Delegates at a Ministerial event on climate and health organised by the CSO Climate and Health Cluster under the ACS2 organizing committee. Credit: Friday Phiri/Amref

By Friday Phiri
ADDIS ABABA, Sep 25 2025 (IPS)

At the Second Africa Climate Summit (ACS2) held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 8-10 September, African leaders committed to the climate and health nexus and their desire to advance climate-resilient and adaptive health systems on the continent.

According to available evidence , climate-induced extreme weather events—cyclones, droughts, floods and heatwaves, are leading to a surge in malaria cases including in regions previously unaffected as warming conditions provide conducive breeding ground for malaria carrying mosquitoes; overwhelming sanitation systems, creating a perfect storm for diarrheal diseases such as cholera; while climate-induced food shortages are driving malnutrition to dangerous levels, as droughts and floods disrupt agricultural productivity and production.

“We reaffirm our collective commitment to advancing Africa-led climate solutions that prioritise human health, environmental sustainability, and equitable development, as guided by the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the principles of multilateralism, recognise the urgent need to address the intertwined crises of climate change and public health across the continent, and call for dedicated financial mechanisms for climate-related health and the resilience of African health systems, in particular, we highlight the growing threats of heatwaves and water scarcity, which severely affect public health, and call for early-warning systems linked to health services,” reads part of the ACS2 leaders’ declaration adopted at the close of the summit.

Amref Health Africa hosted delegates at the launch of the Climate and Health curriculum for African negotiators. Credit: Friday Phiri/Amref

The leaders thus committed to advancing climate-resilient and adaptive health systems across the continent and recognised the Belém Health Action Plan as a pivotal global framework that aligns with Africa’s aspirations for equitable, sustainable, and climate-smart healthcare.

Held under the theme, “Accelerating Global Climate Solutions: Financing for Africa’s resilient and green development,” the summit brought together African leaders, policymakers, youth, civil society, development partners, and the private sector to shape a unified African stance on the global climate agenda.

The summit served as a catalyst for bold commitments, transformative partnerships, and innovative solutions that address the continent’s most pressing climate challenges.

During the three-day summit, and at the 13^th Conference on Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA XIII), which served as a pre-session meeting to feed into the summit outcomes, experts discussed the clear linkages and the growing evidence of climate impacts on Africa’s health systems and delivery.

With limited, and in most cases, complete lack of climate-resilient infrastructure and well-trained health personnel to manage climate shocks affecting the sector, the discussions underscored that “health has become the human face of the climate crisis on the continent”, a reality that demands bold action from leaders.

“Health is the human face of climate change. Yet when you search for images of climate change, you only see the human face after page six. We must change that narrative,” remarked Naveen Rao, Senior Vice President of the Health Initiative at The Rockefeller Foundation, during the closing session of the launch of a Climate Change and Health Negotiators’ Curriculum by Amref Health Africa, a first-of-its-kind initiative to strengthen Africa’s voice in global climate negotiations.

A roundtable at the launch of the Climate and Health curriculum for African negotiators hosted by Amref Health Africa. Credit: Friday Phiri/Amref

With support from the Wellcome Trust, Amref Health Africa, working with its subsidiary, Amref International University (AMIU), and the African Group of Negotiators Expert Support (AGNES), has developed a curriculum which aims to equip African negotiators with the technical expertise, advocacy tools, and evidence to place health at the centre of climate negotiations and financing frameworks.

Dr Modi Mwatsama, Head of Capacity and Field Development for Climate and Health at Wellcome Trust, underscored the urgency of catalytic climate and health action, grounded in science.

“This is the moment to roll out training sessions, strengthen AGN’s leadership on climate and health, and ground Africa’s climate diplomacy in science and sustainability.”

In welcoming the curriculum, Dr Ama Essel, AGN Lead Coordinator on Climate and Health, who spoke on behalf of AGN Chair, Dr Richard Muyungi, emphasised the importance of unity and right framing.

“The science is there, but how we frame and communicate it is the value proposition. This curriculum is right on time, it will help Africa negotiate with a strong, common position,” said Dr. Essel, pointing out that the group is ready to support Africa’s agenda on climate and health, which should be rooted in the continent’s long-held priority of adaptation.

Dr Jeremiah Mushosho, WHO AFRO Regional Team Lead for Climate Change, emphasised the importance of aligning efforts with the Global Plan of Action on climate and health, while civil society voices, including the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance, reinforced the need for advocacy “soldiers” to sustain pressure for health in climate talks, highlighting the Nairobi Summer School on Climate Justice as an important platform from which enthusiastic advocates could be recruited.

In summing up, Desta Lakew, Group Director of Partnerships and External Affairs at Amref Health Africa, refocused the discussions on the communities, emphasising their involvement at all stages of planning and implementation of climate action.

“Communities are the true front line of the climate crisis, as the health impacts of climate change are felt first in villages, towns, and cities. They are the first responders to shocks, witnessing floods, droughts, and outbreaks before national systems react. Resilience demands co-creation with communities at every stage, from surveillance and data generation to response. Leadership and coordinated action are critical to scaling an inclusive, African-led climate and health ecosystem. Climate resilience cannot be achieved from the top down. It must be built with and through communities, backed by integrated data systems, strong governance, and sustained investment. Thus, for Africa to build resilience, negotiators, governments, civil society, and scientists must work together to ensure health is firmly embedded in the UNFCCC processes and agendas.”

Other key climate and health sessions focused on the need to enhance climate information services for health resilience; pathways for integrating health into Africa’s climate change and adaption, mitigation and resilience strategies; unlocking climate and health financing; and ministerial dialogue on shaping a cohesive narrative for Africa’s climate and health agenda, among others.

• At the sessions, experts highlighted capacity building and training; research and evidence; and cross-sectoral partnerships, as key adaptation measures to support health sector’s resilience in the face of the climate crisis.
• The author is the Climate Change Health Advocacy Lead at Amref Health Africa.

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Participants at the AfDB pavilion at the Second Africa Climate Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Credit: Farai Shawn Matiashe/IPS

By Farai Shawn Matiashe
ADDIS ABABA, Sep 16 2025 (IPS)

As increasingly frequent droughts and devastating floods are affecting agricultural productivity, leaving millions of people food insecure in Africa amid a lack of climate finance, the African Development Bank (AfDB) has committed USD 11 billion to support various climate-resilient and infrastructure projects in rural areas.

