ADDIS ABABA, March 1 (Bernama) — Ethiopia Woyanne will be hosting the World Economic Forum on Africa in May 2012 here in Addis Ababa, reported China’s Xinhua news agency.
Mekonnen Haddis, Chief Advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister of Ethiopia Woyanne, and Elsie Kanza, Director for Africa World Economic Forum, on Wednesday told reporters at Sheraton International Hotel that Ethiopia Woyanne would host the 2012 Forum in the coming May.
In organising the event the Ethiopian government Woyanne junta has formed a national Committee led by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Mekonnen.
By following multi stakeholders approach “we are closely working with businesses and the media,” he added.
“Ethiopia is in a best position to receive some of the world’s powerful business leaders, government leaders, and civil society to be able to mold Africa’s economic transformation. At the same time we visualize the forum to create opportunity for our local investors to have networking opportunities,” he said.
Kanza said the Forum will be focusing on three main issues including strengthening leadership, accelerating investments, and scaling up innovations in Africa.
About 700 people are expected to attend the Conference which will be co-chaired by seven people, she said.
It was noted on the occasion that the Forum is an annual event.
SANAA, Yemen—Aides to Ali Abdullah Saleh said Monday that the ousted Yemeni president plans to go into exile in Ethiopia, as pressures mounted on him to depart the country for fear of sparking new cycles of violence.
The news that the longtime Yemeni leader might leave to Ethiopia marks the latest twist in the meandering story of Mr. Saleh’s fall from grace.
Ali Abdullah Saleh hands over power to new Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi in Sanaa ceremony. (Video: Reuters/Photo: AP)
As rumors have circulated of Mr. Saleh seeking refuge in a myriad of countries including Oman and the United Arab Emirates, where some of his family is already setting up residence, the ousted president has lingered in Yemen, much to the dismay of the man who succeeded him, the international officials who facilitated the handover of power, and people on the street who want him gone.
The aides said that the former president will leave Yemen within two days along with some of his family members where he will reside in a villa in the suburb of Addis Ababa.
A diplomat in Sanaa confirmed that arrangements had been made for Mr. Saleh’s departure for Ethiopia. Aides said that visas have been issued and Mr. Saleh’s belongings already shipped to Ethiopia.
Inside the presidential palace there were signs that Mr. Saleh’s time in power was at an end.
Witnesses who went inside Monday said a whole hall that used to display precious souvenirs, antiques, golden watches, guns, hunting rifles and other paraphernalia collected under the Saleh regime, was bare on Monday.
A senior army officer and a presidency employee said the commander of the Presidential Guards, who is also Mr. Saleh’s nephew, has ordered his guards to move all the antiques to an undisclosed location. Even alcohol, which Mr. Saleh used to serve to his Western visitors, had been carted away, said another employee.
Officials said that Mr. Saleh came under heavy pressure from Western and Arab countries to leave the country, upon repeated requests by the newly elected president and transitional government to prevent Mr. Saleh from staying in Yemen.
Newly inaugurated President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi was sworn in as president on Saturday following an election aimed at ending more than a year of political turmoil. Mr. Hadi was the only candidate. A power-transfer deal backed by the Gulf and U.S. gave Mr. Saleh immunity from prosecution in exchange for stepping down.
Mr. Saleh’s permanent departure from Yemen wasn’t spelled out in the agreement but it was generally understood by all parties that he would find a new home. The fear was that if he stayed in Yemen permanently he would incite riots of those calling for his prosecution and, his opponents feared, he would be able to exert control through his powerful network of well-placed family members and allies.
Prime Minister Mohammed Basindwa told President Obama’s chief counterterrorism advisor, John O. Brennan, during a meeting in Sanaa the night before the election that “…Saleh’s return to the country means another war.”
The Yemen official said Mr. Basindwa has pleaded with the U.S. to get Mr. Saleh to leave. The U.S. sees Yemeni stability as vital to battling al Qaeda on the Saudi Arabian peninsula.
Other Yemeni officials said that members of the U.N. Security Council threatened to freeze Mr. Saleh and his family’s assets if he stayed in Yemen. They didn’t name the member states but one said, “after days of maneuvering, he accepted.”
The U.S. Embassy in Sanaa declined to comment and the Ethiopian Embassy couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Mr. Saleh’s erratic behavior has been a source of uncertainty throughout Yemen’s year of turmoil. He slipped out of signing the accord for the power handover three times before finally agreeing to it.
Mr. Saleh left Yemen in June after being injured in an explosion. He received medical treatment in neighboring Saudi Arabia for three months, and the U.S. had hoped he would remain in the Gulf.
But he returned home and violence worsened anew.
Three weeks ago Mr. Saleh flew to the U.S. for more medical treatment, and again it was hoped that he would remain abroad.
