(Prostitute on the streets of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia)
The streets of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia bustle with activity during the day. Shoppers crowd markets, taxi cabs dash across busy streets and Arabian-style music booms from office towers. For the most part, Addis seems to be an ordinary city. But as the sun sets, remaining illusions of normalcy disappear. Young girls, some between the ages of 12 and 15, line city streets in hopes of finding a customer or two for the night.
What makes Addis different than cities in the U.S. with prostitution problems? The answer lies in the statistics. More than 150,000 women walk the streets each night. Many charge $1 per trick, making them accessible to both Ethiopians and those on business from the West. In many ways, prostitution here is a result of poverty. Unemployment is over 50 percent. Ask a woman to leave the streets and she might go months, years or even decades without work.
Through a partnership with an organization called Women at Risk, Mocha Club supports those wanting to leave the life of being a prostitute or “sex worker.” The idea is simple: befriend women and encourage them to live a better life. The actual process is much more complicated. Through the dedication of local staff members and volunteers, Women At Risk’s goal is to get these women off the streets, counsel them, and equip them with job training so they are empowered to support themselves and their children in a new way, encouraging them to leave behind the life of prostitution forever. We’ll spend the next week with the organization and the people it helps. Stay tuned.
(The Mocha Club Experience: Starting November 1, 2009, Seattle Pacific University recent graduates Daniel “Skiff” Skiffington and Charlie “Char” Beck visit all of Mocha Club’s current projects in 7 countries and take Mocha Club supporters and friends on a three-month virtual adventure to experience real life in Africa.)
The first time I interviewed Birtukan Mideksa I was struck by how careful she was not to say the wrong thing. It was 2007 and we were standing in the garden of a community centre in the part of Addis Ababa where she was raised. She had just been released from prison and the locals — many of whom struggle to feed themselves — had each given about a dollar to throw her the party-cum-political rally we had just attended and to buy her an old Toyota Corolla car to help her back on her feet again.
Such was her care when talking to me that, after less than five minutes, I discreetly switched off my recorder knowing the interview would never make a story, and continued the conversation only out of politeness and professional interest in Ethiopian politics.
It seems her caution was well-placed. The 36-year-old opposition leader and mother of one is back behind bars, accused by the government of speaking out of turn. It has been almost exactly one year since a group of policemen snatched her as she walked to her car with political ally Mesfin Woldemariam. Mesfin — a large, grey-haired man in his 70s — was bitten by a police officer in a scuffle when he tried to intervene.
Now her supporters in the Horn of Africa country are calling her “Ethiopia’s Aung San Suu Kyi” in what analysts see as a move aimed at attracting international attention to her detention. Government officials often smirk when what they see as an overblown comparison is made.
Party colleagues say she was jailed because the government feared her heading an opposition coalition in national elections set for May and rights group Amnesty International calls her a “prisoner of conscience”.
To her champions, Birtukan is the great hope for reconciliation in Ethiopia’s often bitter political landscape. To her detractors, she has been made a romantic figure by her jailing and doesn’t have the intellectual muscle or strategic nous to lead the huge country.
Some Ethiopians see sinister shading in the lack of international attention, claiming western powers are happy to see Prime Minister Meles Zenawi — in power for almost 20 years — stay on as long as he liberalises the country’s potentially huge economy and remains a loyal U.S. ally in a volatile neighbourhood that includes shambolic Somalia.
Others say, with some resignation, that yet another jailed politician in Africa just doesn’t make news anymore.
Opposition politicians have even started arguing amongst themselves over her jailing. A split in Birtukan’s Unity for Democracy and Justice party is being blamed by some on accusations that certain UDJ officials had policy disagreements with their leader and so are now not working hard enough for her release.
Birtukan was jailed for the first time after Ethiopia’s last elections in 2005. A coalition of parties, of which she was a leader, claimed a fix when the government declared victory. Police and soldiers then killed about 200 opposition protesters in running street battles when Meles said they were marching on state buildings to overthrow him.
She was released in 2007, along with other opposition leaders, after the government said they had accepted responsibility for orchestrating the violence and asked for a pardon. But Birtukan, a former judge, then made a speech in which she said she never asked for any such pardon.