Climate change-induced humanitarian emergencies are materializing in every corner of the world. Often, more frequently than predicted. Over the past few years, many countries have been experiencing extreme weather events almost every month. Poor countries like those in Africa emerged as the worst affected, bearing the brunt of climate change.

Africa warmed faster than the rest of the world, according to a report released last year by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The Horn of Africa, as well as Southern and Northwest Africa, suffered from exceptional multi-year droughts recently, while other African countries reported significant casualties due to extreme precipitation leading to floods in 2023.

Targeting Climate Action Projects

James Kinyangi, coordinator of the Climate and Development Special Fund and the Climate Action Window at AfDB, said they are providing funding for various climate adaptation and mitigation projects across Africa.

“AfDB has several ways in which they are tackling climate challenges and integrating finance for climate action in its portfolio. Last year, we had total approvals for projects in African countries for about USD 11 billion,” he told IPS in an interview at the AfDB Pavilion during the Second Africa Climate Summit (ACS2) held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 8 to 10 September. The summit took place in anticipation of the United Nations Climate Conference (COP30), in Belém, Brazil, scheduled for November 2025.

“Out of that, close to half was mainstream climate finance. Of the nearly USD 5 billion that went to climate finance, nearly 65 percent was adaptation finance. The remaining was mitigation.”

Kinyangi said they have a mainstream of climate finance for climate action in their main portfolio, making sure that all of the lending of the bank responds to climate action.

“We also screen our projects. Now, nearly 100 percent of all new approvals of the bank are mainstream with climate action. They are climate-informed designs of projects,” he said.

Kinyangi, an AfDB early warning expert, says they also have various special funds and trust funds that respond to climate change.

“One that is visible is through our major constitutional lending window, the African Development Fund. We have created the Climate Action Window, which has mobilized a total of USD 500 million as climate finance,” he said. “That has now been programmed for 37 low-income African countries that benefit from the resources of the African Development Fund. We have about 41 projects that are adaptation and we have another 18 projects that are mitigation.”

The cost of climate adaptation in sub-Saharan Africa would be between USD 30 and 50 billion annually over the next decade, according to the WMO. This is a huge blow to a continent where 118 million extremely poor people have a daily income of less than USD 1.90 per day. If adequate climate funding is not secured in time, farmers in the rural areas will be poorer by 2030 as national budgets continue to be diverted.

AfDB’s investments in Africa cut across energy, agriculture, water resources and sanitation, forestry, climate information systems, and green projects seeking finance to help transform mitigation pathways. Kinyangi said several of these projects are designed to support rural communities, including early warning systems, climate-smart agriculture and clean cooking solutions.

In the Sahel region, AfDB is supporting a project called Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR), a low-cost, sustainable approach where farmers protect and manage the natural growth of trees and shrubs on their agricultural lands, rather than planting new ones. The practice restores degraded soil and increases agricultural yields, improving food security.

As part of their climate-smart agricultural projects, AfDB is supporting 20 million farmers across Africa. Kinyangi said AfDB is supporting technologies like drought insurance for the management of risks associated with losses of livestock and crops due to drought. He said the result is a whole host of technologies they are financing in rural communities across Africa, supporting farmers with water harvesting and renewable energy.

In Zimbabwe, for instance, AfDB is working with the International Fund for Agricultural Development, a United Nations agency working to eliminate poverty and hunger in rural areas and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to support school feeding programs for children.

“This includes improving cooking equipment in schools and improving the delivery of vaccines and other medications through rural dispensaries by use of cold chains powered by solar, ” said Kinyangi. Across Africa, AfDB is revamping irrigation projects, changing from diesel-powered to solar-powered systems to reduce emissions.

Bridging the Financing Gap for Countries in Debt Distress

Several African countries that are exposed to extreme weather events like droughts and floods divert their national budgets to respond to these disasters. These are funds meant for the health and education sectors, which are diverted to support affected communities and rebuild destroyed infrastructure. To fill the financing gap, they turn to multinational lenders like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which leaves them in debt.

Efforts have been made in the past to restructure debt through the G20 Common Framework, which was created during the COVID-19 crisis in 2020 as a debt relief effort. But African leaders say it is slow and creditor-driven. Five years after it was established, only Ghana and Zambia have managed to restructure their debt under the G20 Common Framework.

Between 2010 and 2020, Africa’s external debt increased more than fivefold and accounted for almost 65% of Gross Domestic Product in 2023. Even though Africa’s average debt-to-GDP ratio is expected to decrease to 60% in 2025, the continent faces an escalating debt crisis, according to the African Union. Statistics from the IMF and World Bank’s Debt Sustainability Framework show that African countries in distress, or at high risk of debt distress, have risen from 9 in 2012 to 25 in 2024.

Kinyangi said the AfDB Climate Action Window was established to help countries in debt distress.

“For example, countries like Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe are exposed to tropical cyclones in the Indian Ocean. So, they divert national resources to combat the negative impacts of tropical cyclones. That leaves them in a budget hole. Sometimes they have to borrow to leave that budget hole.”

Kinyangi said AfDB’s aspirations are to ensure that it channels more climate finance to vulnerable countries to cushion those countries against having to divert important national budgets to combat the impacts of climate change. He said climate finance is supposed to go directly to building resilience against the negative impacts of extreme weather events while preserving the national budget that is meant to create education systems and promote health and infrastructure.

The AfDB was among the African banks that have committed to mobilizing USD 100 billion to fund green industrial projects at the ACS2. While a copy of the final declaration from the three-day Addis Ababa Summit is yet to be released, African leaders set a new goal to raise USD 50 billion annually for climate solutions. In 2023, about USD 26 billion was mobilized at the ACS1 in Nairobi, Kenya, but it is not clear how much funding has been disbursed. The continent needs USD 1.3 trillion per year to finance its climate adaptation plans, according to the AU.

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Ann Maina of BIBA addressing the media at the Africa Climate Summit. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
ADDIS ABABA, Sep 12 2025 (IPS)

African climate negotiators and civil society organizations at the second Africa Climate Summit (ACS 2) have called on governments to include sustainable farming approaches and other Africa-led solutions in their revised Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) and National Adaptation Plans (NAP) ahead of COP 30, as the only way to have their priorities on the global climate negotiation agenda.

