ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – A coalition of opposition parties accused the Ethiopian authorities the Woyanne tribal junta on Thursday of arresting some of its members on trumped up charges to stop them running in an election scheduled for next May.
Eight parties have allied under the banner of the Forum for Democratic Dialogue in Ethiopia (FDDE) to contest the 2010 polls, which analysts say the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) Tigrean People Liberation Front (Woyanne) is likely to win.
Opposition figures say they have been hamstrung by a campaign of arrests and intimidation. The EPRDF Woyanne denies it.
“Ruling party cadres throughout the country are jailing our potential candidates on false charges,” Bulcha Demeksa, leader of the Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement, one of the parties in the opposition coalition, told reporters in Addis Ababa.
“We want to negotiate with the government and ask them to stop arresting and jailing our potential candidates.”
The parties that make up the alliance hold just 80 of parliament’s 547 seats, but still represent the most significant opposition to a government that is a close ally of Washington.
Bereket Simon, the Ethiopian government’s head of information, told Reuters that since none of the parties had yet named their candidates, the opposition’s claims were baseless. “Nobody is being jailed for being a politician,” he said.
TALKS WALK-OUT
Ethiopia’s last elections in 2005 were hailed as the country’s first fully democratic polls, but they ended in bloodshed after the government declared victory and the opposition said the result had been rigged. Police and soldiers killed about 200 people who took to the streets in protest.
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi accused the demonstrators of trying to topple his government, and more than 100 opposition leaders, journalists and aid workers were later jailed.
Those detainees were pardoned and freed in 2007, but rights groups say the government is cracking down on dissent again. One opposition party leader is in jail and a group of former military officers have been convicted of plotting to oust Meles.
Meles has set up talks with the opposition about drawing up a code of conduct for next year. But the FDDE said on Thursday that its members had walked out of discussions.
“The code of conduct assumes a context where there will be independent administration of elections, freedom of movement, freedom of expression, no intervention by security forces,” said Seye Abraha, a former defence minister who is now in the FDDE.
“We want these issues discussed alongside the code of conduct, not assumed.”
Bereket dismissed FDDE claims the code was undemocratic: “This code of conduct is being drawn up by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, not the Ethiopian government … To walk away from it is disastrous and is to walk away from democracy.”
ADDIS ABABA (NMG) — Ethiopia Prime Minster Head of the brutal tribal junta in Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi, will run for a new five-year term, his ruling party announced on Tuesday.
The 54 year-old former [Marxist] guerrilla leader, who has been in power for 18 years, was convinced by party members to stay on. [Don’t laugh. This is not a joke!]
The Ethiopian People Democratic Front (EPRDF) council Tigrean People Liberation Front (Woyanne) underlined that the Ethiopian people and his party need Mr Zenawi for one more term at the end of a two day annual gathering.
“Meles is playing a key role in transforming Ethiopia….” EPRDF said in a statement.
In recent months, EPRDF’s chairman Woyanne junta leader Zenawi has said he plans to go in 2010 if his party accept his resignation.
The council extensively debated on the issue and agreed to keep Mr Zenawi in office for one until 2015.
Ethiopia’s next general election is scheduled for June 2010.
The PM has increasingly become a champion of African in international forums.
However, at home he is accused of a poor human rights record and oppression against opposition politicians and the media.
Last week, Mr Zenawi was elected [by his fellow thieves] to represent Africa in the climate change talks in Denmark, Copenhagen.
Immigrants to Minnesota from eastern Ethiopia are being forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in ransom payments to support an Ethiopian security force that tortures and kills thousands of innocent Ethiopians.
Under an extortion scheme run by the Ethiopian Woyanne tribal junta, soldiers in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia abduct men, women and teenage boys and girls, holding them without charge in one of scores of military jails in the region, which borders Somalia.
Knowing that many Ogaden families have relatives who live in Minnesota, the Ethiopian army tells the prisoners’ families that their loved ones can be freed upon payment of ransoms ranging from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars.
Hating to pay the money but having no other choice, the Minnesota refugees empty their personal bank accounts and pass the hat to raise ransoms to release their husbands, wives, sons, daughters and friends from overcrowded jails where torture, rape, beatings and killings are common.
