KEBRE DEHAR, ETHIOPIA – Britain is to withhold future aid commitments to Ethiopia over concerns that its Government is obstructing efforts to help millions at risk of famine in the drought-stricken Somali region in the east of the country.
Douglas Alexander, the Minister for International Development, flew to Ethiopia on Thursday with a proposal committing millions in funds to the vast African nation over several years.
After visiting the Somali region and hearing the testimony of aid organisations as well as evidence of attempts by the authorities to hide the scale of the crisis, Mr Alexander told the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, that he had reconsidered. “In light of our continued concerns, I said I was now not prepared to make a multi-annual commitment,” Mr Alexander said.
At the moment Britain gives Ethiopia £130 million a year in aid.
He characterised the Government’s reaction to the crisis as “deny and delay,” fuelled in part by Ethiopia’s extreme sensitivity to its global image as a famine-stricken nation, which the Government views as an impediment to foreign investment.
Mr Alexander saw the sensitivity at first-hand on his trip to Somali when he was taken to the infant malnutrition ward in Kebri Dehar hospital to see seriously ill mothers and babies being treated.
Aid workers were surprised to find that the most severely malnourished babies and their mothers had vanished from the ward where they had been for several days, leaving only one mother and her fast-recovering child.
The health worker who had taken them to the hospital expressed fears that the children had been spirited away before the minister’s arrival to avoid “embarrassing” press pictures of starving Ethiopian babies.
“I come here every day and they are always here,” the health worker said. “I don’t know where they are now.”
“They’ve hidden them,” an international aid worker with a lot of experience in the region said.
“The Government doesn’t want to acknowledge this crisis because it’s bad for their image. It’s not the image of Ethiopia they want to project. It doesn’t encourage investment.”
Mr Alexander raised the incident later in his meeting with Mr Zenawi. “If it’s true that they moved severely malnourished children, that is unconscionable,” he said. Mr Zenawi promised to investigate, calling the incident “despicable”.
In Kebri Dehar, Mr Alexander also heard concerns from local and international aid workers that the Ethiopian Government was actively frustrating efforts to reach the worst-affected areas of the region, using the insurgency as an excuse – an allegation that Mr Zenawi denied.
Aid agencies are unable to conduct surveys into the scale of need in the region because they require government permission and military escorts, which the Government is failing to provide.
NEW YORK – Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro will visit Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, this weekend to attend a development meeting and to hold talks with the Horn of Africa nation’s top officials.
She will chair a meeting of UN agencies working to support the African Union (AU) and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).
That gathering which will focus on the theme “Delivering as one in support of Africa’s development at the regional and subregional levels.”
While in the Ethiopian city, Ms Migiro is also scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin.
Heavy fighting has broken out in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, leaving at least 18 people dead, many of them civilians.
The fighting began when insurgents attacked African Union Dictators-R-Us and Ethiopian troops Woyanne thugs Thursday, drawing retaliatory fire. During the battle, heavy artillery hit the populous Bakara Market.
The fighting also drew in forces from the transitional Somali government. The government is backed by Ethiopia TPLF, which is believed to have more than 10,000 troops in the country.
Thursday, Ethiopia’s prime minister the leader of TPLF dismissed opposition calls for a timetable to withdraw his country’s troops from Somalia.
Addressing parliament, Meles Zenawi Dictator Zenawi, said troops would remain in Somalia until a credible international force can take over and Somalia’s stability is assured.
Ethiopian troops TPLF Thugs entered Somalia in 2006 to help the government oust an Islamist movement that had seized power throughout much of the country.
U.N.-backed reconciliation talks between the Somali government and some of its opponents have achieved little, while a bloody Islamist insurgency rages on.
In New York Tuesday, a U.N. official said the Somali government and opposition groups would meet for a third round of talks October 25-26 in Djibouti.
The official, Amadou Oul Abdallah, also said the U.N. and World Bank are planning a donor conference to assist Somalia, where millions are in need of aid because of fighting and drought. He said a preliminary meeting for the conference will take place Monday in Stockholm.
It is reported by Sunday Herald that Woyanne has already started withdrawing troops.
By Peter Heinlein, VOA
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA – Ethiopia’s dictator Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has rejected opposition calls for a timetable for withdrawing his country’s troops from Somalia. As VOA’s Peter Heinlein reports from Addis Ababa, Mr. Meles indicated there would be no change in Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s determination to keep troops in Somalia until a credible international force is ready to replace them.
Speaking in parliament Thursday, the Ethiopian Woyanne leader expressed impatience with the international community’s failure to respond adequately to the violence and lawlessness that has enveloped Somalia for the past 17 years.
He suggested it might soon be time to consider ending Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s nearly two-year military campaign to prop up Somalia’s weak Transitional Federal Government.
The Ethiopian Woyanne presence is viewed by many Somalis as an occupation force, prompting a violent backlash from extremist clan-based militias. But, Prime Minister Meles said withdrawal would be considered only when stability is assured.
“In the following months, the time for us to take a once and final decision is approaching,” he said. “The time has come to take a final decision on the issue, in particular when our troops entered Somalia, those of us who felt our intervention was based on national security interests, then our withdrawal should also be responsible.”
The prime minister brushed aside calls by leaders of some opposition factions for a troop withdrawal timetable.
“However, some have proposed something outside, stating that we should leave Somalia on this specific date, outside our strategic goal, interests,” he said. “It would not be correct to state we would leave on Monday, Tuesday or Thursday.”
Ethiopia Woyanne is believed to have more than 10,000 soldiers in Somalia supporting the interim government. The African Union also maintains a peacekeeping force in and around the capital, Mogadishu. But only 3,000 Ugandan and Burundian troops are on the ground, out of an authorized eight thousand.