NDCs are climate action plans submitted to the UNFCCC by individual countries under the Paris Agreement, outlining their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change, while NAPs outline how countries will adapt to climate change in the medium and long term.

“Most of the issues we discuss in the negotiation rooms carry political inclinations and economic implications,” said Dr. Antwi-Boasiako Amoah, the Lead of Ghana’s delegation at the UNFCCC climate negotiation conferences and the incoming Chair for the Africa Group of Negotiators (AGN).

“If we fail to prioritize sustainable farming practices and other innovations through our NDCs and NAPs, the developed nations will happily keep the status quo because Africa remains an important market for their farm inputs, particularly fertilizers, pesticides, and fossil fuel-powered machinery, among other items,” said Amoah.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Dr. Abiy Ahmed backed this call, saying that Africa must lead in championing its solutions.

“We are not here to negotiate our survival; we are here to design the world’s next climate economy,” he told delegates at the ACS2, ahead of the 30^th round of climate negotiations (COP 30) later this year in Belem, Brazil.

According to Ann Maina of the Biodiversity and Biosafety Association (BIBA), such solutions include advancing food sovereignty by rejecting exploitative industrial animal agriculture, rejecting high use of synthetic fertilizers, rejecting the grabbing of Africa’s resources in the name of greening projects, and rejecting carbon markets that come at the expense of communities while opening up polluting opportunities, especially for the Global North.

“Having Africa-led solutions will encourage just transition, which will lead to decentralized energy that should power agroecology, territorial markets, and resilient livelihoods, breaking (away from) dependence on imported fossil fuels and exploitative ‘green grabs,’” she said.

“If we make the right choices now, Africa can be the first continent to industrialize without destroying its ecosystems,” reiterated Ethiopia’s Prime Minister.

Evidence-based studies consistently show that the most viable and sustainable farming practice in Africa is the use of agroecological approaches, which emphasizeecological balance, social equity and cultural integration, thereby presenting viable strategic opportunities to address impacts of climate change while supporting sustainable development.

Yet, the progress has been very slow. A recent report by the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) in all 53 African countries reveals that integration of agroecology into the NDCs and NAPS across the continent remains alarmingly low, with only 22 percent of NDCs explicitly mentioning agroecology.

“This study exposes a critical gap in policy integration and calls on all industry players to act with urgency,” said Dr. Million Belay, AFSA General Coordinator. “Agroecology is not just a farming method; it is a bold climate solution rooted in African realities, which governments should be promoting instead of working towards subsidizing harmful chemical farm inputs.”

Some of the inputs, particularly pesticides exported to Africa, are banned in countries of their origin due to their negative impact on human health, environment and important insects.

According to Amoah, recognizing agroecology at the UNFCCC level will require up to 50 countries to explicitly include it in their NDCs. “Without a deliberate and united push for sustainable farming approaches for Africa, I can foresee very serious resistance from developed countries because while such approaches benefit African economies and food systems, they are a threat to economic and political interests in the global north,” he said.

The AFSA report shows that incorporating agroecology into NDCs and NAPs, supports the dual goals of adaptation and mitigation by enhancing carbon sequestration, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and fostering climate-resilient farming systems.

So far, Africa has consistently faced a lack of adequate finance to meet the costs of adaptation. Less than two percent of global climate finance reaches small-scale actors in the entire food system.

According to the African negotiators, financing projects that foster business interests of developed countries will always be accepted in the negotiation rooms without much struggle, unlike approaches like agroecology, for which negotiators from the global north often demand evidence—just to frustrate the process.

“As followers of agroecology, we need to be very strategic because negotiations are about consensus building,” said Amoah. “It is one thing to talk about a subject and another thing to convince other parties to accept it.”

So far, African countries are in the process of updating their NDCs to be submitted to the UNFCCC probably ahead of COP 30. “AFSA is currently working with individual African countries towards integrating agroecology into their NDCs,” said Belay.

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Delegates at the Second Africa Climate Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Credit: Farai Shawn Matiashe/IPS

By Farai Shawn Matiashe
ADDIS ABABA, Sep 11 2025 (IPS)

Despite climate change being a health risk multiplier, health is often underrepresented in climate negotiation processes.

Experts attribute this to a lack of funding by the African governments and a lack of capacity building among climate negotiators.

At the Second Africa Climate Summit (ACS2) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 8 to 10 September, health experts are calling for funding to bring health negotiators to the table at the Conference of the Parties (COP30) in Belém, Brazil, to demand more funding for the health sector.

Amref Health Africa, a Kenyan-based non-governmental organization providing community and environmental healthcare across Africa, launched a Climate Change and Health Negotiators’ curriculum on 9 September at the summit.

The Climate Change and Health Negotiators’ curriculum, developed for the African Group of Negotiators (AGN), seeks to address this gap by equipping African negotiators with the technical, policy understanding, and advocacy skills required to integrate health considerations into climate policy and finance Agendas.

Desta Lakew, a group director of partnerships and external affairs at Amref Health Africa, said when they started conversations around climate and health, health was not included.

“At COP27, Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, there were no health ministers because health was not included. We thought we needed to bring the health issues in Africa,” she said while speaking at a side event at the Rockefeller Foundation Pavilion during the ACS2.

“We have developed a curriculum to bring health to the climate negotiation process. AGN; they speak for us and people in the rural areas who are affected by climate change.”

At COP28 in Dubai in 2023, health was included only in the declaration.

But this was seen as progress by climate experts.

Climate change is devastating health in Africa 

Though Africa contributes less than 4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, it continues to experience the effects of climate change.

Climate change presents a fundamental threat to human health.

It affects health by increasing heat-related illnesses, worsening respiratory conditions and air quality, expanding the range of infectious diseases and disrupting food and water security.

Extreme weather events like floods in Africa cause injuries and distress while also damaging essential health infrastructure.

In southern Africa, countries such as Botswana, eSwatini, Namibia, and Zimbabwe experienced a dramatic surge in malaria cases in 2025.

From 2023 to 2024, the region was hit by El Niño-induced drought, a natural climate phenomenon in which surface waters of the central and eastern Pacific warm, causing changes in global weather patterns.

In 2025, the region experienced La Niña, which brought above-average rainfall.

The prolonged rains fuelled mosquito breeding.

In other parts of the continent, climate variability is also facilitating the spread of non-communicable and infectious diseases, such as dengue, malaria, West Nile virus, and Lyme disease.