Destruction of Villages
“It is a booming business for the Ethiopian Woyanne army,” said Mohamed, a Minnesota school teacher who immigrated from the Ogaden in 1993. “It happens every day in the Ogaden, and every day someone in Minnesota is sending money.”
Mohamed and other Ogaden immigrants quoted in this story declined to give their full names for fear that their families and friends living in the Ogaden would be jailed, tortured or killed in retribution for their openness.
In recent years, one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises has unfolded silently in the Ogaden region, where a vicious counter-insurgency campaign by the Ethiopian government has wiped out scores of villages, killed thousands of civilians, and displaced tens of thousands or more to refugee camps in Ethiopia and northern Kenya.
About 5,000 Ogaden refugees have found their way to Minnesota, which has one of the largest refugee populations from the Ogaden crisis in the world. They Ogaden refugees in Minnesota are settled mainly in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Willmar, St. Cloud and Faribault.
Frantic Calls
The ransoming of Ogaden refugees in Minnesota is exacting a disastrous economic, psychological and social toll within the Ogaden community and the broader society, Ogaden immigrants here say.
“I cry every night, believe me,” said Abdi, an Ogaden refugee who has sent $600 ransoms on two occasions. “You are forced to do what is not right, you are forced to do the wrong thing. It’s horrible. It lives with us, it lives with us everywhere. No matter where I am, in the bedroom, in the bathroom, in the living room, I cannot hold back my tears.”
Being forced to spend thousands of dollars to free their relatives from jail in Ethiopia slows down the Minnesota Ogadeni refugees’ attempts to learn English, to get an education and to successfully assimilate into U.S. society, they say.
“We get frantic phone calls day and night,” says Mustafe, an Ogaden refugee who works at Minneapolis employment agency. “Friends and family need money to be freed from jail. They say ‘Please send us money, please send us money!’ We send it, of course, but as a result we go into debt ourselves. I don’t even dream of going back to school to improve myself until the situation in Ogaden changes and improves.”
Financial Aid
In 2007, Mustafe sent $1,500 towards a $4,000 ransom collected in Minnesota to release a teenaged cousin who was jailed for three months, and was released after the ransom was paid. As a result of that and other ransoms Mustafe has paid, plus monthly support he sends back home to relatives, he is about $10,000 in debt.
The ransoming of Ogaden refugees is only one facet of an extreme humanitarian crisis involving countless crimes against humanity bordering on a full-scale genocide, that has been building in the Ogaden for more than a decade, but intensified sharply in 2007.
The roots of the Ogaden crisis lie in the fact that eastern Ethiopia is inhabited by ethnic Muslim Somalis at a time when the Ethiopian government has been waging war against Somalia. In December 2006, with financial aid and military training from the U.S., Ethiopia crushed the Islamic Courts Union, an Islamist government that controlled Somalia.
In 2007, the Ethiopia-Somalia war intensified in Ogaden, where the Ethiopian Army launched an all-out counter-insurgency against a separatist militia, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, which it calls a terrorist organization.
Collective Punishment
The ONLF conducts deadly raids against Ethiopian Woyanne military, such as an April 2007 attack against a Chinese-run oil operation in the Ogaden which killed not only Ethiopian soldiers but several dozen Ethiopian citizens and nine Chinese nationals.
The report documented hundreds of cases of torture, rape, executions and indeed the destruction of entire Ogaden villages on the mere suspicion that someone in the village was harboring an ONLF fighter. Human Rights Watch said the likely scale of the disaster was far larger than they were able to document in the report.
Since 2007 all foreign journalists and many aid organizations, including the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders, have been forced by the Ethiopian government Woyanne junta to suspend operations in the Ogaden.
Virtually all of the ransoms paid by Minnesota Ogadeni refugees to the Ethiopian Woyanne military are to release friends and relatives who have been jailed on suspicion of knowing, sheltering, or aiding ONLF fighters.
Clan Elders
But in a region like Ogaden, where almost every village has at least one son or daughter who has joined the ONLF, to declare war on all people with even a slight relationship the ONLF is tantamount to declaring war on the entire Ogadeni people – on their society and culture. From an Ogadeni perspective, that is what has happened.