Her defiant words riled many and ruling party members said she was trying to destablise Ethiopian politics, risking a rerun of 2005’s trouble. Meles himself — who had to fight hardliners in his party to push through the 2007 pardon deal — seemed angry and backroom negotiations aimed at forcing her to withdraw her remarks began. She refused.
Now, a year into her detention, Meles seems reluctant even to speak her name, preferring to call her “the lady” or “that woman”.
When he finally did say the word Birtukan last week at a news conference, he couldn’t have been clearer about her future.
“There will never be an agreement with anybody to release Birtukan,” he said. “Ever. Full stop. That’s a dead issue.”
The words will have chilled her family, friends and political allies.
So what next for Birtukan? Does Meles mean what he says? Or will she be pardoned again after the elections? Is she a future Prime Minister for Ethiopia? Or has she simply become a romanticised figure? Why isn’t the international community pushing harder for her release?
SANA’A, Yemen (UPI) — Yemen systematically arrests and deports Ethiopian asylum seekers, a human rights group charges in a report urging the United Nations to intervene.
Tens of thousands of refugees make the hazardous sea crossing from Africa to Yemen, only to risk being arrested and forced illegally to return home to possible persecution, Human Rights Watch said in a report.
“Illegal immigration is a big problem for Yemen’s government, but hunting asylum seekers down like criminals and sending them back illegally is no way to solve the problem,” Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said.
More than 100,000 people, fleeing war or persecution, have been smuggled by boat to the coast of Yemen in the last two years. They often suffer brutal treatment at the hands of the smugglers, HRW charges, and face being robbed, beaten or even killed.
Once in Yemen, Ethiopians and others are treated as illegal immigrants and often deported even if they are in danger of persecution in their own countries.
Human Rights Watch wants the U.N. refugee agency to pressure the Yemeni government to meet its obligations toward refugees, Gagnon said.
I don’t know if you are familiar with it but there used to be an American television show called ‘what is my line?’ It was a guessing game where the panelists try to determine the identity of the contestant by asking leading questions. It was fun to watch a skillful contestant completely baffle the panelists.
Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia was in Europe playing what is my line. Our skilled PM was using the podium to get legitimacy abroad while enhancing his image as a respected states man in front of the Ethiopian people. It was a perfect Kodak moment. I am sure ETV, his private television station back home will play the tape ad nauseam. The Sarkozys and the Obamas were enabling him to hide behind their podium.
Why was he there since Ethiopia cannot be accused of contributing to green house gas? Well he was delegated by NEPAD (New Partnership For African Development.) What is NEPAD? According to their website it ‘is a Vision and Strategic Framework for African Renewal.
NEPAD is setup to address the ‘current challenges facing Africa. Its objective includes eradicating poverty, halt the marginalization of Africa in the globalization process and empowerment of women. The principle NEPAD stands for includes good governance, broad and deep participation of the population in decision-making, acceleration of regional and continental integration.’
The Ethiopian Prime Minster was heading the NEPAD delegation. To start with one gets the feeling NEPAD is trying to convince others to work for the lofty goals mentioned above but it does not want to lead by example. If the challenge faced by Africans is the absence of ‘good governance’ shouldn’t NEPAD appoint some one who exudes those qualities? That is not too much to ask is it?
Let us put the NEPAD thing in perspective. The Copenhagen meeting was about threat to planet Earth. It is man made crisis. It is a problem created by the Northern hemisphere dwellers. The Europeans and the Americans. As time honored tradition dictates we Africans are victim number one. Our usual fellow victims Asia and South America are not with us anymore. They are heating up the planet but they are not in a mood to discuss slowing down. There is a lot of catch up to do.
So what was NEPAD doing there? Since it does not have any green house gas to threaten with it was doing some serious begging. Leading to this great ballyhooed affair our fearless leader was posturing to disrupt the proceedings. He was threatening to walk out. He was demanding 40 billion USD a year for Africa. That was his demand and he is sticking to it! Not. He was just kidding.