Climate change is not just an environmental issue-it is a health emergency.

Yet, only a tiny fraction of climate funding goes to the health sector.

Many health systems in Africa, which are underfunded and collapsing, were not built for this.

They are being overwhelmed, under-resourced and on the brink.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), in a report last year, revealed that Africa warmed faster than the rest of the world.

The WMO report revealed that African countries lost up to 5 percent of their gross domestic product on average, with many of them forced to allocate 9 percent of their budgets to deal with climate extremes.

The WMO estimated that the cost of climate adaptation in sub-Saharan Africa would be between USD 30 and USD 50 billion annually over the next decade.

Adaptation and climate finances could make a difference, giving many people in the path of extreme danger a new lease of life, increasing their access to health infrastructure, smart agriculture, and improved nutrition.

Africa receives less than 5 percent of global climate finance.

Capacitating negotiators on health and climate change issues

The Climate Change and Health Negotiators’ curriculum was developed with support from different partners, including AGNES and Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), a specialized technical institution of the African Union that works to support public health initiatives across Africa.

Dr Modi Mwatsama, head of capacity and field development for climate and health at Wellcome Trust, a London-based charity focused on health research, said the curriculum would ensure that Africa’s health issues are prioritized in climate negotiation processes.

Dr. Martin Muchangi, a director for population health and environment at Amref Health Africa, said the curriculum targets negotiators, including health and environment ministers, as well as mid-level state and non-state actors.

He said the idea is to train negotiators to understand the technical aspects of climate and health.

Muchangi said the curriculum provides a place where negotiators can always refer.

“We want health to be at the negotiating table. We want to empower AGN by building the capacity of negotiators,” he said while speaking at the same side event.

Muchangi said the curriculum will equip negotiators to use evidence and data to make a strong case at COP30 in Brazil as well as develop actionable plans.

Dr. Petronella Adhiambo, a capacity building officer at AGNES, said the curriculum is in line with what they want, which is to have health featured in the climate negotiation process.

“We will be able to provide evidence,” she said.

Adhiambo said it is possible to have health as an agenda item at COP30 in Brazil in November.

Dr. Jeremiah Mushosho, a regional team lead for climate at the World Health Organization, said the curriculum is aligned with Global Climate Action and is relevant to the needs of African countries.

“This is quite a big opportunity to prepare negotiators and create a regional pool of climate expert negotiators,” he said.

Mushosho said it is critical to push for resources to be allocated equitably.

Dr. Yewande Alimi, Antimicrobial Resistance and One Health Unit lead at Africa CDC, said her organization will amplify this initiative.

She said the curriculum is timely and Africa will no longer just sit at the negotiating table, but negotiators will be able to demonstrate that health should be prioritized.

Health Experts called for more funding to bring health and environment ministers to COP30 to demand health to be on the Agenda, as well as increase funding to the health sector.

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A mother receives a birth certificate for her youngest child in the village of Bindia, East Cameroon. Photo credit: UNICEF/Dejongh

By Catherine Wilson
SYDNEY, Jun 17 2025 (IPS)

Registering the birth of a newborn, which is taken for granted in many countries, has profound lifelong repercussions for a child’s health, protection, and well-being. But after initially increasing this century, the global birth registration rate has declined in the past ten years, with some countries in the Pacific and Sub-Saharan Africa facing significant challenges. Embracing new registration technologies, increasing political will, and increasing parents’ understanding of its importance are paramount to reversing the trend.

Today about 75 percent of all children aged under 5 years are registered, up from 60 percent in 2000, reports the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

But Bhaskar Mishra, Child Protection Specialist at UNICEF Headquarters in New York, told IPS that a recent slowdown is due to persistent challenges.

“Rapid population growth, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, is outpacing registration systems. Weak infrastructure, limited funding, and low political prioritization have also contributed to the stagnation. Additionally, families often face barriers such as high fees, complex procedures, and limited access,” he said.

Some of these hurdles exist in East Africa, where the birth registration rate is 41 percent and the Pacific Islands where it is 26 percent. At the country level, it varies from 29 percent in Tanzania to 13 percent in Papua New Guinea and 3 percent in Somalia and Ethiopia. Of an estimated 654 million children aged under five years in the world, about 166 million are unregistered and 237 do not have a birth certificate.

In Papua New Guinea, the birth registration rate is being raised with the aid of mobile registration, an important means to reach rural and remote communities and help protect children living in vulnerable circumstances. Mangem IDP Camp, Madang Province, PNG. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

“Systemic and social obstacles, exacerbated by the lingering effects of COVID-19, which reversed gains achieved in previous years, mean that progress must accelerate fivefold to meet the Sustainable Development Goal target of universal birth registration by 2030,” Mishra emphasized.

One country that is striving to meet the challenge is Papua New Guinea (PNG). The most populous Pacific Island nation of about 11 million people comprises far-flung islands and an epic mountain range on the mainland where people’s daily hardships include extreme terrain, lack of roads, and unreliable transportation.

More than 80 percent of people live in rural areas and, in Madang Province, in the northeast of the country, the Country Women’s Association has worked to increase maternal and health awareness among pregnant women.

“Some don’t have access to health facilities as they are in very remote areas and it takes hours to get to a health facility, so all births are done in the village. But health facilities in some communities are rundown, there is no maintenance on the infrastructure and no health workers on the ground, so that is the most challenging,” Tabitha Waka at the association’s Madang Branch told IPS.

For a mother, recording the birth of her baby could entail long journeys in community buses along dirt tracks and unsealed roads to the registration office, along with the cost of the fares.

“Lack of information is another challenge. These rural mothers don’t have this kind of helpful information and they don’t know the importance of birth registration. And, in some communities, due to traditions and customs, they only allow mothers to give birth in the village,” Waka continued. Just over half of all births in PNG take place in a healthcare facility, according to the government.

Births are registered and birth certificates issued to mothers at Nijereng Primary Health Centre, Adamawa State, Nigeria. Photo credit: UNICEF/Esiebo

But the country has made significant strides and, from 2023 to 2024, more than doubled the distribution of birth certificates from 26,000 to 78,000. Last July, 44 handheld mobile registration devices were supplied by UNICEF to the government and field officers have started a massive outreach mission to record births in local communities.

