Why is the EU funding Ethiopia's repression of land rights ...

by Nyikaw Ochalla, Anywaa Survival Organisation

Monday, 18 July 2016 17:30 GMT

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* Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Opponents of the Ethiopian government’s policies have faced violence, but the EU has continued to provide funding for its commercial land deal projects

On Friday, the EU and German government announced the agreement of providing the Government of Ethiopia with 3.8 Million euro for a project to facilitate large-scale commercial land deals amid wide spread human rights abuses and brutal repression of its opponents. The EU and German government state that the project will “support responsible agricultural investment in Ethiopia” and establish “mechanisms to facilitate productive investments in agriculture by national and international private investors.”

The launch of the 3.8 Million Euro project to “support agricultural investments in Ethiopia” comes exactly one year and four months after the government arrested seven community activists to block their participation in a workshop on food and land issues in Nairobi, Kenya. Three of these activists continue to languish in an Ethiopian jail, under the spurious charge of “terrorism”. 

Ethiopia is among African countries promoting large-scale commercial agricultural investments that deny the right of the affected communities for active involvement and free, prior and informed consent. In past few years, the government policy has received strong criticism from journalists and activists leading to the government suspending the implementation of its land deal policy in March 2016.     

Despite great concerns for its human rights records against Ethiopian food, land rights and human rights defenders and journalists, Ethiopian government remains to be strongly supported by major donor countries and institutions. The World Bank that funded the Ethiopian controversial villagisation programme and facilitated major development projects in the country has been heavily criticised for ignoring the arrest of food and land rights activists Pastor Omot Agwa Okwoy who was World Bank Inspection Panel translator in 2014, Ashinie Astin and Jemal Oumar for their effort to attend a food security workshop in Nairobi in March 2015.

The three activists remain behind bars, charged under Ethiopian controversial counter-terrorism law. The government persecution has failed to present any evidence to support the counter-terrorism charges brought against them. They were denied legal representation and detained without charges for six months. 

The three activists are scheduled to appear again in court this Tuesday, July 19, 2016. The organisations listed below, as well as the EU Addis delegation, have been closely following the case. The organisations are Anywaa Survival Organisation, GRAIN, Oakland Institute, Bread for All, etc. 

In recent years, numerous opponents of the Ethiopian government’s land policies have been arrested, beaten and even killed, while many communities have been forcefully evicted from their lands to make way for large scale agricultural projects. 

There can be no responsible investment in large-scale agricultural projects when communities do not have the right to freely express and assert their opposition to projects affecting their lands.  

The announcement by the EU and German government, who not only are well aware of the Ethiopian government’s repression of opponents to its land policies but also have been following up the court hearings, are sending a message that the lives of Ethiopians can be sacrificed for the profits of their corporations.

Nykiaw Ochalla is a director and founder of Anywaa Survival Organisation-ASO, an organisation that believes in social justice and environment friendly sustainable development without prejudice; active participation of indigenous people in decision making processes that affected their livelihoods and their full enjoyment of development projects benefits implemented on their territories

Why is the EU funding Ethiopia's repression of land rights defenders?

by Nyikaw Ochalla, Anywaa Survival Organisation

Monday, 18 July 2016 17:30 GMT

ABOUT OUR PROPERTY RIGHTS COVERAGE

This story is part ofOur new website shining a light on land and property rights around the world

Share:

Newsletter sign up:

Most Popular

• Malala shocked as crying Burundian girls recall rape fleeing war
• World must not forget about Ethiopia's food crisis - former Olympic champion
• Can we feed the world without cutting forests? It can be done, says U.N.
• From favelas to the White House, tiles turn footsteps into electricity
• Surging heroin use threatens Kenya's HIV/AIDS gains

* Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Opponents of the Ethiopian government’s policies have faced violence, but the EU has continued to provide funding for its commercial land deal projects

On Friday, the EU and German government announced the agreement of providing the Government of Ethiopia with 3.8 Million euro for a project to facilitate large-scale commercial land deals amid wide spread human rights abuses and brutal repression of its opponents. The EU and German government state that the project will “support responsible agricultural investment in Ethiopia” and establish “mechanisms to facilitate productive investments in agriculture by national and international private investors.”

