To Resist against international Land Grabbing working against the local population by evicting them from their ancestral lands and from rendering them internally displaced ...
Friday, January 31, 2014
US Congress Takes a Historic Stance Against Land Grabs-Related Forced Evictions in Ethiopia
US Congress Takes a Historic Stance Against Land Grabs-Related Forced Evictions in Ethiopia
Monday, January 27, 2014
For Immediate Release January 27, 2014
MEDIA CONTACT:
Anuradha Mittal, 510-469-5228; amittal@oaklandinstitute.org
Frederic Mousseau, 510-512-5458; fmousseau@oaklandinstitute.org
Oakland, CA – In a historic move, the US Congress has taken a stance on land grabs-related human rights abuses in Ethiopia. The 2014 Omnibus Appropriations Bill contains provisions that ensure that US development funds are not used to support forced evictions in Ethiopia.
The bill prevents US assistance from being used to support activities that directly or indirectly involve forced displacement in the Lower Omo and Gambella regions. It further requires US assistance in these areas be used to support local community initiatives aimed at improving livelihoods and be subject to prior consultation with affected populations. The bill goes further and even instructs the directors of international financial institutions to oppose financing for any activities that directly or indirectly involve forced evictions in Ethiopia.
According to Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute, “We welcome this move as it aims to address one major flaw of US assistance to Ethiopia. The step taken by the US Congress is very significant, as it signals to both the Ethiopian government and the US administration that turning a blind eye to human rights abuses in the name of development is no longer an option.”
Several reports from the Oakland Institute have raised alarm about the scale, rate, and negative impacts of large-scale land acquisitions in Ethiopia that would result in the forced displacement of over 1.5 million people. This relocation process through the government’s villagization scheme is destroying the livelihoods of small-scale farmers and pastoralist communities. Ethiopian security forces have beaten, arrested, and intimidated individuals who have refused to relocate and free the lands for large-scale agricultural plantations.
Ethiopia’s so-called development programs cannot be carried out without the support of international donors, primarily the US, one of its main donors. Oakland Institute’s on-the-ground research has documented the high toll paid by local people as well as the role of donor countries such as the US in supporting the Ethiopian policy.
This language represents an important first step towards Congress initiating a comprehensive examination of US development practices in Ethiopia. As the oversight authority of the State Department, Congress must now ensure that the law is fully upheld and implemented. This warrants thorough scrutiny of USAID programs to Ethiopia and their contribution to forced resettlements and human rights abuses.
With this bill, USAID, the State Department, as well as the World Bank, will have to reconsider the terms and modalities of the support they provide to the Ethiopian government. According to Frederic Mousseau, Oakland Institute’s Policy Director, “This is a light of hope for the millions of indigenous people in Ethiopia who have sought international support from the international community to recognize their very destruction as communities and people.”
For more information, see:
Development Aid to Ethiopia: Overlooking Violence, Marginalization, and Political Repression
Ignoring Abuse in Ethiopia: DFID and USAID in the Lower Omo Valley
Omo: Local Tribes Under Threat
Lower Omo: Local Tribes Under Threat (video)
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
G8 land deal to boost land rights in Ethiopia
- Details
- Published on Monday, 09 December 2013 14:04
- Written by newbusinessethiopia
Ethiopian government, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, and the Federal Republic of Germany enter a land country partnership to work together to improve rural land governance for economic growth and to protect the land rights of local citizens in Ethiopia.
"The Ministry of Agriculture of Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia welcomes this joint partnership in the context of supporting the implementation of Ethiopia’s Rural Land Administration and Use plan under its policy and strategic frameworks," said, Ethiopia’s Minister of Agriculture Tefera Derbew.
Food security
"It will help the country to ensure and sustain its economic development by strengthening rural land governance in view of fostering food security and realising constitutionally recognised rural land related rights of Nations, Nationalities and People of Ethiopia. I hope the current harmonisation, co-ordination and alignment mechanisms of Rural Economic Development and Food Security Working group (RED-FS SWG) and Sustainable Land Management Platforms will serve as an engine to further," he said. This partnership builds on existing programmes and represents an important vehicle for increased coordination and collaboration among the Government of Ethiopia and its development partners.
Land ownership for women prevents fears of uncertainty:
The announcement came after the representatives of the heads of state from G8 member states gathered in London to mark the handing over of the G8 Presidency from the United Kingdom to Russia.
The partnership with Ethiopia will support improved rural land tenure security for all, including through appropriate land use management in communal and pastoral areas.
It will strengthen transparency in land governance, including by promoting responsible agricultural investment through an improved legal framework and practices.