Then in December, the PNG Parliament passed a new bill to develop the national Civil and Identity Registry. “The Pangu-led government is a responsible government with policies based on inclusivity across the country… accurate and reliable identity information on our people is significantly vital for enabling effective service delivery and for their social well-being,” PNG’s Prime Minister, James Marape, told media in November.

There is already tangible progress, but the government’s goal to register up to half a million births every year “will require scaling up technology. The kits need to be deployed nationwide, especially in remote areas, and decentralizing certificate issuance,” Paula Vargas, UNICEF’s Chief of Child Protection in PNG told IPS. “There are bottlenecks in the process. For example, there is just one person in PNG authorized to manually sign birth certificates.”

On the other side of the world, more than half of all unregistered children live in Sub-Saharan Africa, and Ethiopia, among other countries in the region, is grappling with similar issues.

Located on the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia is more than twice the size of PNG and has a high birth rate of 32 births per 1,000 people, compared to the global average of 16. Here the majority of Ethiopia’s more than 119 million people also live in vast and remote regions.

But while birth registration is free and the government is training healthcare extension workers in the procedures, the urban-rural divide persists. The burden on rural parents of multiple visits, with long distances and costs, required to complete registration is impeding progress.  The birth registration rate in the rural Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region (SNNP) is 3 percent, which is the national average, compared to 24 percent in the capital, Addis Ababa.

Dr. Tariku Nigatu, Assistant Professor of Public Health at Ethiopia’s University of Gondar, told IPS that improvements could be driven by “integrating the registration service with the health system, [increasing] availability of resources to support interventions to boost birth registration and infrastructure for real-time or near real-time reporting of births.”

UNICEF has also assisted Ethiopia in deploying mobile registration kits to healthcare workers in remote communities, including those experiencing instability, “ensuring that children born during emergencies or while displaced are not excluded from legal identity and protection,” Mishra said. Currently a humanitarian crisis and insecurity are affecting people’s lives in the northern Tigray region following a civil war from 2020-2022.

Lack of understanding and misconceptions about birth registration also need to be addressed, Nigatu emphasized.

Birth registration is the first step to reducing the risk of children being exploited, abused, trafficked and coerced into child marriage. A young mother in Mozambique ensures her newborn is protected with a birth certificate and legal identity. Photo credit: UNICEF/Fauvrelle

“There are myths in some communities that counting the newborn as ‘a person’ at an early age could bring bad luck to the newborn. They do not consider the child worthy of counting before people know it even survives the neonatal period,” he said. This is partly due to the country’s high neonatal mortality of 30 in every 1,000 live births, with around half occurring within 24 hours after birth, he explained.

Messaging also needs to reinforce how birth registration is of lifelong importance to a child. There are high risks and human disadvantages for the uncounted millions of children without an official existence. They will have a greater fight to rise out of poverty, to resist sexual exploitation, abuse, child labor, and human trafficking, and to access legal protection, voting rights, even formal employment, and property ownership.

But birth registration is only the first step to their protection and well-being.

“It only works when backed by strong systems and services. This includes linking registration to services such as immunizations, hospital births, and school enrollment,” Mishra said.

In the wider context, having accurate birth and population data is essential for governments to plan public services and national development and equally critical to assessing progress on the Sustainable Development Goals.

Note: This article is brought to you by IPS Noram, in collaboration with INPS Japan and Soka Gakkai International, in consultative status with the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

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In Somalia, water infrastructure projects are building climate resilience and reducing emissions by using solar panels to provide energy. A new report calls for recognizing and establishing a nexus between the water, energy and food sectors in the Horn of Africa. Credit: UNDP/Tobin Jones

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 13 2024 (IPS)

The Horn of Africa holds the resources and potential for lasting development and resilience. The countries in the subregion and development partners need to come together to invest in regional cooperation and resource management.

On December 12, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) launched the first-ever Human Development Report on the Horn of Africa subregion, which includes Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda.

Horn of Africa Human Development Report 2024: Enhancing Prospects for Human Development through regional Integration, explores the key challenges that the eight countries and the subregion are experiencing in

In the Arab states and the African region, low productivity in economic activity will only continue in a “vicious cycle,” one that perpetuates poverty for the population. Abdallah Al Dardari, UN Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP Regional Director for the Arab States, remarked that the countries in the subregion have been taking what he described as a “siloed approach” to state affairs, even as its neighbors are dealing with the same issues. This is evident in how the region engages with the water and food sectors.

The report calls for recognizing and establishing a nexus between the water, energy and food sectors. Over 50 percent of the population across the Horn of Africa experience moderate to severe food insecurity and only 56 percent have access to electricity. Less than 56 percent have access to clean drinking water, yet the report indicates that this is not a consistent experience among the countries, given their geographical locations.

Conflict and disasters have also been persistent factors that have limited development in the Horn of Africa, as over 23.4 million people have been displaced in the wake of major conflicts in Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, and internal conflicts like in Ethiopia.

The report presents three priorities that will help to accelerate human development and build resilience: build on increasing intra-regional trade, enhance collaboration in the water, energy and food sectors, and promote governance and peace.

The region could see a GDP increase of 3.9 percent by 2030 through liberalizing trade and reducing tariffs. The African Continental Free Trade Area (ACFTA) agreement would also boost trade were it fully implemented; the countries in the ACFTA need to ratify the agreement for them to benefit. Regional integration through collaboration on resource management can help foster sustainable growth and climate resilience, as the report suggests. This could be seen in improved access to electricity and shared food value systems. This could be valuable in a subregion that holds a high share of renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and hydro and yet faces significant energy gaps.

“What we’ve attempted to do with this report is see if we can begin to see a shift in the narrative on this region,” said Ahunna Eziakonwa, the UN Assistant Secretary General and Director of UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Africa. In working towards integration in economic and political relations, she argued, partnerships need to be established within the subregion that is built on finding commonalities and shared purposes. Changing the narrative is key towards achieving sustainable development.

At the report’s launch, Eziakonwa remarked that certain demographics needed to be brought into the fold when discussing development, requiring a re-examination of the narratives associated with them. Young people make up a significant percentage of the population across the region, yet they have been characterized as the problem rather than the solution. Involving young people and recognizing the skills and perspectives they can bring to the table is critical, which will involve expanding socio-economic opportunities for the youth population that are not employed or in education. Investing in women’s participation in the development sector is also needed, for they have been largely left out of decision-making spaces and policy discussions.