The launch of the 3.8 Million Euro project to “support agricultural investments in Ethiopia” comes exactly one year and four months after the government arrested seven community activists to block their participation in a workshop on food and land issues in Nairobi, Kenya. Three of these activists continue to languish in an Ethiopian jail, under the spurious charge of “terrorism”. 

Ethiopia is among African countries promoting large-scale commercial agricultural investments that deny the right of the affected communities for active involvement and free, prior and informed consent. In past few years, the government policy has received strong criticism from journalists and activists leading to the government suspending the implementation of its land deal policy in March 2016.     

Despite great concerns for its human rights records against Ethiopian food, land rights and human rights defenders and journalists, Ethiopian government remains to be strongly supported by major donor countries and institutions. The World Bank that funded the Ethiopian controversial villagisation programme and facilitated major development projects in the country has been heavily criticised for ignoring the arrest of food and land rights activists Pastor Omot Agwa Okwoy who was World Bank Inspection Panel translator in 2014, Ashinie Astin and Jemal Oumar for their effort to attend a food security workshop in Nairobi in March 2015.

The three activists remain behind bars, charged under Ethiopian controversial counter-terrorism law. The government persecution has failed to present any evidence to support the counter-terrorism charges brought against them. They were denied legal representation and detained without charges for six months. 

The three activists are scheduled to appear again in court this Tuesday, July 19, 2016. The organisations listed below, as well as the EU Addis delegation, have been closely following the case. The organisations are Anywaa Survival Organisation, GRAIN, Oakland Institute, Bread for All, etc. 

In recent years, numerous opponents of the Ethiopian government’s land policies have been arrested, beaten and even killed, while many communities have been forcefully evicted from their lands to make way for large scale agricultural projects. 

There can be no responsible investment in large-scale agricultural projects when communities do not have the right to freely express and assert their opposition to projects affecting their lands.  

The announcement by the EU and German government, who not only are well aware of the Ethiopian government’s repression of opponents to its land policies but also have been following up the court hearings, are sending a message that the lives of Ethiopians can be sacrificed for the profits of their corporations.

Nykiaw Ochalla is a director and founder of Anywaa Survival Organisation-ASO, an organisation that believes in social justice and environment friendly sustainable development without prejudice; active participation of indigenous people in decision making processes that affected their livelihoods and their full enjoyment of development projects benefits implemented on their territories

Ethiopia body suspends farm lease programme after poor results | Daily Mail Online

By Aaron Maasho

ADDIS ABABA, March 25 (Reuters) - An Ethiopian state body that has been involved in leasing tracts of land for commercial farming has suspended the issuance of new licences until it completes a review because of scant progress in developing areas leased so far, an official said.

The Horn of Africa country in 2011 allocated 3.6 million hectares of land, close to the size of Switzerland, for firms seeking to invest in agriculture, mostly around its western Gambela and Benishangul Gumuz regions.

More than 2.43 million hectares has been leased to nearly 5,700 domestic and foreign firms at 20 Ethiopian birr ($0.90) per hectare on average, said Daniel Zenebe, spokesman for the Agriculture Investment and Land Administration Agency.

But investors have only developed 30 percent of the land leased. "There is a need for a review on where it has gone wrong. The suspension is indefinite," he said.

For now, the suspension affects the Agriculture Investment and Land Administration Agency, which has leased 476,000 hectares since it was set up in 2013, he said.

But he added that regional authorities, which were responsible for leasing 1.95 million hectares, were expected to suspend such activity soon.

Addis Ababa said leasing land aimed to introduce modern technology and new farming techniques. But the programme has attracted criticism from rights groups, saying it often hurt the environment or led to forced resettlemment of some locals.

"The policy's aim is to boost production, foster the transfer of technology, as well as increase foreign currency earnings from exports," Daniel said. "But we clearly have an execution problem."

Ethiopia, which suffered a devastating famine in 1984, is facing renewed drought that has left more than 10 million people facing food insecurity. But government support mechanisms now in place are preventing a deep crisis, experts say.

In one case of a land licence, Daniel said an international firm had cultivated just 1,200 hectaries out 100,000 hectares it was awarded after seven years. He also cited cases where different investors were awarded the overlapping tracts of land.