With the French President at his side the NEPAD leader agreed to a pittance 10 billion USD for the first year and little guarantee for the future. Africa’s cut will be 40%. Heck of a negotiator wouldn’t you say. The Westerners will heat up the planet and increase the temperature that in turn will create havoc on Africa’s weather forcing us into more deforestation, drying up of lakes and rivers and further starvation.
What do we get for this? Surplus genetically engineered food and deposit in African leaders personal account in European and American banks. To say plenty of African were upset by this unilateral negotiation by NEPAD chief is an under statement. They were fuming. From Algeria to South Africa they all distanced themselves from NEPAD. The Americans and the Europeans used NEPAD as a wedge to divide the third world group.
We Ethiopians are familiar with that playbook. Is it me or do you see some similarity here. Let us see Ato Meles is famous for his unique disruption technique. He leaves a clear MO. (Modus operandi). We can refer to the Ledetu affair, the Chamiso saga or the Hailu opera. The Westerners used NEPAD exactly as the Prime Minster used Hailu to break the solidarity of the opposition. The only difference is NEPAD will be paid thru African Development Bank while Ato Hailu or Ato Ledetu will suffer eternal humiliation. Not that I will waste any tears for them.
To go back to ‘what’s my line’ story the performance of the Prime Mister was enough to baffle the panelists if this was a show. He preached the gospel of compromise. The science of give and take was the heart of his philosophy. Ato Meles scolded the West for marginalizing Africa. He demanded to be included as an equal.
I was flabbergasted. Well that is an under statement. I was floored. I have not seen this side of him. Did the mantra ‘my way or the highway’ get revised? Did the philosophy of ‘some are more equal than others’ get tossed away? Are we going to have the new improved TPLF after Copenhagen?
The old one we knew was different. He has a few political prisoners in the various dungeons scattered all over the country, he likes to be mean and angry when it comes to Chairman Bertukan and jailing, bankrupting, and exiling journalists and intellectuals is his hobby.
Stupid me, I used to think TPLF was all about power and revenge for the past transgressions for perceived injustice. It is sort of surprising and a let down to see it is all about money. The net worth of Ato Meles is jaw dropping. It is difficult to explain. It begs for a tharrow investigation. The information boggles the mind.
This is a list of heads of state and government by their net worth, mostly of their liquid assets in US Dollars. This list should not include crown property and other material goods (although these are sometimes difficult to separate depending on the source) as of August 2008.
Name Title Net Worth Country
Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Sultan $20 billion[1] Brunei
Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan Emir $18 billion[1] United Arab Emirates
Abdullah King $17 billion[1] Saudi Arabia
Mohammed Bin Rashid Prime Minister $12 billion[1] United Arab Emirates
Silvio Berlusconi Prime Minister $9.4 billion[2] Italy
Asif Ali Zardari President $4 billion[3] Pakistan
Hans-Adam II Prince $3.5 billion[1] Liechtenstein
Mohammed VI King $2.5 billion[1] Morocco
Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Emir $2 billion[1] Qatar
Meles Zenawi Prime Minister $1.2 billion[4] Ethiopia
Albert II Prince $1 billion[1] Monaco
Qaboos Sultan $700 million[1] Oman
Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo President $600 million[citation needed] Equatorial Guinea
Poor Mr. Obama is not even worth a lousy million and he is going to stay that way till he leaves office. Our Meles can eradicate famine from Ethiopia if he donates some of that stash. Don’t ask me how he amassed such obscene amount of money in such a short time. I did not know we paid our chief executive that kind of money either. Do you get the feeling there is no rational answer to this problem except outright denial. May be Wikidepia’s editors character can be brought to question or a plot can be uncovered that was trying to defame the regime. Hey 1.2 billion in USD is nothing to scoff at.
The “delegation of African negotiators” rumbled into Copenhagen rubbing their palms and licking their chops to load up tens of billions of dollars in carbon blood money and make a quick exit. They were disappointed. There was no gold at the end of the Copenhagen rainbow. At the end of the day, the industrialized countries pledged chump change in the amount of USD$30bn to the poor countries for the 2010-2012 period.