In Minneapolis over the past two weeks, I interviewed 18 Ogaden refugees. Every one confirmed knowledge of the frequent payment of ransoms by Minnesota Ogadenis to free imprisoned relatives held by the Ethiopian army in the Ogaden.
About half of the refugees I interviewed said they had personally paid ransoms to free relatives from jail, and some had done so many times.
The ransom amounts ranged from $300 to $1,500. In some cases those amounts were contributions to total collected ransoms of more than $10,000, which seems to be a typical amount needed to release Ogadeni clan elders who are held.
Here are four ransom stories I was told:
Abdi #1: “In 2002, in the city of Harare, Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers arrested my brother and beat him badly, tying a rope at the top of his elbows. For five nights they beat him. My Dad had to pay money to get him loose. He came back with marks on his arms above his elbows. Another time, my brother-in-law was arrested. On two occasions, his relatives called me in Minnesota to say he is alive in prison and asked us here to send money. So on two occasions since 2002 we sent $600, but my brother-in-law was never released and we still don’t know if he is alive or dead.”
Mustafe: “In 2007 my brother, who was in high school, was arrested and put in jail. They accused him of being a collaborator of the ONLF. They said he was buying khat [a chewed leaf that is a legal stimulant in Ethiopia and a major cash crop there] to give to the ONLF. But he was only a student with no money and he never did that. We collected $4,000 here in Minnesota to release him which they finally did after three months.”
Mohamed: “In 2005 they put my brother in jail. He is a tea shop owner and the Ethiopian army said he sold some food to the ONLF. My brother’s wife and cousins sold their sheep and goats to get the ransom money and he was released, but five months later they put him back in jail. This time, his wife called me and said ‘Mohamed, our sheep and goats are very thin and weak, it’s the dry season, and none of them can be sold. We need money. They will kill your brother if we don’t pay.’ So I sent what I could afford which was $700. Again he was released, but today, only a few hours ago, I got the bad news from my village that my brother and two others were taken by the Ethiopian army and no one knows their fate. So again I don’t know if my brother and the others are okay or if they are killed. If they aren’t killed, I will once again have to pay ransom, for the third time. They said my brother is a sympathizer of the ONLF, but he is only a tea shop owner. How can he discriminate if a customer who comes in who is ONLF? They don’t wear any uniform, how can he tell?”
Abdi #2: “My friend and cousin is named Hassan Ahmed, from the town of Jijiga. Last year he was jailed and sentenced to death for supposedly helping the ONLF. But he has asthma and was seriously sick and he needed to go to the hospital. So his mother called me here in Minnesota and said, ‘If we pay $500 they say they will take him to the hospital.’ So we managed to raise $500 which we sent to the family, and they gave it to the Ethiopian army. But he was never let out of prison and we don’t think he was taken to the hospital either. Instead, after they got the money they said, ‘This guy is sentenced to death, he will never get out.’”
Cell Phones
Mohamed, the Ogaden school teacher, has collected records of 182 separate instances of extortion and ransoming of Ogadeni civilians by the Ethiopian Woyanne Army. The total amount paid in these cases was $84,500, which Mohamed estimates is less than 1% of the total amount of money extorted and ransomed by the Ethiopian Army in the past two years.
“You cannot imagine how widespread this is,” said Mohamed, who collected the data through cell phone calls to contacts in the Ogaden and the global Ogaden diaspora.
As a result of the humanitarian aid and information blackout imposed by Ethiopia on the Ogaden, accounts given by the Ogaden refugees in Minnesota provide one of the richest sources of information about the crisis there.
Money, Army or Jail
Ogadeni shopkeepers and traders are also frequent targets for Ethiopian Woyanne army threats and shakedowns, Minnesota’s Ogaden refugees say.
“In the town of Gode,” said Mohamed, ‘the Army just last week gathered more than 100 business people recently and told them, ‘You have three choices: you can give us money, you can join the army, or you can go to jail.”
(Douglas McGill has reported for the New York Times and Bloomberg News– and now the Daily Planet. To reach Doug McGill: [email protected]. And visit The McGill Report at www.mcgillreport.org)
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) — Ethiopia could suffer ethnic violence next year ahead of its first national elections since a 2005 poll triggered street clashes following a disputed victory for the government, a think tank has said.