But he returned Saturday for Mr. Hadi’s inauguration.
Mr. Saleh’s aides said he was waiting for an answer from the Gulf sultanate of Oman, which borders Yemen to the east, on whether he can live there, but the sultanate hasn’t responded.
In a farewell ceremony on Monday, Messrs. Saleh and Hadi appeared for the first time together. They pledged to lay the foundation for a peaceful power transition.
“Two years from now, I will stand in the same place to transfer power to [another] newly elected president,” Mr. Hadi told the gathering. Mr. Saleh then passed a Yemeni flag to his successor.
According to the deal that saw Mr. Saleh leave office, a new president and a new parliament are to be elected within two years and a new constitution should be in place.
But the ceremony didn’t sit well with many Yemenis. Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets, calling for Mr. Saleh’s prosecution.
“This is a provocation to the Yemeni people,” said Abdu al-Udaimi, a spokesman for the anti-Saleh protest movement. “As if Saleh claims he is stepping down voluntarily.”
Yemen’s Saleh is in Ethiopia, foreign ministry says
By Associated Press, Published: February 24
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Ethiopia’s foreign ministry spokesman says the outgoing president of Yemen is in the east African country.Dina Mufti said Friday that Ali Abdullah Saleh arrived in Ethiopia Thursday night. Mufti said he “doubts” Saleh will fly on to Yemen.
Yemen on Tuesday voted to replace Saleh with Vice President Abed Rabo Mansour Hadi, who is expected to be sworn in Saturday. He takes over after months of uncertainty over whether Saleh would step down in the face of popular protests that plunged Yemen into crisis.
Before arriving in Ethiopia, Saleh spent more than three weeks in the U.S. for medical treatment from wounds sustained in a June assassination attempt. The 69-year-old Saleh, Yemen’s ruler for 33 years, has pledged to attend his successor’s inauguration.
Donor Funds Should Not Facilitate Abuse of Indigenous Groups
The Ethiopian government’s villagization program is not improving access to services for Gambella’s indigenous people, but is instead undermining their livelihoods and food security. The government should suspend the program until it can ensure that the necessary infrastructure is in place and that people have been properly consulted and compensated for the loss of their land.
Jan Egeland, Europe director at Human Rights Watch
(London) – The Ethiopian government under its “villagization” program is forcibly relocating approximately 70,000 indigenous people from the western Gambella region to new villages that lack adequate food, farmland, healthcare, and educational facilities, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. State security forces have repeatedly threatened, assaulted, and arbitrarily arrested villagers who resist the transfers.
The report, “‘Waiting Here for Death’: Forced Displacement and ‘Villagization’ in Ethiopia’s Gambella Region,” examines the first year of Gambella’s villagization program. It details the involuntary nature of the transfers, the loss of livelihoods, the deteriorating food situation, and ongoing abuses by the armed forces against the affected people. Many of the areas from which people are being moved are slated for leasing by the government for commercial agricultural development.
“The Ethiopian government’s villagization program is not improving access to services for Gambella’s indigenous people, but is instead undermining their livelihoods and food security,” said Jan Egeland, Europe director at Human Rights Watch. “The government should suspend the program until it can ensure that the necessary infrastructure is in place and that people have been properly consulted and compensated for the loss of their land.”
The government says the “villagization” program is designed to provide “access to basic socioeconomic infrastructures” to the people it relocates and to bring “socioeconomic & cultural transformation of the people.” But despite pledges to provide suitable compensation, the government has provided insufficient resources to sustain people in the new villages, Human Rights Watch said.
The residents of Gambella, mainly indigenous Anuak and Nuer, have never had formal title to the land they have lived on and used. The government often claims that the areas are “uninhabited” or “under-utilized.” That claim enables the government to bypass constitutional provisions and laws that would protect these populations from being relocated.
The report is based on more than 100 interviews in Ethiopia in May and June 2011, and at the Ifo refugee camp in Dadaab and Nairobi, Kenya, where many Gambellans have fled.
“My father was beaten for refusing to go along [to the new village] with some other elders,” a former villager told Human Rights Watch. “He said, ‘I was born here – my children were born here – I am too old to move so I will stay.’ He was beaten by the army with sticks and the butt of a gun. He had to be taken to hospital. He died because of the beating – he just became weaker and weaker.”
The Villagization Program
The Ethiopian government is planning to resettle 1.5 million people by 2013 in four regions: Gambella, Afar, Somali, and Benishangul-Gumuz. Relocations started in 2010 in Gambella, and approximately 70,000 people there were scheduled to be moved by the end of 2011. Under the Gambella Peoples’ National Regional State Government Plan, 45,000 households are to be moved during the three-year program. The plan pledges to provide infrastructure for the new villages and assistance to ensure alternative livelihoods. The plan also states that the movements are to be voluntary.