The Oakland Institute, a U.S.-based research group, has said land deals in Ethiopia lacked transparency, had an adverse impact on the environment and had led to the forceful resettlement of thousands of people. ($1 = 21.1440 birr) (Editing by Edmund Blair and Alison Williams)

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-3509365/Ethiopia-body-suspends-farm-lease-programme-poor-results.html#ixzz43zuyiDbD
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Forced evictions in Ethiopia – what the UK government tried to cover up - Survival International

The UK government has tried to suppress evidence of gross human rights violations in Ethiopia's Lower Omo Valley, such as the forced resettlement of the Bodi and other tribes.

© Nicola Bailey/ Survival, 2015

The U.K. government tried to suppress evidence of gross human rights abuses in Ethiopia to appease the government there, a new investigation by Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights, has revealed.

The key aid donors to Ethiopia, including the U.K.’s DFID, USAID and the European Union, sent two missions to the Lower Omo Valley in the south of the country in August 2014, to investigate whether tribes there were being forced off their land to make way for commercial plantations.

The U.K. authorities refused to release the missions’ reports under the Freedom of Information Act, saying their disclosure would significantly prejudice international relations. But Survival then appealed to the European Commission, which has released them.

The reports reveal:

- That the Ethiopian government has not obtained the consent of tribes of the Lower Omo to their resettlement;

- It has pressured and threatened them into leaving their lands – in some cases in fear for their lives;

- One tribal group told the donors, "before you come back next year, the government will come to kill and finish us”;

The reports of two donors missions to the Lower Omo Valley reveal that land grabs deny the tribes access to the river banks they need for cultivation.

© Survival

- That land grabs associated with large scale plantations deny the tribes access to ancestral grazing and farming lands on which they depend for survival, and to the river banks they need for cultivation;

- On the conditions in one resettlement site the report states, “Their situation during our visit was deplorable; the absence of sanitation means the villagers are suffering from diseases such as bloody diarrhoea, malaria and unspecified headaches … Despite the dire circumstances in [name redacted], residents say the Government does not allow this impoverished and vulnerable group to move

out”;

- Donor guidelines designed to ensure that resettlement complies with international law have been routinely ignored.

Survival International has been urging the international donors to freeze further aid to the Lower Omo Valley until the human rights abuses are stopped, but virtually no action has been taken. The U.K.’s 2014-15 aid budget to Ethiopia exceeds £360 million.

Survival’s Africa campaigner Elizabeth Hunter said today, “It took DFID almost two years to investigate allegations of serious human rights violations in the Lower Omo. The reports it desperately tried to prevent the British public from reading show just how far it will go to cover up gross human rights abuses carried out by a regime which receives hundreds of millions of pounds of UK taxpayers’ money. While entire tribes are subjected to violence, the destruction of their homes and livelihoods, and the theft of their land on a staggering scale, the UK government turns a blind eye in the name of political and economic expediency.”

Background:

Around 200,000 tribal people live in the Lower Omo. Many have suffered from brutal repression, forced relocation, and prejudice from a government that views them as “backward” and in need of “modernization.” One expert has warned that the loss of their land and resources will lead to a “humanitarian catastrophe,” and one of the mission reports warns that the influx of more than 500,000 workers into the area is “likely to significantly increase the risk of conflict.”

Survival has received reports that the Kwegu are starving following the construction of the Gibe III dam.

© Survival International, 2012

The central findings of the donor missions were covered up in a letter to the Ethiopian government, published in February 2015. The letter sanitised the reports’ conclusions to the extent that the Ethiopian press was able to claim that the donor missions had “found no evidence of people being forced to move for either resettlement for agricultural development projects in the areas they visited,” and that it “found none of the problems claimed by Survival International or Human Rights Watch and others …”

In March 2015, Survival received disturbing reports that many of the small Kwegu tribe are starving as a result of the destruction of their forest and the death of their river following the construction of the Gibe III dam and associated irrigation schemes.

- Download the full reports of the donors’ visits to South Omo and Bench Maji in the Lower Omo Valley

How hunger in India is causing conflict in East Africa - CNN.com

Mohammad Amir Anwar is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Johannesburg focusing on the broader field of human geography. The opinions expressed are solely those of Mohammad Amir Anwar. CNN is showcasing the work of The Conversation, a collaboration between journalists and academics to provide news analysis and commentary. The content is produced solely by The Conversation.

(CNN)The global food price crises between 2008 and 2009 led countries that bore the brunt of the catastrophe to look elsewhere for agricultural land to mitigate the effects.