In a study released over the weekend, the International Crisis Group (ICG) warned of the potential for a violent eruption of conflict ahead of the election scheduled for May 2010 because of rising ethnic tensions and dissent.
“The international community must stop ignoring and downplaying these problems and encourage meaningful democratic governance in the country,” the ICG said in a statement.
Ethiopian government officials were not immediately available to comment.
The 2005 elections were touted as Ethiopia’s first truly democratic poll. But they ended in bloodshed after the government declared victory and the opposition cried foul.
Police and soldiers then killed about 200 people who had taken to the streets in protest. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi accused the demonstrators of trying to topple the government.
Rights groups regularly accuse his administration of cracking down on opponents. One party leader has been jailed and several former and serving military officers have been charged in recent months with plotting to oust Meles.
The ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) is made up of parties from all major ethnic groups.
It introduced a system of “ethnic federalism” when it took power in 1991, after a communist regime was toppled, with major ethnicities controlling the regions where they dominate.
The government says that gives all ethnicities equal power.
“Ethnic federalism has not dampened conflict, but rather increased competition among groups fighting for land, natural resources, administrative boundaries and government budgets,” said Francois Grignon, director of the ICG’s Africa Program.
“This concept has powerfully promoted ethnic self-awareness among all groups and failed to accommodate grievances.”
The ICG called on donors who give money to sub-Saharan Africa’s second most populous country — which is one of the world’s biggest recipients of foreign aid — to put pressure on Meles’ government.
(Reporting by Barry Malone; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
WASHINGTON (Africa Insight) — The Kenyan government has reportedly retained a top Washington public relations firm to improve its image in the United States at a reported cost of Sh129 million ($1.7 million) over the next two years. According to the Paris-based Indian Ocean Newsletter, CLS & Associates have added the Kenyan Government to their list of clients.
By retaining the firm, Kenya has joined a growing list of countries including some in Africa that rely on lobbyists to protect and promote their interests in Washington. This subculture reflects a steady decline and privatisation of diplomacy and has an impact on growth of democracy in Africa.
Power and influence are the trademarks of Washington D.C.’s K Street, a major thoroughfare that is known as a hotbed for over 14,000 lobbyists, advocacy groups and think tanks who, in 2008, cumulatively made an estimated $3.30 billion (Sh251 billion). Lobbying, a multi-billion dollar profession, involves all attempts to influence legislators and officials, whether by other legislators, constituents, or organized groups.
The strongest lobbies promoting foreign interests are driven by cohesive ethnic population groups in the United States such as Armenians, Greeks, Taiwanese and Irish. Arguably, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is the most influential and well connected lobby in America whose work is to defend Israel’s hard line stand on the Palestinians at the same time deflecting criticism of its military operations in the Palestinian territory especially when dealing with Hezbollah.
For Africa, there exists the Africa Action group, which is the oldest organisation in the US working for Africa affairs, lobbying on issues that fit into the broad goal of political, economic and social justice in Africa. The fifty-year old African Studies Association – a vocal conglomerate of people with a scholarly and professional interest in Africa is yet another African lobby. Lastly is the Trans Africa Forum which advocates human rights and social justice in the continent.
John Newhouse in the article ‘Diplomacy Inc’ (Foreign Affairs May/June 2009) argues that advantages of using lobbyists emanate from the fact that they operate within the system in ways that experienced diplomats cannot. This is not to negate the work of foreign embassies, but lobbyists can identify with a domestic ethnic bloc even though the bloc is paid by a foreign government.
Ethnic politics can hence trump corporate interests and, more important, influence what agencies within the US government may see as the national interest. Lobbying firms are also able to put forward arguments in ways that Ambassadors cannot, in part due to the diplomacy rules they operate under.
Compiled fact sheets on Kenya
It has also been argued that even the US government has become so complex that only insiders, such as former members of Congress or congressional staff members turned lobbyists, can navigate its confusing structure. In addition, foreign missions, including those representing African countries, have limited resources and hence are spread thin, with limited access to the people and offices that matter. Thus, it becomes necessary to engage lobbyists who will cover much of the legwork in Congress for the client country.
Nations retain a specific lobbying firm with an eye to extracting maximum advantage in areas such as foreign aid, investments and trade matters. Whatever it is they want, the lobbying firms in Washington help them get it.
