As the Ethiopian People’s Patriotic Front (EPPF) intensifies its military operations against the Woyanne regime in Ethiopia, it leadership is calling on Ethiopians around the world for more support. One way Ethiopians can support EPPF is by joining its chapters. For more information on how to join an EPPF chapter, write to [email protected] or visit eppfonline.org
The following video is Part 2 of a 5-part series that has just been released by Ethiopian People Patriotic Front (EPPF). To watch all the videos click here.
ADEN, Yemen (Reuters) – At least seven African migrants drowned and more than 20 were injured when their boat capsized off the Yemeni port of Aden on Saturday, official sources said.
The boat was carrying around 100 people, most of them Somalis, a source at the Aden coastguard told Reuters.
The vessel had overturned because it was overcrowded and rescue operations are continuing, the source said.
A local official from Aden told Reuters eight people died when the boat capsized and around 22 people had been taken to hospital. Another 70 were safe, he added.
The boat overturned after its passengers attempted to disembark and reach the shore, the official said.
Earlier on Saturday the French Navy said it had towed a boat carrying around 70 people to the Yemeni coast because it had a broken engine.
There have been a number of fatal incidents this year involving migrants trying to leave the Horn of Africa by sea.
Last year 50,000 people, mostly from Somalia and Ethiopia, took rickety smugglers’ ships across the Gulf of Aden, which is on the sea route from Europe to the Middle East and Asia via the Suez Canal.
Most are thought to be seeking jobs in the Middle East, or fleeing political turmoil in Somalia or drought and food shortages in Ethiopia. (Reporting by Mohammed Mokhashaf in Aden, Mohammed Sudam in Sanaa and Yves Clarisse in Paris; Writing by Raissa Kasolowsky, Editing by Jonathan Wright)
European donors are movingtowardsincreasing direct budget support to governments of aid-receiving countries. Leading the charge is the UK, which gives the largest percentage of direct budget support of any bilateral or multilateral donor (although the World Bank, the European Commission, the US and France also give substantial budget support).
Giving cash directly to host country governments for use in the general budget for public spending has a number of advantages. The donors say it gives recipient governments more predictability, and more control over the aid resources being funneled in. Rather than serving a plethora of masters in the international donor community, funds given as budget support can be corralled by the host government and spent coherently according to host government priorities, while building government capacity to do what everyone wants governments to do for themselves in the long run: competently manage their own affairs. The aid jargon for this is “country ownership.”
So how is this working out in practice? In 2007, the UK gave 20 percent of their total bilateral ODA in the form of budget support to 13 countries: Tanzania, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Ghana, Uganda, Mozambique, Vietnam, Malawi, Zambia, India, Sierra Leone, Nepal, and Nicaragua. (Source)
Of this list, only Ghana and India were classified as “free” by the annual Freedom House ratings on democracy (according to either the 2007 or 2008 rating). For the 11 other countries that did get British budget support, how much is there “country ownership” when the government is not democratically accountable to the “country”?
Moreover, Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused some of these governments of serious human rights violations. Ethiopia’s autocratic government, which is inexplicably the largest recipient of UK budget support in Africa, won 99% of the vote in the last “election.” The government army is accused by HRW of war crimes in the Somali region of Ethiopia. Nor is this brand new — neither army officers nor civilian officials have been “held accountable for crimes against humanity that ENDF (Ethiopian National Defense Force) forces carried out against ethnic Anuak communities during a counterinsurgency campaign in Gambella region in late 2003 and 2004.” HRW also notes that today: “Credible reports indicate that vital food aid to the drought-affected [Somali] region has been diverted and misused as a weapon to starve out rebel-held areas.” Ironically, Ethiopia’s autocratic ruler, Meles Zenawi, was the Africa representative at the recent G-20 meeting campaigning for more aid to Africa during the current crisis, because, among other reasons, Meles said “people who were getting some food would cease to get it and … would die” (from an article in Wednesday’s Financial Times.)
As for Vietnam, HRW reports: “In March 2008 police arrested Bui Kim Thanh, an activist who defended victims of land confiscation and involuntarily committed her to a mental hospital for the second time in two years. … In October a Hanoi court sentenced reporters Nguyen Viet Chien of Young People (Thanh Nien) newspaper to two years in prison and Nguyen Van Hai from Youth (Tuoi Tre) to two years’ “re-education” for having exposed a major corruption scandal in 2005…..”