Through this report, UNDP is calling on governments and development partners to invest in infrastructure and policy frameworks that build up human development and resilience in the Horn of Africa.

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Furtuna (5) is getting the early education she deserves, and she loves counting with children at the Mahabre Dego Primary School, Tigray Region, Ethiopia. ECW and strategic partners’ investments in the country provide much-needed support for young crisis-affected girls and boys to have a better start in life through quality early education. Credit: ECW/Tesfaye

By Joyce Chimbi
ADDIS ABABA & NAIROBI, Dec 9 2024 (IPS)

Ethiopia’s education system is buckling under the weight of complex, competing challenges. The aftermath of a deadly war in the north, ongoing violence, climate-induced disasters, and widespread forced displacements have converged to push as many as 9 million children out of school. With close to 18 percent of schools in the country destroyed or damaged and persisting intercommunal conflicts in various regions, there are fears that many might never find their way back to school.

“In the absence of education, both boys and girls may be mobilized into militant groups, and frequently, girls will be subjected to child marriage. The choice is to provide them with an education, as it is the pathway to their future and contribution to their society and also as a protection mechanism,” says Yasmine Sherif, Executive Director of Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises in the United Nations. “Being out-of-school puts them in harm’s way and onto the path of abuse, violations, and the destruction of their lives, their communities, and eventually their country. We must ensure that no child is left behind in the education system. Investing in the very real potential of Ethiopia’s young generation is not an option—it is an absolute necessity.”

Sherif traveled to the Tigray region in the first week of December 2024 together with the ECW Global Champion and Finance Minister of Denmark, Nicolai Wammen. ECW’s high-level delegation saw first-hand the devastating effects of the deadly three-year conflict between the Ethiopian central government and the northernmost region of Tigray, Ethiopia.

Yasmine Sherif, Executive Director, Education Cannot Wait (ECW) and Nicolai Wammen, ECW Global Champion and Danish Minister of Finance, visit a school in the Tigray Region in Ethiopia. The delegation met with girls and boys whose education was interrupted for over three years due to conflict. Thanks to ECW & strategic partners’ support in the region, students are back in the classroom where they belong.
Credit: ECW/Tesfaye

The aftermath and recovery process are such that, amid limited resources, the country is putting back the pieces of a broken education infrastructure to jumpstart an education system that had come to a complete halt. At the end of their joint visit, the two called for bold donor action to deliver the promise of a quality education to millions of crisis-impacted children.

“We have a multi-year investment and great partners on the ground, including a very supportive government. We work with UN agencies, including UNICEF, and civil society organizations such as Save the Children, the Norwegian Refugee Council, Image1Day and other local Ethiopian organizations,” Sherif told IPS.

The ECW delegation visited schools benefiting from funding by ECW and strategic partners, met children, parents, and teachers, and saw first-hand the impact of ECW-supported programmes. In one school alone, enrollment increased by an impressive 20 percent last year due to a comprehensive package of interventions funded by ECW.

“It is heartwarming to witness the life-transforming power of quality education in the most complex crisis situations. I met strong and resilient girls and boys who are returning to learning, healing and thriving thanks to ECW’s support. However, conflicts, climate change and other crises continue to push millions of children out of school every year—in Ethiopia and beyond. Business as usual will not meet this challenge. I encourage private sector partners to join ECW’s efforts and invest in new and innovative financing strategies to fill the widening gap,” said Nicolai Wammen, Minister of Finance, Denmark, and ECW Global Champion.

Breiy Nuguse is a teacher at the ECW-supported FreKalsi Primary School in the Tigray Region, Ethiopia, where children are back in classrooms after over three years of missing out on an education due to the conflict that devasted the region. “Teaching makes me happy. I love teaching and when I see children learn, it is so rewarding. I was inspired to become a teacher, as my teachers were so wonderful when I was at school. I realize the gift of learning that they gave me, and I wanted to do the same for the next generation,” Nuguse said. Credit: ECW//Tesfaye

Sherif says the delegation saw significant progress in supported schools, such as “rehabilitated infrastructure and others rebuilt from scratch. We saw learning supplies, teachers who are well trained and sensitized, and professionals offering mental health and psychosocial services. There is a strong academic curriculum. Included in the national curriculum are critical issues of peacebuilding, ethics, and the arts. Education is ongoing in primary and secondary schools but also in pre-primary and early childhood development schools. Children with disabilities also benefit from targeted supports and inclusive education.”

Overall, they witnessed a protective learning environment that included systematic implementation of a referral identification of children in need and distribution of assistive devices, and children in need of assistance integrated with their peers, which promotes their inclusion and improves their social and learning skills.

There were girls’ clubs too for pursuit of shared and common interests. Teachers are trained on gender-sensitive issues, and there is systematic implementation of menstrual hygiene for adolescent girls, designated sanitation areas for girls, and promotion of water and sanitation.

Displaced and host community students who attend the ECW-supported Embandaso Primary School in the Tigray Region, Ethiopia, enjoy drawing so they can express their feelings and their dreams.
Credit: ECW/Tesfaye

“The children are receiving quality, safe, and inclusive holistic education. Having gone through mental health and psychosocial support through ECW investment, they are confident and expressive of their dreams. This is what investment in education can do, and we can do even more through bold donor action to reach every child with quality education and prospects for lifelong learning and earning,” Sherif observes.

But the challenges are still significantly complex and pressing, and resources are scarce.

Ethiopia also hosts the third largest refugee population in Africa, significantly exacerbating the country’s educational challenges. There were over 200,000 new arrivals from Sudan and Somalia in 2023-2024 alone, further increasing pressure on existing resources.

After a visit that revealed the numerous challenges Ethiopian children face and their unwavering determination to learn, ECW announced a USD 5 million First Emergency Response grant, increasing its total investments in the country to USD 93 million since 2017.

Of the new USD 5 million grant, UNICEF will be the implementing partner for USD 4 million. A local organization, Imagine 1Day, will implement the remaining USD 1 million. The organizations will work together with their partners to address urgent needs in the Oromia and Afar regions, where renewed conflict, intercommunal violence, drought and displacement have further disrupted education services in recent months.

These emergency interventions will build on the USD 24 million Multi-Year Resilience Programme announced last month by ECW, targeting needs in the Amhara, Somalia, and Tigray regions.