Defuse conflicts
“Having secure rights to land will help people across Ethiopia to grow the food they need, boost incomes, defuse conflicts and deal with the impact of climate change," International Development Minister Lynne Featherstone said Speaking for the UK.
"This joint partnership will make sure Ethiopia can make the most of its valuable resources and attract the investment and income needed to boost growth and fight poverty.”
German Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development Dirk Niebel on his part said in Berlin, "Access to land and land tenure security are crucial for food and income security for the rural population in Ethiopia."
"This partnership will complement and strengthen the Government of Ethiopia's efforts in the sustainable land management program to which Germany has been committed for years. This partnership also shows that the G8 is delivering upon its commitments promptly and with a view to the needs and priorities of our partners."
According to Dr. Rajiv Shah U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator, the Government of Ethiopia has made great progress "in recognizing the rights of smallholder farmers with support from USAID, and we look forward to broadening and deepening this collaboration in the country’s pastoral areas."
New Alliance
According to the joint press statement, the partnership represents the continuation of the commitments made under the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, an effort by African heads of state, corporate leaders and G8 members to increase food security and nutrition in sub-Saharan Africa, and takes note of the African Union Declaration on Land Issues and Challenges.
"It will also coordinate and harmonize support from existing and potential new development partners in the land sector. These objectives will be achieved through ongoing and potential additional future programs in support of improved rural land governance."
"Further details on the partnership will also be communicated over the course of the next year through the G8 and the Global Donor Working Group on Land, which was recently established by bilateral and multilateral donors to improve coordination of their respective efforts in the rural land sector," the statement noted.
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Ethiopian Regime looks to the space and "unveils a new telescope of space program" while 80% of Ethiopians do not eat full meal a day
This NASA image obtained on October 16, 2011 shows the Carina Nebula -- a star-forming region of the Milky Way
Ethiopia unveiled Friday the first phase of a space exploration program, which includes East Africa's largest observatory designed to promote astronomy research in the region. Once Jommo Kenyta in 1960's said " the Europeans showing as the heavens took our lands". The Ethiopian regime today letting the land of the people to be grabbed claimed started exploring the heavens, when 80% of Ethiopians do not eat a full meal in a day.
The so called "The optical astronomical telescope is mainly intended for astronomy and astrophysics observation research," said observatory director Solomon Belay.
The observatory, which will formally be opened on Saturday, boasts two telescopes, each one meter (over three feet) wide, to see "extra planets, different types of stars, the Milky Way, and deep galaxies," Solomon added.
The 3.4 million dollar (2.5 million euro) observatory, run by the Ethiopian Space Science Society (ESSS), is funded by Ethiopian-Saudi business tycoon Mohammed Alamoudi enriched selling Ethiopian Gold and fertile land to the international speculators.
The observatory, 3,200 meters (10,500 feet) above sea level in the lush Entoto mountains on the outskirts of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, is an ideal location because of its minimal cloud cover, moderate winds and low humidity, experts said.
When established in 2004, ESSS was labelled as the "Crazy People's Club", according to the group, but has gained credibility in the past decade with astronomy courses introduced at universities and winning increased political support.
The Ethiopian government is set to launch a space policy in coming years.
Solomon said the group originally faced sceptics in Ethiopia and abroad, who questioned whether space exploration was a wise use of resources in one of Africa's poorest economies, plagued in the past by chronic famine and unrest.
But Solomon said promoting science is key to the development in Ethiopia, today one of Africa's fastest growing economies largely based on agriculture.
"If the economy is strongly linked with science, then we can transform a poor way of agriculture into industrialization and into modern agriculture," he said.
The ESSS is now looking to open a second observatory 4,200 metres (13,800 feet) above sea level in the mountainous northern town of Lalibela, also the site of the largest cluster of Ethiopia's ancient rock-hewn churches.
Photographs from the ESSS show scientists with testing equipment looking for the best site to put the next telescope on the green and remote peaks, as local villagers wrapped in traditional white blankets watch on curiously, sitting outside their thatch hut homes.
Solomon hopes to boost "astronomy tourism" among space fans interested in coming to one of the least likely countries in the world to boast a space programme, an added economic benefit.
The country will also launch its first satellite in the next three years, ESSS said, to study meteorology and boost telecommunications.
Ethiopia is not the first African nation to look to the skies; South Africa has its own National Space Agency, and in 2009 the African Union announced plans to establish The African Space Agency.
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, has also called for a continent-wide space program .
Solomon said while the next several years will be about boosting research and data collection, along with promoting a strong local and regional interest in astronomy, he is not ruling out sending an Ethiopian into space one day.