In 2008 prices of some foods, including wheat, soared by 130% in a single year and the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation's food price index shot up 40%.

The result was a frenzied scramble that saw countries acquire an estimated 40 million hectares of land in foreign countries, most of it in Africa.

There is a strong sense that land deals in Ethiopia have benefited both the foreign investors and domestic private capitalists with close ties to the ruling party

Mohammad Amir Anwar, University of Johannesburg

A great deal of attention has been paid to the role of the US, the largest investor in land in the world, China and Middle Eastern countries. Much less attention has been given to the role of India. A global land monitoring initiative, Land Matrix, ranks India as one of the top 10 investors in land abroad. It is the biggest investor in land in Ethiopia, with Indian companies accounting for almost 70% the land acquired by foreigners after 2008.

Indian land deals in Ethiopia are the result of the strong convergence in the two countries' domestic political-economic policies. Both advocate the privatisation of public assets and increasing reliance on free trade and open markets.

India's investment in land has been driven by the need to obviate the effects of spiralling food prices by outsourcing food supply. Ethiopia's decisions are driven by its development policy based on commercialisation of agriculture and reliance on foreign investments.

Rough estimates suggest Indian firms have acquired roughly 600 000 hectares of land in Ethiopia. This is more than ten times the size of land acquired by firms in India under the country's special economic zones policy. India is followed closely by Saudi Arabian firms, with 500 000 hectares of land, in Ethiopia.

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What drives Indian firms to Ethiopia

India's ability to feed its 1.22 billion people is under increasing strain. This is due to a rapidly growing population, low agricultural productivity, reductions in farm sizes, declining water tables, increasing control of the seed sector by multi-nationals and a gradual withdrawal since the 1990s of the farm support system.

India introduced special economic zones in 2005 hoping it would lead to agricultural development through the consolidation of land holdings. The intention was that this would lead to industrialisation.

But the policy exposed the oldest contradiction of capitalism -- primitive accumulation which includes privatisation of land, the forced expulsion of peasant populations and the conversion of common, collective and state property rights to exclusive property rights.

Widespread resistance movements began in many states, stalling some of the biggest zones, most notably in Nandigram. The protests led to the fall of the Left Frontstate government of West Bengal in 2011 after 34 years in power.

To meet consumption needs the Indian government started encouraging firms to seek land abroad for growing crops. This was driven by two factors: it was struggling to make more land available for investors and the spike in global food price crisis in 2008.

The lure of Ethiopia

The Ethiopian agricultural sector lies at the heart of the government's development strategy. It has set out to attract more foreign investment in large-scale commercial agriculture as outlined in its 1993 policy which was later reformulated in 2005.

The policy marked a move towards a more trade-orientated approach, and a desire to attract foreign investors. Over 3.5 million hectares of land has been earmarked for investment by foreign firms.

Need for caution

Foreign investors need to tread carefully when acquiring land in Africa. This is best illustrated in the Gambela region of Ethiopia which I visited earlier this year. The area has been the centre of large-scale land acquisitions by Indian as well as other foreign investors.

According to the Ethiopian constitution, land is administered by the regional government. However, the federal government's move to govern land investments through a centralized agency called the Agricultural Investment Land Administration Agency has led to discontent among Gambela regional government officials.

The concern is that the behaviour of foreign companies is not being managed adequately. There is a strong sense that land deals in Ethiopia have benefited both the foreign investors and domestic private capitalists with close ties to the ruling party.

A recent study found that foreign investors are farming less than 8% of the land they have acquired. During my visit I learnt that Karuturi Global Ltd, an Indian firm which has 100 000 hectares of land in Gambela, had only 1 000 hectares under production.

A lack of consultation with people living in the area is also a problem. Gambela is an ecological hotspot with Gambela National Park at its centre. It is home to Nuer and Anuak people whose livelihoods are threatened by investors illegally clearing trees in the park. These clearances happen mostly without consultation. This has led to conflict in the region.

Given the political nature of international land deals and the role states play in shaping policy and practice, there must be scrutiny on the role governments play in such deals because of their close alliance with private capital.

This is especially so for India. It can ill-afford to be tainted by accusations of complicity in land deals that disadvantage the people of Africa given the role it sees for itself in promoting co-operation among countries in the south to mitigate the effects of skewed power relations with the north.

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