Yasmine Sherif, Executive Director, Education Cannot Wait (ECW) and Nicolai Wammen, ECW Global Champion and Danish Minister of Finance, are welcomed by students at the ECW-supported Chila Primary School in Tigray, Ethiopia. Children here have missed more than three years of education due to COVID and the conflict that devastated the region.
Photo credit: ECW

“Imagine1Day is deeply grateful for this Education Cannot Wait First Emergency Response grant. With this generous support, we will provide over 13,000 out-of-school children in the Afar region—60 percent of whom are girls and 13 percent are children with disabilities—with access to safe learning environments. This project will not only enhance their well-being but also empower them to reach their full potential. Given that education in emergencies in Ethiopia has been severely underfunded, this grant is crucial in ensuring that crisis-affected children receive the education and support they need to build a brighter future,” said Dr. Seid Aman, Country Director of Imagine1Day.

To date, ECW’s combined multi-year and emergency investments in Ethiopia have reached more than 550,000 children and adolescents, providing a comprehensive range of supports—school rehabilitation, teacher training, mental health and psychosocial support, inclusive education, school feeding, gender transformative initiatives, early childhood education, and more. ECW’s support focuses on the most vulnerable, including girls, children from refugee, displaced and host community communities, and children with disabilities.

ECW’s investments are aligned to the Ethiopia Humanitarian Response Plan and the Ethiopia Education Sector Development Programme VI, a detailed planning document that provides a comprehensive outlook of the roadmap that the country’s education sector is taking. The Global Fund urgently calls for additional resources to fill the USD 64 million funding gap to meet the requirements for the acute education needs in the 2024 Humanitarian Response Plan for Ethiopia.

Working in emergency and protracted crisis settings across the globe, ECW supports quality education outcomes for refugee, internally displaced, and other crisis-affected girls and boys, so no one is left behind.

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These Sudanese refugee children are among the 748,000 refugees and asylum-seekers who have sought refuge in Egypt. Credit: ECW

By Joyce Chimbi
CAIRO & NAIROBI, Aug 26 2024 (IPS)

As peace eludes war-torn Sudan, thousands of displaced people fleeing the deadly battle between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have found refuge in neighboring countries, including Egypt.

The Sudanese refugee population in Egypt has grown almost sevenfold in what is considered the worst displacement crisis in the world, impacting 10 million people, with at least 2 million having fled to neighboring countries, including Egypt. In Egypt, over 748,000 refugees and asylum-seekers are registered with the UNHCR, a majority of whom are women and children who have recently arrived from Sudan. This number is expected to continue to rise.

“When Sudan plunged into conflict, the international aid community, UN agencies, civil society and governments developed a response plan to meet the urgent needs of refugees fleeing Sudan to seek safety in five different countries, including Chad, Ethiopia, Egypt, South Sudan and the Central African Republic,” Yasmine Sherif, Executive Director of Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises within the United Nations, told IPS.

To put it into perspective, the 2024 Sudan Regional Refugee Response Plan calls for USD 109 million to respond to refugee education needs across the region. To date, only 20 percent of this amount has been mobilized, including USD 4.3 million—or 40 percent of the requirement for Egypt.

ECW was among the first to respond in the education sector, providing emergency grants to support partners in all five countries.

The government of Egypt has demonstrated great commitment to providing refugees with access to education services, but with 9,000 children arriving every month, the needs are overwhelming.

Consequently, nearly 54 percent of newly arrived children are currently out of school, per the most recent assessment.

Sherif says despite Egypt’s generous refugee policy, the needs are great, resources are running thin and additional funding is urgently needed to scale up access to safe, inclusive, and equitable quality education for refugee as well as vulnerable host community children.

“Families fleeing the brutal conflict in Sudan endured the most unspeakable violence and had their lives ripped apart. For girls and boys uprooted by the internal armed conflict, education is nothing less than a lifeline. It provides protection and a sense of normalcy amidst the chaos and gives them the resources they need to heal and thrive again,” she said.

Yasmine Sherif, Executive Director of Education Cannot Wait (ECW), interacts with the Sudanese refugee community in Egypt. Credit: ECW

The government of Egypt has demonstrated great commitment to providing refugees with access to education services, but with 9,000 children arriving every month, the needs are overwhelming.

On a high-level stock-taking UN mission to Egypt in August 2024, ECW, UNHCR and UNICEF are urging donors, governments and individuals of good will to contribute to filling the remaining gap and scaling up the education response for refugee and host-community children.

“We have seen the important work that is being undertaken by UNHCR, the Catholic Relief Service and local organizations. But needs are fast outpacing the response, and Egypt now has a growing funding gap of USD 6.6 million. Classrooms are hosting as many as 60 children, most of whom are from host communities,” Sherif says.

Stressing that additional resources are urgently and desperately required to ensure that refugee and host community children in Egypt and other refugee-receiving countries in the region can attend school and continue learning. With the future of the entire region at stake, ECW’s call to action is for as many donors as possible to step in and help deliver the USD10 million required here and now to adequately support the refugee and host communities.

Education Cannot Wait Executive Director Yasmine Sherif, UNHCR, UNICEF, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) staff and Sudanese refugee girls and women at the CRS office in Cairo, Egypt.Credit: ECW

“We have seen the important work that is being undertaken by UNHCR, the Catholic Relief Service and local organizations, such as the Om Habibeh Foundation. But needs are fast outpacing the response,” Sherif says.

“In the spirit of responsibility sharing enshrined in the Global Compact on Refugees, I call on international donors to urgently step up their support. Available funding has come from ECW, ECHO, the EU, Vodafone, and a few other private sector partners. We should not abandon children in their darkest hour. This is a plea to the public and private sectors, and governments to step in and deliver for conflict-affected children,” she said.

Dr. Hanan Hamdan, UNHCR Representative to the Government of Egypt and to the League of Arab States, agreed.

“Forcibly displaced children should not be denied their fundamental right to pursue their education; their flight from conflict can no longer be an impediment to their rights. UNHCR, together with ECW and UNICEF, continue to ensure that children’s education, and therefore their future, are safeguarded,” she said.

“To this end, it is crucial to further support Egypt as a host country. It has shown remarkable resilience and generosity, but the increasing number of displaced individuals requires enhanced international assistance. By strengthening Egypt’s capacity to support refugees, we can ensure that more children have access to education and eventually a brighter future,” Hamdan added.