In the run up to the Copenhagen Conference, the trumpeted bravado to the world was that the “African delegation” will “walk out” and “de-legitimize” the proceedings unless the industrialized countries forked up a cool $40bn. The delegation and its leader, Meles Zenawi, were prepared to strong-arm, outwit and outplay the industrialized countries in their usual zero sum game. This time the game backfired. The wily “neo-colonial” Westerners outmatched, outplayed, overpowered and slickly finessed the African negotiators and others from the developing world.
Nobody walked out of the Conference. The “African negotiators” let off a whole lot of steam and huffed and puffed in the frigid Copenhagen winter, but they stayed in. Zenawi’s vaunted Copenhagen Showdown at High Noon with the rich countries never materialized. The bravado about “walking out” and “challenging” the industrialized countries proved to be just hot air. When push came to shove, all the bravado was replaced by servile groveling. Some representatives of African countries refused to walk into (“boycotted”) the conference. But they did their “boycott” during their lunch hour. They complained that the industrialized countries were railroading them into signing a deal that would be “against the interest of Africa.” A couple of days later, chief African negotiator Zenawi stood attentively clutching the podium at a farcical French-Ethiopian press conference as President Nicolas Sarkozy harangued his industrialized country partners for not being more forthcoming on emissions limits and mitigation aid.
At the press conference, Zenawi and Sarkozy buttered up each other. Zenawi said that he and Sarkozy mirrored each other so much on the issues that they were “preaching to the converted.” In a joint communiqué, they declared, “France and Ethiopia, representing Africa” appeal to all participants “to adopt an ambitious agreement limiting the increase of temperatures to 2°C above preindustrial levels.” They proposed “the halving of global CO2 emissions by 2050 compared to 1990 levels.” This would require the developed countries to commit to an 80 per cent emissions reductions by 2050.
On the cold cash end of things, Zenawi and Sarkozy proposed “the adoption of a ‘fast-start’ fund of 10 billion dollars per year covering the next 3 years.” The fund will be used for “adaptation and mitigation actions, including the fight against deforestation.” Africa would get a cut of “40% of the fund.” They called for the “creation of a tax on international financial transactions and consider other sources such as taxes on sea freight or air transport.” They proposed “the development of carbon markets, which will be a major source of capital flows and investments between the North and the South.”
Throughout the negotiations, the rich countries threw out dollar figures at the poor countries as one would throw bones to hungry dogs. The U.S. offered the developing countries $85 million as part of a combined donation of $350 million from the industrialized countries to support clean energy technologies (wind, solar). Japan said it will kick in $15bn a year over the coming decade. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised a contribution of a $100bn a year to a long-term fund by 2020 to help poor countries deal with worsening floods, drought, storms and rising seas. The catch was that the developing countries had to sign on the Copenhagen deal and agree to transparency and emissions verification standards.
Other African countries and negotiators saw the Sarkozy-Zenawi deal as an outrage, an unconscionable trick to sell “Africa’s future” down the proverbial river. To borrow Zenawi’s pre-Conference phrase, they said the deal would lead to another “rape of our continent.” Rising to Africa’s defense was Algeria, with the support of South Africa and Nigeria. The trio accused the industrialized countries of conspiring to “kill” the Kyoto Protocol and get away with an agreement in Copenhagen that does not have strict and legally binding commitments on emissions cuts.
Zenawi was whipsawed by various representatives of the developing countries for bare-faced double-dealing. Lumumba Di-Aping, the chief negotiator of the G77 bloc of countries, representing some 130 nations, mauled Zenawi for selling out Africa to the rich countries:
Meles [Zenawi] agrees with the EU perspective and the EU perspective accepts the destruction of a whole continent plus dozens of other states… The EU’s very moral foundation is deeply questionable because she accepts that a large section of the human family should suffer in order for her to continue to thrive and prosper… The African Union has not accepted this. Meles is not the author of this proposal, the EU definitely is, along with the UK and France.
Mithika Mwenda of Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance, citing a study of the Working Group I to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, lashed out at Zenawi:“The IPCC science is clear – 2 degrees is 3.5 degrees in Africa – this is death to millions of Africans…. If Prime Minister Meles wants to sell out the lives and hopes of Africans for a pittance – he is welcome to – but that is not Africa’s position.”