Oh yes, and let’s consider corruption, which may affect whether aid to governments translates into aid to poor people. Another country on the UK budget support list, Malawi, had received $148 million in budget support from its donors from 2000 to 2004. It ended those four years with poorer government capacity and greater fiscal instability than it began them, according to one evaluation. Also during those four years, the Malawian president was accused of awarding fraudulent contracts, and government officials achieved new lows when they sold off all 160,000 tons of the country’s grain reserves for personal profit. In the ensuing famine, provoked by drought and floods but made worse by the loss of the grain reserves, the government had to borrow an additional $28 million to feed its starving people. Yet Malawi continues to receive British budget support today.
Elsewhere on the corruption front, British aid continues to give direct transfers to the Sierra Leonean government even though its own 2006 report found that previous support to the “Anti-Corruption Commission” had “made no progress on the overall goal of reducing corruption, had made no impact on reducing real or perceived levels of corruption, had suffered a fall in institutional capacity since the previous year.” (Quote from a 2008 Transparency International report). Sierra Leone is ranked the 158th worst country in the world on corruption (where the worst ranking is 180th).
Of course, low income countries have lower ratings on democracy, human rights, and corruption than richer countries, so poverty-alleviation aid has to face the tricky tradeoff of directing aid to the poorest countries while trying to avoid the most corrupt and autocratic ones. Unfortunately, a recent article found that the UK was one of the best (least bad) official aid agencies in doing this, so most of the others are apparently even worse.
This study did not consider the issue of direct budget support. There is nothing that says you have to give aid meant for the poorest peoples directly to their governments, if the latter are tyrannical and corrupt. With the examples above, which side are UK aid officials on, on the side of poor people or on the side of the governments that oppress them?
Ethiopia’s prime minister dictator Meles Zenawi has refused to say how many troops were killed or wounded during the his regime’s two-year military campaign in Somalia.
During a question-and-answer period in the Ethiopian parliament Thursday, an opposition lawmaker asked Meles to provide casualty numbers from the Somalia conflict.
The prime minister responded by saying it is “unnecessary” for parliament to have that information, and that he is not obligated to provide it.
One Member of Parliament, former President Negaso Gidada, told VOA that he found the comments arrogant.
Tune into the Amharic service report of the exchange in parliament from Eskinder Firew.
Gidada says that, as representatives of the people, parliament members have a right to know.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is yet another fake battle with malaria. It is to be remembered that before the Woyanne tribalist junta came to power in 1991, malaria had been effectively eradicated in Ethiopia. One of the first institutions Meles and his Woyanne gang had dismantled when they took power was the Ethiopian Malaria Prevention Center saying that each ethnic region should have its own Center. Of course all of the equipment and supplies from the dismantled Center in Addis Ababa were shipped to Tigray. What Health Minister Tewodros Adhanon and his Woyanne regime are currently doing is nothing more than a scheme to milk more money from donor countries.
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (VOA) – Ethiopia is gearing up for an epic battle with malaria, possibly later this year. The stakes are high, with international aid agencies betting millions of dollars that the Horn of Africa’s largest country can wipe out a disease that kills at least a million Africans every year. VOA correspondent Peter Heinlein reports on Ethiopia’s unique chance of eradicating a killer disease.
The battle lines are drawn. The troops in this fight are equipped with life-saving medicines, diagnostic kits and protective gear. Health Minister Tewodros Adhanon says Ethiopia is on high alert for the next attack of malaria-carrying mosquitos. “We have deployed 30,000 health extension workers over the country, civil servants, high school graduates with one year certificate training out in the village to train and empower our communities,” he said.
Humad Ibrahim belongs to a nomadic tribe that roams Ethiopia’s remote Afar region. Now he’s also a health worker. Equipped with a cellphone, medicines and diagnostic kits, he is on the scene in the event of a malaria outbreak.
“We are not free of malaria,” Ibrahim said. “But it is better than it was before.”
Historically, a malaria epidemic hits Ethiopia every five to eight years. The last one, in 2003-and four, caught the country unaware. Millions contracted the disease. Nobody knows how many died.
Since then, aid agencies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to prevent the next outbreak.
