:
· Demonstration at 9AM, gathering in front of the White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW.
· Marching to US State Department, 2200 C St, NW, at 11AM – ending at 1PM.
· Official Celebration at the Ukrainian Catholic National Shrine, 4250 Harewood Rd, NE, Washington, DC 20017, starting at 4:30PM.
· Continuing with Oromo Cultural Evening at the Ukrainian Catholic National Shrine until midnight.

Please join us so that we joyously celebrate together the 50th anniversary of the Macha-Tulama Association and demonstrate to the TPLF leaders that they will never be able to kill the spirit of freedom and human dignity that the Macha-Tulama Association planted in the heart, mind and soul of the Oromo nation.

We thank you for your cooperation in this noble undertaking.

Respectfully,

MTA 50th Anniversary Organizing Team

=>gadaa

Ethiopia's Nile dam project signals its intention to become an African power

Grand Ethiopian Renaissance dam will provide energy for growing economy but add to Egypt's fears over water security

Emeline Wuilbercq

Labourers work at the Grand Renaissance dam in Guba Woreda, Ethiopia. Photograph: Tiksa Negeri/Reuters

The 4x4 roars off, kicking up a cloud of dust. With one hand on the wheel, the other stifling a yawn, Semegnew Bekele could do this trip with his eyes shut. A construction engineer, he has driven down this track at every hour of the day or night over the past three years. "Ordinary people are building an extraordinary project," he says. He is referring to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance dam (Gerd), in the north-west corner of the country close to the border with Sudan. Four hours away from the town of Assosa more than 8,500 workers and engineers are labouring on a massive project to harness the waters of the Blue Nile.

The site is closely guarded. Only officially authorised vehicles are allowed through the three checkpoints. As the kilometres flicker by, the din of the diggers becomes more audible. Then the gigantic site itself appears, with thousands of tonnes of aggregate piled up and smooth expanses of concrete lining the bottom of the Guba valley, ringed by arid hills. The hundreds of families belonging to the Gumuz indigenous people, who lived off fishing, have been moved to a location several tens of kilometres away, making room for a hydroelectric power station that will be the largest in Africa when it comes online in 2017. At present only a third of it has been built.

Bekele, who works for the Ethiopian Electric Power corporation, has already worked on two dam construction jobs, both on the river Omo in the south-west. He answers our questions with a flood of figures: the dam will be 1,780 metres long and 145 high, with a reservoir covering 1,874 sq km expected to contain 70bn cubic metres of water. Output from the 16 turbines will total 6,000MW. It will be sufficient to meet growing demand in Ethiopia, now Africa's second most populous country, where gross domestic product is estimated to have grown by 10.5% annually over the past five years.

The countdown has already started for Bekele: he has three years left to complete this concrete colossus. "I don't feel like a special person," he says, "just an engineer leading the project." True enough, the driving force behind the dam is former prime minister Meles Zenawi, who ran the country for more than two decades. He was obsessed with the country's rebirth. The structure will be built, whatever the cost, he asserted, upon laying the first stone in April 2011. He died the following year.

International bodies such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch were extremely critical of his record on human rights, but he knew how to rouse national fervour and mobilise the country for the five-year growth and transformation plan launched in 2010, which included Gerd.

Due to open in 2017, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance dam will be Africa's largest hydroelectric power station. Photograph: Tiksa Negeri/Reuters

The scheme is expected to cost $4.1bn. As the country has not received any international funding, the government has appealed to the population to buy treasury bonds. For civil servants it is mandatory. Companies have urged their personnel to give up a month's wages to support Gerd. In a country where information is under strict control, it is hard to say whether they have much choice. "We agreed, we want to contribute to development," bank clerk Birhanu Libsework, 25, tells us in a cafe in Addis Ababa. "We're prepared to make sacrifices for better living standards and more energy," says Genet Getachew, an Amharic teacher. A single mother, she helps her daughter with her homework by candle light during the frequent outages in the capital. "The government mustn't try to do a thousand things at once, but this one is necessary," says Yeshi Negash (name changed at her request), a sociology graduate.

The government has already raised more than $350m, a third of which has been contributed by Ethiopians abroad.

Ethiopia hopes to become an African lion. "We have finished with the syndrome of dependence," says Zadig Abraha, deputy-head of Gerd coordination. "We want to recover our past glory," he adds.

Some neighbouring countries are less upbeat about the project. Citing two treaties, dating from 1929 and 1959, Egypt claims a historic right over the Nile. It fears that the dam will restrict the flow of water. The treaties, signed with the UK and Sudan, allocate two-thirds of the Nile's water resources to Egypt, with the right to veto any project affecting the world's longest river.

"These treaties are now obsolete. We are entitled to build the dam," says Alemayehu Tegenu, Ethiopia's minister of water, energy and irrigation. "For a long time we derived no benefit from our river."

Mohamed Ghoneim, the Egyptian representative to the African Union, disagrees. "It's impossible to undertake a project on this scale without environmental impact studies to assess the consequences for downstream countries," he counters, speculating on a range of potential disasters: salt may accumulate in the soil; land downstream could turn to desert or the flow be interrupted; the dam might even break. "The Nile is a vital resource for 80 million Egyptians," he adds.

In 2012, a year after work started, Addis Ababa tasked an international panel of experts (from Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan among others) with a study of the project's human and economic impact. In May 2013 they reported that further studies were needed. The Ethiopians have refused, saying enough time has already been wasted. Egypt is demanding a second international panel. Negotiations between Ethiopia and Egypt are deadlocked.

Night falls on the site. In the temporary lodgings, several thousand workers are falling asleep, while the next shift are playing football, soon to resume work. In a few years the Guba valley will be flooded. "The whole area will become a tourist attraction," Bekele suggests hopefully. But what will happen to the Gumuz community, we inquire. The engineer tells us to turn off the recorder. "We're all making sacrifices for our country," he says. "It seems only natural."

=>theguardian