Instead of improved access to government services, however, new villages often go without them altogether. The first round of forced relocations occurred at the worst possible time of year – the beginning of the harvest – and many of the areas to which people were moved are dry with poor-quality soil. The nearby land needs to be cleared, and agricultural assistance – seeds and fertilizers – has not been provided. The government failure to provide food assistance for relocated people has caused endemic hunger and cases of starvation.
Human Rights Watch’s research showed that the forced relocation policy is disrupting a delicate balance of survival for many in the region. Livelihoods and food security in Gambella are precarious. Pastoralists are being forced to abandon their cattle-based livelihoods in favor of settled cultivation. Shifting cultivators – farmers who move from one location to another over the years – are being required to grow crops in a single location, which risks depleting their soil of vital nutrients. In the absence of meaningful infrastructural support and regular supplies of food aid, the changes for both populations may have life-threatening consequences, Human Rights Watch said.
The resident of one new village told Human Rights Watch: “We expect major starvation next year because they did not clear in time. If they [the government] cleared [the land] we would have food next year but now we have no means for food.”
Commercial Land Investment
The villagization program is taking place in areas where significant land investment is planned or occurring. The Ethiopian government has consistently denied that the resettlement of people in Gambella is connected to the leasing of large areas of land for commercial agriculture, but villagers have been told by government officials that this is an underlying reason for their displacement. Former local government officials confirmed these allegations to Human Rights Watch.
One farmer told Human Rights Watch that during the government’s initial meeting with his village, government officials told them: “We will invite investors who will grow cash crops. You do not use the land well. It is lying idle.”
“We want you to be clear that the government brought us here… to die… right here,” one elder told Human Rights Watch. “We want the world to hear that government brought the Anuak people here to die. They brought us no food, they gave away our land to the foreigners so we can’t even move back. On all sides the land is given away, so we will die here in one place.”
Mass displacement to make way for commercial agriculture in the absence of a proper legal process contravenes Ethiopia’s constitution and violates the rights of indigenous peoples under international law.
From 2008 through January 2011, Ethiopia leased out at least 3.6 million hectares of land, an area the size of the Netherlands. An additional 2.1 million hectares of land is available through the federal government’s land bank for agricultural investment. In Gambella, 42 percent of the total land area is either being marketed for lease to investors or has already been awarded to investors, according to government figures. Many of the areas that have been moved for villagization are within areas slated for commercial agricultural investment.
“The villagization program is being undertaken in the exact same areas of Ethiopia that the government is leasing to foreign investors for large-scale commercial agricultural operations,” Egeland said. “This raises suspicions about the underlying motives of the villagization program.”
Role of Foreign Donors
Foreign donors to Ethiopia, including the United Kingdom, United States, World Bank, and European Union, assert that they have no direct involvement in the villagization programs. However, the multi-donor Protection of Basic Services (PBS) program subsidizes basic services – health, education, agriculture, roads, and water – and local government salaries in all districts in the country, including areas where new villages are being constructed and where the main activity of local governments is moving people.
As a result of their potential responsibilities and liabilities, donors have undertaken assessments of the villagization program in Gambella and in Benishangul-Gumuz and determined that the relocations were voluntary. Human Rights Watch’s field-based research and interviews with residents, however, indicates that the moves have been coerced.
International donors should ensure that they are not providing support for forced displacement or facilitating rights violations in the name of development, Human Rights Watch said. They should press Ethiopia to live up to its responsibilities under Ethiopian and international law, namely to provide communities with genuine consultation on the villagization process, ensure that the relocation of indigenous people is voluntary, compensate them appropriately, prevent human rights violations during and after any relocation, and prosecute those implicated in abuses. Donors should also seek to ensure that the government meets its obligations to respect, protect, and fulfill the economic and social rights of the people in new villages.
“It seems that the donor money is being used, at least indirectly, to fund the villagization program,” Egeland said. “Donors have a responsibility to ensure that their assistance does not facilitate forced displacement and associated violations.”
It would be hard to find a better symbol of media repression in Africa than Eskinder Nega. The veteran Ethiopian journalist and dissident blogger has been detained at least seven times by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s government over the past two decades, and was put back in jail on September 14, 2011, after he published a column calling for the government to respect freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and to end torture in prisons.
Eskinder now faces terrorism charges, and if convicted could face the death sentence. He’s not alone: Ethiopia currently has seven journalists behind bars. More journalists have fled Ethiopia over the past decade than any other country in the world, according to CPJ.
Eskinder could easily have joined them. In February 2011, he was briefly detained by federal police and warned to stop writing critical stories about Ethiopia’s authoritarian regime. The message was clear: it’s time to leave. Eskinder spent part of his childhood in the Washington D.C. area, and could have returned to the U.S.