Zenawi’s befuddled response was drenched in crocodile tears:
I know my proposal today will disappoint those Africans who from the point of view of justice have asked for full compensation for the damage done to our development prospects. My proposal dramatically scales back our expectation with regards to the level of funding in return for more reliable funding and a seat at the table in the management of such funds.
Compare this to Zenawi’s braggadocio in September, 2009:
We will use our numbers to de-legitimise any agreement that is not consistent with our minimal position… If needs be we are prepared to walk out of any negotiations that threaten to be another rape of our continent… Africa’s interest and position will not be muffled as has usually been the case… Africa will field a single negotiating team empowered to negotiate on behalf of all member states of the African Union…. The key thing for me is that Africa be compensated for the damage caused by global warming. Many institutions have tried to quantify that and they have come up with different figures. The sort of median figure would be in the range of 40 billion USD a year.
The farcical saga of the “African delegation” at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP 15) is reminiscent of the story in Leonard Wibberley’s 1955 book, The Mouse That Roared. In that satirical work, the fictional little duchy (territory ruled by a duke or duchess) of Grand Fenwick in the French Alps declared war on the U.S. so that it could lose the war and receive U.S. aid. Following a series of wacky and comic twists and turns, Fenwick wins the war and forms a League of Little Nations which dictates its own peace terms to the U.S. and Russia and blackmails them into a general nuclear disarmament.
The “African delegation” came to Copenhagen with pipedreams of billions of dollars in carbon blood money. They left with pledges and promises of chump change. As the Copenhagen drama drew down its curtains, the “African negotiators” learned a valuable lesson: They may huff and puff and try to blow the Copenhagen House down, but in the climate change theatre, they are nothing more than servile stagehands. After two weeks of hanging around Copenhagen, the “African negotiators” became mere sideline onlookers to a hollow agreement, the “Copenhagen Accord”, signed by the US, China, Brazil, India and South Africa dubbed a “historic step forward” with “much further to go”.
The Accord affirms the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol and sets a maximum of two degrees Celsius average global temperature rise. Following a review in 2016, that could be reduced to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The rich countries pledged to commit USD$30bn in new funding to help the poor countries during 2010-2012. They also promised to support “a goal of mobilizing jointly 100 billion dollars a year” by 2020. The rich countries committed to a minimum 80 percent emissions reductions by 2050. There were other vague provisions for supporting national mitigation actions and verification procedures.
As the shiny limos scampered in the dark towards the Copenhagen Airport on December 18 with their freight of the world’s high and mighty, John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, lamented: “The city of Copenhagen is a crime scene tonight, with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport.”
So ended the great adventure of the Mouse that Roared in Copenhagen!
Alemayehu G. Mariam, is a professor of political science at California State University, San Bernardino, and an attorney based in Los Angeles. He writes a regular blog on The Huffington Post, and his commentaries appear regularly on Pambazuka News and New American Media.
One of the places I had visited last October when I went to the field to attend a meeting by the Ethiopian People’s Patriotic Front (EPPF) was the town of Humera, Ethiopia. For obvious reasons, I could not actually enter the town, but I was right at the Tekeze River, which serves as the border. It was tempting to grab an AK-47 from one of the EPPF fighters who were accompanying me and unload it on the Woyanne military post that was a few meters away from me.
The trip to Humera was an extremely emotional experience for me — looking at my own country from across a river. Woyanne made millions of Ethiopians like me strangers to their country, while sucking the life blood of the nation. The trip made me more determined than ever to muster every energy and knowledge I have to fight and remove this cancer from Ethiopia. – Elias Kifle
I have produced the following video about my trip to Humera.
The first time I interviewed Birtukan Mideksa I was struck by how careful she was not to say the wrong thing. It was 2007 and we were standing in the garden of a community centre in the part of Addis Ababa where she was raised. She had just been released from prison and the locals — many of whom struggle to feed themselves — had each given about a dollar to throw her the party-cum-political rally we had just attended and to buy her an old Toyota Corolla car to help her back on her feet again.