In the initial phase of its work, CLS is said to have compiled a series of eight fact sheets on Kenya for distribution to the US media, government officials in Washington and American corporate executives.
These brief releases attempt to put a positive spin on Kenya’s efforts at national reconciliation, its fight against corruption and the country’s security ties with the United States. The strategy appears to be designed to highlight considerations that are already at the forefront of President Barrack Obama administration’s relations with the Kenya’s coalition government.
Lobbying firms are also expected to deflect criticism against their client country, when the US Congress takes note, concerning violations of human rights. Congressional indignation, after all, may lead to partial or total economic and financial sanctions. However, it is this capability of lobbyists to shield its client country from human rights accountability and scrutiny that posses a challenge to Africa’s democracy.
Flipping through the US State Department annual global survey of human rights for the past four years, it is noticeable that many of the African countries known as human rights violators have got significant support from the American government whether military assistance (Egypt), development aid (Nigeria), or expanded trade opportunities (Angola, Cameroon).
It is also worth noting that most of these countries have natural resources that they could have appropriated for American support. Nevertheless, even the best natural resource-endowed regimes need help navigating the bureaucratic seas of Washington, and it is their great fortune that, for the right price, countless lobbyists are willing to captain even the foulest of ships.
During the 2008 US Presidential campaigns, the top adviser to US Senator John McCain, then prospective Republican Party nominee for president, was heavily criticised for his work on behalf of former President Daniel arap Moi of Kenya and other past African leaders accused of human rights abuses.
Repackaged Savimbi
Charles Black Jnr, a longtime Washington power broker, was a well-paid lobbyist for Kenya’s government in the late 1980s and into the 1990s. A report by the non-governmental Centre for Public Integrity documented that Black’s firm, Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly Public Affairs Co., was paid about $1.5 million (Sh114 million) by the Kenyan government from 1990 to 1993. The money was intended to win influence for Kenya with the US Congress, the White House, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and an array of Washington-based NGOs.
Black’s firm also helped orchestrate the widely publicised 1989 burning of $3 million (Sh228 million) worth of poached elephant tusks in Nairobi National Park by the former President. Moi’s private visit to the United States in 1990 was in part organised by Mr Black’s firm and it also handled media relations during the visit, including a press briefing by Foreign Affairs Minister Dr Robert Ouko, who would be assassinated on returning to Kenya. Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly Public Affairs Co. also represented DR Congo (then Zaire) dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, Nigerian military ruler Gen Ibrahim Babangida, Somalia strongman Mohamed Siad Barre, and Angola rebel leader Jonas Savimbi. It greatly helped repackage Savimbi as a valiant anti-communist “freedom fighter.”
In 2004, six former members of Congress served as “election observers” in Cameroon and offered positive assessment of President Paul Biya’s overwhelming reelection victory. However, it was later found out that the so called observers had been financed by the firm of Patton Boggs, which worked for and was paid by the Biya government.
Egypt, historically one of the largest recipients of US foreign aid, has also mounted a large effort to preserve American funding in a case that shows the power of well connected lobbyists. Nevertheless, critics have voiced that American aid has allowed Cairo’s political elite to put off much needed changes especially in democracy and governance that can spur growth.
Killed anti-Ethiopian bill
In June 2006, the Ethiopia Freedom, Democracy and Human Rights Advancement Act was introduced by Rep. Christopher Smith (Republican, New Jersey) proposing to put limits on military aid to Ethiopia — with the exception of peacekeeping and anti-terrorism programs — until the government released all political prisoners and provided fair and speedy trials to other prisoners held without charges. Most of these political prisoners had been arrested during the 2005 post election protests following the re-election of vote stealing by Prime Minister tribal warlord Meles Zenawi, which also left more than 500 people dead.
The bill swiftly passed the House International Relations Committee with bipartisan support with the Ethiopian diaspora in America launching letter and e-mail campaigns to push the legislation in Congress. To counter this effort, the Ethiopian government hired a well-established law and lobbying firm, DLA Piper, to protect its interests in Washington at a cost of $2.3million.