He didn’t. Instead he continued to publish online columns demanding an end to corruption and political repression and calling for the security forces not to shoot unarmed demonstrators (as they did in 2005) in the event the Arab Spring spread to Ethiopia. That’s landed him back in jail–where he could remain for years in the event he avoids a death sentence.
Since then a group of journalists, authors and rights activists have organized a petition calling for the release of Eskinder and other journalists unjustly detained by Ethiopia’s government. Among the signatories are the heads of the U.S. National Press Club, the Open Society Foundations, Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists.
The petitioners also include Maziar Bahari, the Newsweek journalist jailed by the Iranian government for four months in 2009; three former BBC correspondents in Ethiopia; development economist William Easterly; the Christian Science Monitor‘s Marshall Ingwerson and others.
The campaign also included a letter published in The New York Review of Books, contacts with the U.S. State Department, press releases, and media interviews. Still, making an impact is difficult. Eskinder was just one of 179 journalists jailed worldwide as of December 1, 2011, according to CPJ data. In addition, Ethiopia is viewed as a strategic partner for the West in combating terrorism and instability in East Africa, making Western governments less likely to press Zenawi on human rights abuses.
People have asked me why we should try to help someone who could have saved himself by fleeing the country. It’s a good question. I suspect that even if he were to be released tomorrow, Eskinder would stay in Ethiopia and continue writing and publishing online–at the risk of being thrown back in jail.
After all, this is a reporter whose wife, journalist Serkalem Fasil, gave birth while they were both in jail following the 2005 elections. When they were released in 2007, Serkalem and Eskinder were banned from reopening their newspapers. To survive, they rented their house in central Addis Ababa to a team of Chinese telecom workers and moved to a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of the city.
Like many good journalists, Eskinder is stubborn to a fault. Standing for free speech in Ethiopia can seem a Sisyphean task, but if Eskinder is principled enough to risk more years in jail – and possibly the death sentence – it’s our obligation to stand with him.
In famine-stricken Ethiopia, a Saudi company leases land to grow and export rice
By Public Radio International
Famine has swept through much of Ethiopia in the past year, but a new project will see a Saudi Arabian country convert one of the most fertile areas to produce rice for export. The idea is it’s better to have people employed and making money.
Gambella in western Ethiopia is one of the most fertile places in the mostly drought- and famine-stricken Eastern Africa country, with thick forests, scorching heat and abundant rains.
But now Gambella, home to five rivers and a National Park, is also home to large-scale agricultural investments. A Saudi billionaire has leased 25,000 acres from the Ethiopian government to grow rice and this summer planted its first commercial crop. The company, Saudi Star, plans to expand that to nearly 500,000 acres within 10 years.
Saudi Star plans to add hundreds of miles of irrigation canals and pipes to bring water from the Alwero Dam to its thirsty rice crop. Ethiopians don’t typically grow or eat rice, so most of the crop will be exported to the Middle East. But Muhammad Manzoor Khan, a Pakistani consultant for Saudi Star, said the rice will still help Ethiopia feed its people.
“This kind of project can really bring a revolution in food production as well as uplifting the social conditions of the people around,” Khan said, standing in front of rice paddies.
Ethiopia is a fast-developing nation, but it’s struggling with severe drought and skyrocketing food prices. The Ethiopian government estimates 4.5 million people in the country need emergency food aid.
In the past few years, Ethiopia has developed a comprehensive agricultural plan that relies on foreign investment, and much-needed foreign currency to move forward.
Saudi Star predicts its massive rice project will generate $1 billion in revenue for Ethiopia and create tens of thousands of jobs. The Ministry of Agriculture’s Esayas Kebede said that means increased food security for Ethiopians – if people have jobs they can buy food, even if there is a drought.
“If you increase the purchasing power of the people, the people can easily get their own food by their own cash,” Kebede said.
But many of the local Anuak tribe say the rice farm is not providing jobs for their people. They worry the rice will dry up the water they rely on for their own farming and fishing. And they say, after years of hostility from the government, they are now being forced off their land to make way for investors.
One local woman from the Anuak tribe said the government told them they’re moving them to a better place where they can get government assistance.
“There are no farms here and no food. Now we’re living like refugees in our own country,” she said.
The Ethiopian government admits it moved people from rural settlements to villages, but not because of the Saudi Star project, they say. Kebede said it was to provide them with better services and aid. According to Human Rights Watch, however, many of Anuak are being relocated to parts of Gambella that already have insufficient food for the local population.
“This large scale investment program has nothing to do with food security concerns in the country,” said Desalegn Rahmeto, a senior research fellow at the Forum for Social Studies in Addis Ababa. “If you export all the food items and earn foreign currency, but people in the communities don’t have access to food, that is counter productive. And this is happening, this is not hypothetical situation, this is actually happening.”
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