In a country with a doctor shortage and a mostly rural population, Ethiopia’s Health Minister, Twodros Adhanon, says bednets for all, and an army of village-level health workers are the cornerstones of the strategy to beat the disease.
“We have 10-million households in malarious areas, the target was to distribute 20-million, that’s two bed nets per household. A very ambitious target,” Adhanon reported.
Hospitals in the malaria zone are on alert, screening for signs of a surge in caseloads.
The US Agency for International Development believes Ethiopia has a unique opportunity to beat the disease because, unlike in most African countries, malaria is seasonal here. It hits hardest right after the rainy season, around September or October. USAID’S malaria program chief in Ethiopia Richard Reithinger says only time will tell.
“We’re basically due for another big epidemic year, and the big question is, are the number of cases that– we usually would see about 10-million cases in an epidemic year– is that number going to be lower, or is it going to be as high as before, as in 2003-2004,” Reithinger said.
Ethiopians believe they can control the next outbreak, and prove to skeptics that the huge sums being spent battling malaria can produce a decisive victory.
With another epidemic due, the battlefront is ready. Health workers are at their stations, confident of defeating one of the region’s biggest killers.
The U.S.-backed Global Fund for HIV, TB and malaria is betting they can. The fund has just approved another $290-million grant to the campaign.
An ancient civilization still lives in “Andarge Asfaw: Ethiopia from the Heart.” This Ethiopian-born, Washington-based photographer is exhibiting 44 color and black-and-white images at Howard Community College in Maryland. (See more photos here)
The cultural continuity is seen most overtly in the photos documenting the deeply rooted Christian culture in Ethiopia.
One of the most resonant photos is “Ethiopian Cross.” This tightly cropped shot features a large, ornately detailed metal cross being held in black hands that serve as a human reminder of Christianity in Africa. It’s significant that these hands hold the cross across the person’s face and nearly obscure it, because the cross amounts to the person’s identity.
Churches are among the most frequent subjects in the show. An aerial view of the cross-shaped “Bete Giyorgis Church, Lalibela” reinforces the way in which devotion is stamped onto the very landscape. Interior views include “Inside Genet Mariam Church,” whose cave-like walls are painted with portraits of saints.
The vast, dry landscape is featured in many other shots. One of the photographer’s compositional strategies is to emphasize a single tree dominating its beautifully barren surroundings, as in “Sunrise in Baher Dar” and “Acacia Tree.”
Long shots of villages convey how their thatch-roofed houses and stone walls have an organic connection to the landscape. Similarly, human beings walk paths that have been taken for thousands of years. In “Father and Son Beginning the Day,” those two figures are seen walking away from us and into an enormous landscape. Although the boy turns around to look in the direction of the photographer, he and his father continue to drive their cattle down the road.
The exhibit includes its share of single portraits and also a few gatherings in which you get a sense of social life. Surely the busiest shot in the show is “Tree of Life (Gondar Market).” It features colorfully dressed vendors setting up under the branches of a big tree.
Even with the shade that tree provides, it’s telling that some of the people gathered in Gondar Market hold up umbrellas to provide further shelter from the sun. This scene speaks to the vitality of a very old culture that values the umbrella as well as the cross.
“Andarge Asfaw: Ethiopia from the Heart” remains in Howard Community College’s Rouse Company Foundation Gallery through April 18. There is a reception and gallery talk March 19, 6- 8 p.m. Call 410-772-4189 or go to www.howardcc.edu. Click here to see some of Andarge’s photo on exhibit.
ADEN, Yemen (Reuters) – At least seven African migrants drowned and more than 20 were injured when their boat capsized off the Yemeni port of Aden on Saturday, official sources said.
European donors are 
During a question-and-answer period in the Ethiopian parliament Thursday, an opposition lawmaker asked Meles to provide casualty numbers from the Somalia conflict.
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (VOA) – Ethiopia is gearing up for an epic battle with malaria, possibly later this year. The stakes are high, with international aid agencies betting millions of dollars that the Horn of Africa’s largest country can wipe out a disease that kills at least a million Africans every year. VOA correspondent Peter Heinlein reports on Ethiopia’s unique chance of eradicating a killer disease.
An ancient civilization still lives in “Andarge Asfaw: Ethiopia from the Heart.” This Ethiopian-born, Washington-based photographer is exhibiting 44 color and black-and-white images at Howard Community College in Maryland. (See more photos