Supermodel Liya Kebede has created a clothing line primarily geared towards children.
Called Lemlem, the range will cater to children aged three months to 10 years old. Combining some traditional weaving and embroidery techniques with modern silhouettes, all the pieces of the collection are handmade in Ethiopia, Kebede’s native country.
Lemlem, which means “to bloom” in Amharic, a Semitic language from Ethiopia, is expected to launch in early 2008 in limited distribution.
Discovered and signed to an exclusive Gucci contract in 2000 by designer Tom Ford, Kebede currently ranks 11th in Forbes’ list of the highest paid supermodels in the world. The face of Estée Lauder, the supermodel is also known for her charitable and socially relevant work. Apart from her appointment in 2005 as a World Health Organization Goodwill Ambassador for maternal, newborn, and child health, she has also just recently established The Liya Kebede Foundation, which aims for a reduction in maternal, newborn, and child mortality.
Supermodel Liya Kebede has created a clothing line primarily geared towards children.
Called Lemlem, the range will cater to children aged three months to 10 years old. Combining some traditional weaving and embroidery techniques with modern silhouettes, all the pieces of the collection are handmade in Ethiopia, Kebede’s native country.
Lemlem, which means “to bloom” in Amharic, a Semitic language from Ethiopia, is expected to launch in early 2008 in limited distribution.
Discovered and signed to an exclusive Gucci contract in 2000 by designer Tom Ford, Kebede currently ranks 11th in Forbes’ list of the highest paid supermodels in the world. The face of Estée Lauder, the supermodel is also known for her charitable and socially relevant work. Apart from her appointment in 2005 as a World Health Organization Goodwill Ambassador for maternal, newborn, and child health, she has also just recently established The Liya Kebede Foundation, which aims for a reduction in maternal, newborn, and child mortality.
Addis Ababa – Ethiopian opposition officials told a court on Monday that two anti-poverty activists on trial for allegedly trying to overthrow the government were never members of their movement. Daniel Bekele, 40, and Netsanet Demissie, 29, are the last two defendants out of 131 original charged in a long-running treason trial.
On Monday, Hailu Shawel, chairperson of the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) told the court neither men had been a part of his organisation.
“Charges that they were CUD members are totally false,” he said. “If they had been members I would have known.”
Hailu Shawel and other senior CUD officials were also charged in the same trial, which human rights groups and donors said was an attempt to dismantle the opposition after it made strong gains in 2005 elections. They were all arrested after two bouts of violence after the disputed polls in which 199 civilians and police were killed, 800 people wounded and 30,000 arrested, according to a parliamentary inquiry.
They were freed on July 20 after the government published a letter it said CUD leaders had sent to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi admitting their guilt and repenting.
Defence lawyers say Bekele and Netsanet, who work for ActionAid Ethiopia and the Organisation for Social Justice in Ethiopia respectively, refused to sign and want to be acquitted.
ADDIS ABABA — Nearly 12,000 people have been displaced and one person has died in western Ethiopia in flash floods over the weekend, an official said Tuesday.
“As of now, we only know that 11,886 people have been displaced and one killed from the flood that resulted from Sunday’s heavy rainfall,” Ojulu Bach, head of disaster prevention program in the Gambela region, said.
Ojulu said that both the toll and the number of displaced could rise as rescue teams had not accessed all those affected.
“The field teams are using boats and whatever necessary to rescue the people in danger,” he said. “The numbers could be higher after our teams conclude their search.”
Earlier this month, some 7,000 people were affected by floods after heavy rains pounded southern Ethiopia for more than a week.
The rainy season began in early June in the Ethiopian Highlands and is due to last until the end of September.
Last year, more than 600 people were killed and hundreds of thousands affected by unusually heavy floods that ravaged several regions in the Horn of African nation.
In Addis Ababa, a five-day conference is underway on female genital cutting. The UN Population Fund says worldwide, up to 140 million women and girls have been subjected to the practice, which is also known as female genital mutilation. The agency is calling on the international community to support its campaign for zero tolerance of the practice.
Kemal Mustapha is the UN Population Fund’s representative in Kenya. From the conference site in the Ethiopian capital, he spoke to VOA English to Africa Service reporter Joe De Capua about the prevalence of female genital cutting in Kenya.
“The national prevalence rate, when it was last measured in the demographic and health survey, which was conducted in 2003, was that 32 percent of the females in the age range of 15 to 49 had gone through this at one stage or the other. However, that figure needs to be treated carefully because there are areas of the country where it’s almost non-existent and there are areas where you have prevalence rates in certain ethnic communities of over 90 percent. What is encouraging is that the prevalence rate among the younger women is decreasing. And that quite a lot of that 32 percent is made up of older women,” he says.
Asked whether the cutting is done in traditional settings, where a single cutting instrument is used on many different women and girls, Mustapha says, “It varies very much from community to community. There are cases where that kind of practice does continue and efforts are being made to introduce ways in which people are alerted to the health risks, especially of HIV infection. But the general trend has been to try and work towards its elimination. Legislation was passed in the year 2001 criminalizing the cutting of any child under 18. There has unfortunately been in some communities the medicalization, whereby because of the fears of problems of hygiene, people have resorted to going to medical practitioners to undergo the surgery. So, that’s something that’s also being tackled,” he says.
In regards to gathering international support, he says, “I think this has to be seen within the broader framework of human rights, of gender equality and of the Millennium Development Goals.”
Supermodel Liya Kebede has created a clothing line primarily geared towards children.