The so called "The optical astronomical telescope is mainly intended for astronomy and astrophysics observation research," said observatory director Solomon Belay.
The observatory, which will formally be opened on Saturday, boasts two telescopes, each one meter (over three feet) wide, to see "extra planets, different types of stars, the Milky Way, and deep galaxies," Solomon added.
The 3.4 million dollar (2.5 million euro) observatory, run by the Ethiopian Space Science Society (ESSS), is funded by Ethiopian-Saudi business tycoon Mohammed Alamoudi enriched selling Ethiopian Gold and fertile land to the international speculators.
The observatory, 3,200 meters (10,500 feet) above sea level in the lush Entoto mountains on the outskirts of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, is an ideal location because of its minimal cloud cover, moderate winds and low humidity, experts said.
When established in 2004, ESSS was labelled as the "Crazy People's Club", according to the group, but has gained credibility in the past decade with astronomy courses introduced at universities and winning increased political support.
The Ethiopian government is set to launch a space policy in coming years.
Solomon said the group originally faced sceptics in Ethiopia and abroad, who questioned whether space exploration was a wise use of resources in one of Africa's poorest economies, plagued in the past by chronic famine and unrest.
But Solomon said promoting science is key to the development in Ethiopia, today one of Africa's fastest growing economies largely based on agriculture.
"If the economy is strongly linked with science, then we can transform a poor way of agriculture into industrialization and into modern agriculture," he said.
The ESSS is now looking to open a second observatory 4,200 metres (13,800 feet) above sea level in the mountainous northern town of Lalibela, also the site of the largest cluster of Ethiopia's ancient rock-hewn churches.
Photographs from the ESSS show scientists with testing equipment looking for the best site to put the next telescope on the green and remote peaks, as local villagers wrapped in traditional white blankets watch on curiously, sitting outside their thatch hut homes.
Solomon hopes to boost "astronomy tourism" among space fans interested in coming to one of the least likely countries in the world to boast a space programme, an added economic benefit.
The country will also launch its first satellite in the next three years, ESSS said, to study meteorology and boost telecommunications.
Ethiopia is not the first African nation to look to the skies; South Africa has its own National Space Agency, and in 2009 the African Union announced plans to establish The African Space Agency.
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, has also called for a continent-wide space program .
Solomon said while the next several years will be about boosting research and data collection, along with promoting a strong local and regional interest in astronomy, he is not ruling out sending an Ethiopian into space one day.
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
In Ethiopia, more land grabs, more indigenous people pushed out - CSMonitor.com
A journalist's visit to South Omo, where rights groups say police have raped women and otherwise pressured locals to leave an area tagged to become a huge sugar plantation, was quickly curtailed by authorities.
In an August 2013 photo, people from the Mursi ethnic group are seen on the road from Hailewuha to Jinka in the South Omo Zone of Ethiopia.
William Davison
As night wore on in a remote valley in southern Ethiopia, one policeman dozed and another watched a DVD comedy on a battery-powered laptop.
In Pictures Africa's Hot Spots
Related stories
| Ads by Google |
Votre spécialiste cadres, albums, books & accessoires photos ! |
Subscribe Today to the Monitor
Close by, in a clutch of thorn trees and grass huts, an ethnic Mursi man tried to explain to outsiders why he is so concerned for his people, who have lived here as semi-nomads for generations but may soon be evicted to make way for a giant sugar plantation.
"We Mursi [people] do not accept this ambitious government ideology," the man said of an official state plan to house them in new villages in exchange for their compliant departure. He is speaking in the village of Hailewuha, his face lit by flashlight. Cattle shuffle and grunt nearby.
"What we want is to use our own traditional way of cultivation," he says.
RECOMMENDED: Think you know Africa? Take our geography quiz.
Ethiopian officials say the Mursi, like a growing number of ethnic or tribal groups in Ethiopia, are voluntarily moving out of their ancient lands; human rights groups say this is untrue.
The ongoing controversy is not new in Ethiopia, and "land grabs" by governments for lucrative leasing deals have become a story across the continent.
For example, in Ethiopia's lush Gambella region, in the western area bordering Sudan, locals have been forcibly relocated to make way for the leasing of farms to foreign firms. This year, the World Bank and British aid agencies were swept into controversy over charges they helped fund the relocation including salary payments to local officials involved in the clearing of land.
The Mursi have lived in Omo for centuries. Partly for this reason they get frequent visits by tourists and anthropologists alike. Tall and elaborately decorated, their scarified bodies are daubed with paint and ornamented by hooped earrings and bicep bangles.
