Ethiopia: tribe starves as dam and land grabs dry up river - Survival International

The Kwegu in Ethiopia's Lower Omo Valley are starving because of the destruction of their forest and the slow death of the Omo river.

© Survival International

Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights, has received disturbing reports that the smallest and most vulnerable tribe in Ethiopia’s Lower Omo Valley is starving, as a result of the destruction of their forest and the slow death of the river on which they depend.

The Kwegu, who number just 1,000, hunt, fish and grow crops along the banks of the Omo River. But the massive Gibe III dam and associated large-scale irrigation for commercial plantations on tribal land will stop the Omo River’s floods, and destroy the fish stocks on which the Kwegu depend. Recent satellite images show that the Ethiopian government has started to fill the Gibe III dam reservoir.

In disturbing video testimonies filmed in 2012 during the clearing of their land, a Kwegu man said, “Maybe we will die. The river keeps us alive. If they take the water out of the riverbed where will we live? If the fish are gone what will we feed the children?”

Watch the full video testimonies here (the identity of the tribespeople has been disguised to avoid persecution)

Maybe we will dieKwegu tribespeople in Ethiopia’s Lower Omo Valley report that they are starving as a result of being forced from their land and of the irrigated plantations that are drying up the river on which they depend. Filmed in 2012, during the clearing of their land for a government sugar plantation.

Many now report that their beehives have been destroyed by the government’s Kuraz sugar plantations and that their sorghum crops along the Omo riverbank have failed because there has been no flood. The Kwegu have become dependent on food from neighboring tribes to survive. 

There has been almost no consultation of the indigenous peoples of the Lower Omo Valley about these projects on their land, and resistance is met with brutal force and intimidation. Several tribes are being forcibly settled by the government in a process known as “villagization.”

A member of the Suri, a neighboring people to the Kwegu, told Survival earlier this week, “The government has told us to live in new houses but we don’t want to… They did not try to explain what they were doing or ask us what we wanted."

Ethiopia is one of the largest recipients of USA, UK and German aid. DfID, the UK’s donor agency, recently announced it will stop funding a program which has been linked to the forced resettlement of tribes. However, it has not reduced the amount of its aid to Ethiopia and makes no reference to the resettlement program.

The Kwegu's children are going hungry because of the lack of fish and crops, and have become reliant on food from neighboring tribes.

© Survival

A report of a donor mission to the area in August 2014 by the Development Assistance Group – a consortium of the largest donors to Ethiopia including USA, the UK, Germany and the World Bank – has not been released, despite the growing humanitarian crisis in the Lower Omo.

Stephen Corry, Director of Survival, said today, "Donor agencies need to reform to ensure taxpayers’ money is not spent propping up governments responsible for evicting tribal peoples from their lands. DfID says its aid supports the poorest – yet it turns a blind eye to the many reports of human rights abuses in the Lower Omo, and continues to support an oppressive government hell bent on turning self-sufficient tribes into aid-dependent internal refugees.”

Notes to editors:

- DfID’s total aid budget for Ethiopia is £368,424,853 for 2014/2015

- The interviews were filmed in 2012 when the Kuraz Sugar project started clearing Kwegu land.

Ethiopian farmer drops case alleging UK aid money paid for evictions | Sam Jones | Global development | The Guardian

Ethiopian farmer drops case alleging UK aid money paid for evictions | Sam Jones | Global development | The Guardian:

An Ethiopian farmer who claims UK aid money was used to bankroll forced evictions in his home country has dropped his legal action against the British government after it stopped funding a controversial development project because of increasing concerns over civil and political rights in Ethiopia.

The farmer, known as Mr O, had alleged that British aid contributions to Ethiopia’s promotion of basic services (PBS) programme – a $4.9bn (£3.2bn) project run by the World Bank and designed to boost education, health and water services – were being used by the Ethiopian government to help fund its villagisation programme.

Ethiopia’s commune development programme (CDP), which aims to move 1.5 million rural families from their land to new “model” villages across the country, has been beset by allegations of forced evictions, rapes, beatings and disappearances.