The U.N. Security Council has said it would only consider sending blue-helmeted peacekeepers after security conditions improve.
On another issue, Mr. Meles said he sees no early end to Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s longstanding boundary dispute with Eritrea. With tensions high following the withdrawal of U.N. peacekeepers along the frontier, Mr. Meles expressed determination to maintain Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s troop presence indefinitely.
“If we don’t find peace, the situation this is preparing [we are prepared], even for ten years. It will not affect us substantially,” he said.
Ethiopia Woyanne and Eritrea fought a two-year border war from 1998 to 2000 that killed an estimated 70,000 people. Both sides still have tens of thousands of troops massed along the frontier, at some places within eyesight of each other.
U.N. peacekeepers had maintained calm along the frontier for the past seven and a half years, but the Security Council shut down the mission in July, saying the countries had rejected options for a continued presence. The last of the U.N. troops are going home this week.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The mother of all corruptions is right there in Addis Ababa — Azeb Mesfin, the wife of Ethiopia’s dictator Meles Zenawi.
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (AFP) – Corruption absorbs up to 30 percent of most African countries’ gross domestic product, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa said Wednesday at a conference on combating graft.
“In most African countries corruption is estimated to represent between 20 and 30 percent of the GDP, that is astronomic,” Okey Onyejekwe, director of UNECA’s governance and public administration division, said at press conference in Addis Ababa.
The three-day meeting in the Ethiopian capital which wrapped up Wednesday was aimed at giving fresh impetus to the fight against corruption in Africa and called for a broader section of society to be involved.
“It needs synergies, to put together scholars studying corruption, political stakeholders and civil society representatives,” Onyejekwe said.
“The problem of corruption remains intractable in many African countries, and it is widely aknowledged that there is a need for more innovative, creative and strategic approaches to deal with it,” UNECA said in a statement.
The London-based Mo Ibrahim foundation issued its latest corruption index for Africa earlier this month and stressed that around two thirds of the continent’s countries had improved in the field of governance since last year.
SODO, Ethiopia (AFP) — Okume Ochubo’s tiny plot of land in southern Ethiopia is lush with waist-high maize sprouts and other crops, but she and her seven young children are struggling to feed themselves.
“We cannot survive without food aid, we collect assistance whenever it is available,” she said, as two of her children jostled under the shadows of giant eucalyptus trees.
“We are praying to God for a better situation,” the 40-year-old farmer added, her voice barely audible under the breeze of swaying maize leaves.
Okume is one of millions of people in the Horn of Africa nation — a country with a long history of extreme food shortages — who are at renewed threat of hunger as a result of failed and delayed rains.
The British charity group Oxfam announced last week that the number of Ethiopians in need of emergency food aid had risen from 4.6 to 6.4 million since June, as rising food prices and drought continued to compound the crisis.
But in Wolaytta district, some 330 kilometres (200 miles) south of Addis Ababa, and most surrounding areas, it is a crisis of a different kind.
The region is known for its diverse crop varieties, and a recent downpour of rain since August has turned the valley into a sea of green.
But the area’s apparent fertility is deceptive. Rains fell at the wrong time, reserves are dwindling and 50 percent of the area’s two million inhabitants are facing what aid workers have labelled a “green famine”.
Prior to that, not a single rain drop fell for eight months, leaving farmers with dwindling food reserves, while plunging the entire region into one of the worst droughts it has ever seen.
“It certainly is one of the worst in Wolaytta’s history, probably third to 1984 after 2003,” Abraham Asha, representative of the US-based charity group Concern, told AFP.
“Had it not been for the quick response of the government and NGOs, the disaster would not have been averted,” he added.
At least a million people died in the 1984 famine, with the then dictator Haile Marian Mengistu accused of concentrating scarce resources on the lengthy conflict along the border with what is now Eritrea, and the 2003 crisis left 14 million Ethiopians in need of food assistance.
The current Ethiopian government under Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has been criticised for spending too much of its budget on the military and not enough on guaranteeing the basic needs of the population.
The authorities also expelled several aid groups operating in the Ogaden region, where government troops have since last year cracked down on a rebellion, further deepening an alarming humanitarian situation there.
At the height of the drought in April, Abraham said hundreds of children in several districts suffered from stunted growth and weight deficit.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said up to 12 percent were diagnosed with acute malnutrition in the area at that time.
Experts blame numerous factors for the chronic food insecurity behind the facade of green fields in Wolaytta and the rest of southern Ethiopia.
High population density of up to 800 people per square kilometre and a system of smallholdings have always exerted huge pressure on the land.
“Resources are being exhausted and population is increasing. The region has to take drastic measures such as voluntary resettlement to curb the burden,” Abraham said.
Government officials on the other hand, are banking on high yields as a cure for the problem.
“In this district, productivity is far from satisfactory. Farmers here produce only 20 quintals of yield per hectare when other nearby zones produce up to 80,” district administrator Hailebirhan Zena told participants in a recent meeting.
“We are focusing on increasing yields through irrigation. It is no secret that Wolaytta lies in proximity to several rivers,” he said.
Despite the number of hungry Ethiopians doubling since April and aid agencies reporting a funding shortfall of 260 million dollars (190 million euros), chronic malnutrition has stabilised in the region.
Yet local residents remained pessimistic. The September harvest is thought to be enough to stave off starvation until December but unless reserves last until February, millions will be on the brink again.
“It will happen again as not enough stocks will last until then. It is even expected to be worse next year,” Abraham said.
Aid organisations have warned that Ethiopia — one of Africa’s poorest countries and its second most populous — on the brink of a major famine to that which killed millions in the 1980s.