But now the Mursi may be those most affected by government operations to overhaul South Omo, an area that officials in Addis Ababa are calling economically and socially backward.
The plan would turn this scrub and savanna into about 700 square miles of state-owned sugar plantations that would in turn require building Ethiopia’s largest irrigation project.
The water to feed the sugar cane year-round is to come from the Omo river, and is made possible by Gibe III, a partly Chinese-funded hydropower dam that may be completed as early as next year. The cane will be processed at some five local factories.
The people of this valley, the Mursi, Bodi, and Karo, some of whom number only a few thousand, would need to reduce their cattle -- their most prized possessions. Then many if not all will move into enlarged permanent villages.
Controlling the flow of the river will mean the end of an annual flood that makes fertile a strip of land for crops once the seasonal waters recede. An ongoing attempt to control Mursi traditions now means that at public meetings, state authorities implore the group to end “very bad” cultural practices like stick fighting and their characteristic lip-plates.
To be sure, Ethiopian authorities promise new jobs, public services, and plenty of irrigation for every Omo household that agrees to move out.
But this is not the view of international human rights groups who claim that Ethiopia is broadly and constantly harming locals as part of an authoritarian model of development.
In the most recent salvo, the Oakland Institute accused the state of using killings, beatings, and rapes as methods of forcing South Omo residents to accept the sugar cane projects. The California-based advocacy group also accused Western aid agencies and some US and British officials of covering up evidence of the abuses they heard about on research missions.
Instead of investigating claims made by Survival International, Human Rights Watch, and the Oakland Institute, Ethiopian authorities smear them as anti-development.
These groups help "drag Ethiopia back to the Stone Age," is how the prime minister's spokesperson, Getachew Reda, recently described Oakland's agenda.
“We have a scar from them [critics]," says the chief administrator of South Omo, Molloka Wubneh Toricha, about the activists and journalists who make the 400 mile journey from Addis Ababa to the Kenya-border area, hoping to monitor developments. "They try and blacken our image."
Yet in the single nighttime interview the Monitor was able to conduct with the Mursi, the criticism of the rights groups were echoed: "The government uses our ignorance and backwardness to control us,” said the Mursi man. “They force us to do farming…. Those who have been in the bush shall settle together in common village and be brothers. But our leaders do not accept this."
It is impossible to verify whether these comments reflect the community's opinion since officials and police prevented further inquiries by reporters in a trip there in August.
While regional officials at first permitted access to the Mursi, a few hours later, the administration backtracked.
Reporters on an independent visit were forced to camp next to the Hailewuha police station. A security commander regularly called in on a shortwave radio to check that the journalists were still corralled. Senior regional police arrived the next morning to escort them back to the regional capital, Jinka.
Later, apologetic officials in Jinka all had the same explanation: there had been a "misunderstanding."
Yet rather than a genuine mix-up, the obstruction seemed to stem from a basic mistrust of outside eyes and voices. Mr. Molloka said journalists frequently "divert" the views of residents: "This is what burns our hearts," he says, "at public meetings we told all the people not to give information to journalists."
With media muzzled and most civil society initiatives stifled by restrictive laws, there is little independent information about what is happening in South Omo.
Along with the plight of the Mursi, for example, little is known about the impact of as many as 700,000 migrant workers that may move here to work on the sugar cane plantations.
Tewolde Woldemariam, a scholar and senior figure in the ruling party, who left in 2001, and an academician, Fana Gebresenbet, argue that the people, cultures, language and rights of South Omo people, which are theoretically protected by the constitution, are threatened by the new influx of migrant workers.
“Unless the problem is realized and mechanisms to tackle it are put in place, this demographic change puts the cultural and linguistic rights of the indigenous ethnic groups…at great risk," they wrote for a conference in April at the Institute for Peace and Security Studies at Addis Ababa University.
RECOMMENDED: Think you know Africa? Take our geography quiz.
The sugar and resettlement projects are well-intended but the scholars note there is little official response about possible adverse effects.
“The attitude of lumping everyone who raises the possibility of negative consequence of the development project on the local culture as one who wants to permanently perpetuate the pastoral lifestyle for tourist purposes is rampant at all levels of the region," they said.
The Mursi man that was interviewed at night said this: "If we will be mixed with external people, perhaps we will be exposed to some contagious diseases like HIV/AIDS which we have never experienced in life."
One important failing of trying to engineer and control the future of Omo, say analysts sympathetic to the nomads, is that local residents are kept from the design and involvement in policies concerning them.
The Mursi man who we spoke to asked: "The government forces us to accept this project. Do you think this is a good way?"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)