The lobby shop in a memo argued that the bill compromised “the national security interests of both the United States and Ethiopia.” They also raised concerns about Somalia that Addis Ababa and the United States shared. Through numerous meetings and lobbying, eventually the bill never made it to the House floor. It has been argued that lobbying is undesirable because it allows people with particular interests and who represent a minority to gain special access to law-makers and through contributions and favours have controversial relationships with representatives. This is a danger to Africa’s democracy including settling its internal conflicts. A case in point is of Western Sahara which has been fighting for independence from Morocco — and has been the subject of over 34 UN Security Council resolutions since 1999.
In late 2007 and 2008, the desert region was a top priority for Morocco’s hired lobbyists who sought the support of the Congress in the territorial dispute. In 1991, the United Nations had brokered a cease-fire agreement between Morocco and the Polisario Front, a group fighting for Western Sahara’s independence. Part of the terms of that deal included holding a referendum to determine the territory’s final status.
In 2007, Morocco issued a proposal to grant Western Sahara autonomy within sovereign Morocco. The US initially welcomed the proposal, and direct talks began between Morocco and the Polisario with the involvement of Algeria, which supports self-determination for the Sahrawi tribes from the area.
Behind the scenes was the work of lobbyists for both parties. By the end of negotiations according to records released by Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), the Algerian government’s lobbyists had 36 contacts with members of Congress and staff promoting self-determination for the people of Western Sahara.
The Algerians paid a modest $416,000 (Sh31.6 million) in lobbying fees. By comparison, lobbyists for the government of Morocco had 305 contacts with members of Congress and their staff. Morocco paid $3.4 million (Sh258 million) in lobbying expenses — putting it among the top foreign government spenders for FARA filings in the period.
The intense campaign resulted in a bipartisan group of some 173 House members signing on to a statement supporting Morocco’s offer of autonomy for the region without formal independence. President Bush also expressed support for Morocco’s plan, a decision that has since been reversed by President Obama who backs a Western Sahara State.
Obama reining in lobbyists
It is due to this power to influence that President Obama made lobbying a key target of his ethics policies, sharply limiting their access to the administration and forbidding appointment of former lobbyists in the government without special waivers. The moves angered many lobbying groups but it is doubtful if it has made any impact on the booming business on K Street.
It is not only in America where the lobbyists are based. There are currently around 15,000 lobbyists in Brussels, the headquarters of European Union, seeking to influence its legislative process. In Britain, the lobbying industry has been steadily growing in recent years and was estimated by the Hansard Society in 2007 to be worth £1.9 billion (Sh234 billion) and employs 14,000 people. The House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee held an investigation into lobbying, and its 2009 report called for “a statutory register of lobbying activity to bring greater transparency to the dealings between Whitehall decision makers and outside interests.”
It is thus clear that lobbyists have gained considerable influence in Washington and their work is affecting how different Africa countries run their affairs. Whereas there are some lobbyists who carry out harmless and good work, others continue to be used by African leaders to stifle the continent’s democracy.
For the growth of the continent and stronger foreign policy ties, Washington needs to assist fragile democracies reform and strengthen their institutions instead of bowing to pressure from lobbyists working for the interests of the political elite.
At the same time, Africans need to elect strong capable leaders who view success as delivering development and reducing poverty rather than siphoning public resources and buying support or rigging elections. This will be an easier route to take than the power of lobby groups which is a short term gain mostly for the minority.
(Africa Insight is an initiative of the Nation Media Group’s Africa Media Network Project)
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (UN) — Acute Watery Diarrhoea (AWD) cases have been reported from all ten sub-cities in Addis Ababa, with the highest caseload recorded from Akaki/Kaliti, Addis Ketema, Arada and Kolfe, according to official reports from the Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH). The outbreak also continues to spread in other regions of the country and new woredas are reportedly affected in Amhara, Oromiya, Dire Dawa and SNNPR. Between 17 and 23 August (34th eepidemiological week), a total of 2,330 new cases of AWD and 22 deaths with 0.9 per cent case fatality rate have been reported from 61 woredas and 10 sub-cities in Addis Ababa, Afar, Amhara, Somali, Oromiya and SNNPR. The ongoing kiremt rains, and the continuous movement of pilgrims and migrant laborers to and from holy water sites and private farms are contributing to the spread of the disease. The re-opening of schools in mid-September also requires a special attention.