Mr O, an ethnic Anuak, claims he was violently evicted from his farm in the Gambella region in 2011. He says he was beaten and that he witnessed rapes and assaults as government soldiers cleared people off their land.

Last week, Britain’s Department for International Development (DfID) announced that it had ended its PBS contributions because of Ethiopia’s “growing success”, adding such projects were also regularly reviewed to assess recipient countries’ “commitment to partnership principles”. Until this year, it had contributed £745m of UK taxpayer money to the programme.

On 4 March, lawyers for Mr O told the high court in London their client had decided to drop his judicial review of DfID’s actions as he had only ever wanted to see an end to the UK’s funding of the PBS programme.

Rosa Curling, a member of the Leigh Day Human Rights team representing Mr O, told the Guardian he had got everything he had hoped to achieve from his litigation.

“His challenge was to the way in which DfID was assessing human rights issues when deciding whether it should continue to provide UK aid or not,” she said.

“We said given DfID had made a decision to continue to provide aid to PBS in 2013 despite the major allegations of human rights abuses, it was clear that there was not a proper system in place or the system in place wasn’t being properly followed by DfID.”

Curling said Mr O, who now lives in a refugee camp in Kenya, had never sought compensation from the British government.

“He has only ever wanted to make sure the financial support for the programme which has had such a devastating effect on his family – villagisation – was withdrawn,” she added.

“His claim was never about compensation; it’s always been a challenge about DfID funding and making sure UK aid is not used for a harmful purpose.”

In a statement read in court, DfID was more explicit about why the secretary of state, Justine Greening, had made the decision to end Britain’s PBS funding in January.

“This was as a result of ongoing concerns related to civil and political rights at the level of the overall partnership in Ethiopia, and in particular recent trends on civil and political rights in relation to freedom of expression and electoral competition, and continued concerns about the accountability of the security services,” said the statement.

“In light of these concerns about Ethiopia’s record on civil and political rights, and the trend of that record, it was decided to review the way in which UK aid was provided to Ethiopia.”

As a result, the statement said, DfID had chosen to support programmes involving “a lesser degree of responsibility and authority of the government of Ethiopia than the PBS”.

However, DfID was adamant the decision to end its PBS funding had nothing to do with Mr O’s legal action, saying: “[It] was not linked to any development relating to the CDP or any allegations of violations of human rights in that context.”

The department said it welcomed Mr O’s withdrawal of the action, adding the court had found not “fault or flaw” in the processes underpinning its aid decisions.

“It is absolutely right this fruitless legal case, which has dragged on for over two years at the taxpayers’ expense, has now ended,” said a DfID spokesman.

“The UK government has always been firmly committed to upholding human rights across the world and this decision vindicates the thorough processes we have in place to monitor and plan our spending.”

On 4 March the World Bank admitted it had no idea how many people had been turfed off their land or lost their jobs as a result of its projects in developing countries.

The World Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, told reporters: “We must and will do better.”

His pledge came days after the World Bank’s executive board had met to discuss a damning internal report on the PBS programme and the management response.

In a statement released on 27 February, the bank said that although its inspection panel had concluded that the seizing of land and use of violence and intimidation were not consequences of PBS, it had determined that the programme “did not fully assess and mitigate the risks arising from the government’s implementation of CDP, particularly in the delivery of agricultural services to the Anuaks”.

Noting that one of the institution’s core principles was to do no harm to the poor, Kim added: “In this case, while the inspection panel found no violations, it did point out areas where we could have done more to help the Anuak people. We draw important lessons from this case to better anticipate ways to protect the poor and be more effective in fighting poverty.”

Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty 2015: Linking Land Tenure and Use for Shared Prosperity

Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty 2015: Linking Land Tenure and Use for Shared Prosperity

March 23-27, 2015

Washington, DC

The Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty organized by the World Bank Development Economic Research Group (DECRG) is a key global event where representatives from governments, civil society, academia, the development community, and the private sector come together annually to discuss new developments and progress on land policy and implementation. The conference aims to foster dialogue and sharing of best practices on the diversity of reforms, approaches and experiences that are being implemented in land sectors around the world.