Response is ongoing at both federal and regional levels. The central command center continues to provide guidance, meeting twice a day to plan and coordinate response activities. In response to the US$ 500,000 financial request to contain the outbreak in Addis Ababa, WHO committed US$ 30,000 for surveillance, case management and training activities, while UNICEF committed US$ 100,000 for training and operational costs. UNICEF also sent 20,000 bottles of water guards to Addis Ababa health bureau to enable 20,000 households to access clean water for a period of one month. Furthermore, UNICEF is finalizing preparations to establish sanitation facilities at Gishen Mariam, Tsadkane and Wonkshet churches in Amhara in the coming two weeks. UNICEF sent two Case Treatment Center (CTC) kits each to Dire Dawa and South Wollo zone of Amhara Region. For more information contact: [email protected] & [email protected]
Seasonal Update
The latest WFP/FEWSNET food security update indicates that the performance of the kiremt rains in most meher growing areas to date remains below normal, including in some western surplus producing areas where the rains had late onset and erratic performance. The situation could disrupt the food security situation in these areas that managed to sustain normal condition despite various shocks experienced in the past five years. The late onset of the kiremt rains has interrupted timely planting of meher crops including wheat, barley, peas, beans and flax. Consequently, the report indicates that most shortmaturing meher crops are considerably behind their normal phonological stages and are unlikely to reach full maturity unless the rains extend beyond their normal cessation period in September. The prospect for long cycle maize and sorghum crops, which constitute about 50 percent of the total national cereal production, is also not promising in many areas due to poor 2009 belg/gu rains (February to May) and the below normal performance of the current kiremt rains. Meanwhile, food insecurity continues to affect vulnerable populations in northeastern highlands of Amhara, Southern Tigray, Afar, eastern parts of Oromiya and most parts in SNNPR. The report recommends for timely preparation of a comprehensive contingency plan given the poor meher production prospects in the coming months. For more information contact: [email protected] & [email protected]
Nutrition Update
UNICEF reports that admissions to Therapeutic Feeding Programmes (TFPs) continues to increase partly due to the improved access and service coverage with the implementation of the government’s Out-patient Therapeutic Programmes (OTP) rollout strategy. The admission reporting rate and information on key performance indicators for TFPs, however, remain very poor, indicating the need for a strategy to improve report completion rates nationwide. In Amhara Region, for instance, the report completion rate for the January to June period is as low as 10.9 per cent. Meanwhile, training of health extension workers for the rollout of TFP in Amhara, Oromiya, Tigray and SNNP is ongoing, with more than 80 per cent of the planned activities completed in Amhara, SNNP and Tigray, while it is only 50 per cent accomplished for Oromiya. Monitoring activities of TFP interventions also continue. In SNNPR, the observations made by monitoring teams on supplies, quality of services and modalities of collaboration between AWD response activities and OTP services have been discussed with the Regional Health Bureau. In Oromiya, delay of fund disbursement by the RHB has hindered the progress of monitoring activities. For more information contact: [email protected]
Observation Mission Underway in Akobo and Wanthawa, Gambella
A rapid joint observation mission, led by Disaster Risk Management Food Security Sector (DRMFSS), including representatives from the Gambella Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Bureau, UNICEF, OCHA, WFP and FOA, is currently underway in Akobo and Wanthawa woredas. The mission is assessing the impact of the spill-over effect of the recent conflict in Southern Sudan on the humanitarian situation as well as the impact of poor seasonal rains in the general food security situation in the areas. The team will discuss with local authorities and communities to establish a mechanism for distribution of relief items. Due to access constraints, the assessment is being conducted by boat. For more information contact: [email protected]
Improvement in Logistics
WFP reports progress in logistics particularly in trucking capacity with actual allocation of 130 trucks per day to transport food from ports to in-country warehouses. Meanwhile, efforts continue to further improve the situation at the ports to facilitate timely in-country arrival of relief items. Between 12 and 20 August, a joint mission to Sudan led by the State Minister of DRMFSS and the Country Director of WFP assessed the port Sudan-Ethiopia corridor and discussed continued use of Port- Sudan to serve the north western part of the country. In addition, WFP also undertook a recent visit to Djibouti to discuss the possibility of allocating additional berth space, review transport capacity progress and introduce the WFP Djibouti office to officials.