• OVERVIEW
• REGISTER AND CHECK-IN
• SPONSOR WITH US
• IMPORTANT DATES
• RESOURCES

LAND AND POVERTY CONFERENCE 2015

• TITLE: "Linking Land Tenure and Use for Shared Prosperity"
• ORGANIZER: Nisma Elias (202) 458-5628
• CONTACT: Land Conference 2015 landconference@worldbank.org

Preliminary Program

The World Bank is pleased to announce the 16^th Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty to be held from March 23 – 27, 2015 at the World Bank Headquarters in Washington D.C. Participants include leaders and professionals from across governments, civil society, academia, the private sector and partners to interact and discuss innovative approaches to improving land governance. Last year’s conference attracted more than 1,000 participants from 101 countries; 60 percent of participants were from developing countries, about a fourth representing government officials and another fourth from international organizations.

The theme for 2015 is Linking Land Tenure and Use for Shared Prosperity. The topic highlights that, while land tenure affects the distribution of assets between men and women, generations, and social groups, patterns of land use will have far-reaching implications for welfare and other socioeconomic outcomes at household, community, or landscape level. Although they are by no means a silver bullet, recent innovations in geospatial technologies provide exciting opportunities to document and analyze determinants, as well as impacts of land use change that are of great relevance for policy, projects, and research in this area.

Conference Structure

The conference will start on March 23 at 5pm and conclude on March 27. A pre-conference workshop on ‘monitoring land governance’ will be held immediately preceding the opening session on March 23. Sessions comprising select papers and debates on important innovations and policy issues will run concurrently on March 24-26, together with poster presentations. An Innovations Fair featuring how innovations in technology and open data can help improve land governance at scale will be held on March 26 and a post-conference learning day on March 27 will offer hands-on classes to familiarize participants with cutting edge tools and techniques developed to help policy makers.

March 27 — Post-conference Learning Day

There has been considerable interest by participants to gain hands-on experience with cutting edge tools and techniques in order to improve land governance. To respond to this interest, we will provide an opportunity to sponsors and partners to offer master classes or clinics for a limited number of participants in a classroom setting. Events will be published in the program book and participation will be by registration only, with the possibility of repeat classes if interest is high.

March 26 — Innovations Fair

A new feature to be introduced to the 2015 Conference is a full day focusing on solutions for land administration and management.  Service providers and technology vendors are invited to present solutions in a show-and-tell day.  The scope of the Innovations Fair is expected to cover land and geographic information systems, earth observation satellite imagery data acquisition and applications, aerial imagery, satellite positioning applications and location based services, online services and e-governance, land surveying, data conversion, data security, standards, systems interoperability, open systems, social media, volunteer geographic information, etc.  The Innovations Fair will encourage hands-on interaction with conference participants looking for solutions to the land challenges of the post-2015 Development Agenda. If you are interested in participating in the Innovations Fair, please fill out the online form. 

If you are interested in offering a master class, please fill out the online proposal. Priority to offer a Master class will be given to Sponsors. In case we receive more proposals than we have rooms available, preference will be given to sponsors.

The thematic areas for the 2015 Conference are:

1. Land tenure, climate smart land use, and resilience.
2. The role of land tenure in effecting urban form, density, and urban-rural linkages.
3. Impacts of large scale land-based investment, implementation challenges, and policy implications.
4. Scalable approaches to improving tenure security and their impacts.
5. Using standards-based geospatial technologies to monitor land use and improve land governance.
6. Harnessing the potential of open data for transparency.
7. Advances with securing and protecting land rights from a gender perspective.
8. Innovations on improving access to justice.
9. Tenure security in conflict states and resource rich economies.
10. Benchmarking, performance monitoring and policy dialogue: from local to global.