During the high-level ECW mission in Egypt, the ECW delegation met with key strategic partners—including donors, UN agencies, and local and international NGOs—and with Sudanese refugees to take stock of the scope of needs and the ongoing education response by aid partners.

Jeremy Hopkins, UNICEF Representative in Egypt, reiterated the agency’s commitment.

“UNICEF is steadfast in its commitment to ensure that conflict-affected Sudanese children have the opportunity to resume their education. In Egypt, through innovative learning spaces and the Comprehensive Inclusion Programme, UNICEF is working diligently, under the leadership of the Egyptian government, in cooperation with sister UN agencies and development partners, to create inclusive learning environments and strengthen resilient education systems and services,” Hopkins said.

“This not only benefits displaced Sudanese children but also supports host communities by ensuring that all children have access to quality education.”

In December 2023, ECW announced a USD 2 million First Emergency Response Grant in Egypt. The 12-month grant, implemented by UNHCR in partnership with UNICEF, is reaching over 20,000 Sudanese refugees in the Aswan, Cairo, Giza and Alexandria governorates.

Sudanese displaced children in Egypt are falling behind in their education. Education Cannot Wait has made a global appeal for funds to ensure they are able to continue with their education. Credit: ECW

The grant supports interventions such as non-formal education, cash grants, social cohesion with host communities, mental health and psychosocial support, and construction and refurbishment work in public schools hosting refugee children to benefit both refugee and host community children. As conflict escalates across the globe, ECW is committed to ensuring that all children have a chance at lifelong learning and earning opportunities.

Beyond Egypt, ECW has allocated USD 8 million in First Emergency Response grants in the Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia and South Sudan to address the urgent protection and education needs of children fleeing the armed conflict in Sudan. In Sudan, ECW has invested USD 28.7 million in multi-year and emergency grants, which have already reached more than 100,000 crisis-affected girls and boys.

During the mission, ECW called on leaders to increase funding for the regional refugee response and other forgotten crises worldwide. ECW urgently appeals to public and private donors to mobilize an additional US$600 million to reach 20 million crisis-impacted girls and boys with safe, quality education by the end of its 2023–2026 strategic plan.

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Hilina Berhanu Degefa, researcher, gender policy expert and co-founder of the Yellow Movement AAU, addresses the UN Security Council. CREDIT: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Francis Kokutse
ACCRA, Aug 22 2023 (IPS)

The war in Tigray, northern Ethiopian, led to sexual and gender-based violence against women, but when Hilina Berhanu Degefa, researcher, gender policy expert and co-founder of the Yellow Movement AAU, appeared before the UN Security Council Open Debate on Sexual Violence in Conflict last year, and catalogued the problems that the victims of the war faced, it didn’t shock the world.

Giving a background, Degefa said, “When the war first started, Blen, a 21-year-old waitress from Badme, along with around 30 other Tigrayan women, was held against her will and subjected to sexual slavery, starvation, and gang rape by a group of Eritrean and Ethiopian soldiers who took turns with her.”

“I documented many other stories like Blen’s during multiple visits to the Tigray region before June 2021. Sexual violence was used to terrorize communities and build camaraderie amongst allied forces of the Eritrean Defence Forces, Ethiopian National Defence Force, Amhara regional militia, and special forces through the shared experience of exploiting women’s bodies.

“The consistency across victims’ accounts shows that these crimes were committed with a degree of organization, planning, and intent to dehumanize individuals and communities,” she said.

Now, a new study has confirmed that 99 percent of the survivors of sexual and gender-based violence during the conflict have not received medical or psychological care because most health facilities were destroyed and looted.

Girmatsion Fisseha – Lead Author

The authors have, therefore, suggested the establishment of an urgent survivor centre approach with medical and psychological services, together with sustained community support, to reduce the lifelong impact on the behavioural, emotional, sexual, social, and economic fortunes of the victims.

Published by BMJ Global Health journal, the study, “War-related sexual and gender-based violence in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia: a community-based study,” is a survey conducted in six zones of Tigray after the Eritrean, Ethiopian and Amhara forces left Mekelle, the capital of Tigray.

The western zone of Tigray and the districts bordering Eritrea were not included for security reasons. Women of reproductive age (i.e., 15–49 years) recruited from the study communities were included as primary respondents in this survey. Information on girls under 15 years and women above 50 years of age was also collected from the primary respondents, and the period of the SGBV incidents covered from 4 November 2020 to 28 June 2021.

Findings from this study indicate a higher incidence, nearly 10 percent more of rape, than those reported in other studies during conflicts, such as in Northern Uganda, 4.2 percent; Sierra Leone, 8 percent and Ukraine, 2.6 percent. In the case of physical violence, 28.6 percent observed in this study was higher than the findings for East Timor, Indonesia, where 22.7 percent of the women were physically assaulted.

Co-author of the study, Kiros Berhane, professor at the Cynthia and Robert Citron-Roslyn and Leslie Goldstein, and Chair, Department of Biostatistics Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University in the U.S. told the IPS why they were motivated to conduct the study. “During the war period in Tigray, there were unprecedently high incidents of SGBV reported by various humanitarian agencies, local and international media, including gang-rape and other extreme types of abuses such as insertion of foreign objectives to the victims’ private parts.

Kiros Berhane Professor of Biostatistics at Columbia University

“Most of the reports were coming from health facilities around big towns. Health professionals working at university hospitals (including many on the author list of this manuscript) observed many rape survivors admitted to Mekelle Hospital and Ayder Comprehensive Specialized Hospital (one-stop centre),” he said.

Berhane said the main objective of the study was to scientifically and thoroughly document the level and severity of war-related SGBV in Tigray beyond the sporadic and incomplete (but still shocking) reports in hopes that policies and actions could be activated to help rape survivors and further prevent the rape incidence in the community, adding that, “this study provides first-of-its-kind objectively/carefully collected primary data on scale/level of SGBV in Tigray.”

Degefa gave a chilling account of a Tigrayan woman who was fleeing the conflict zone with her children, and encountered the Amhara militia, who separated her from her family, gang-raped her and inserted a hot metal rod into her uterus and declared that a Tigrayan should never give birth.”

“Similar incidents of rape with claims of cleansing “Tigrayan blood” and mutilating women’s bodies to prevent the birth of more generations of Tigrayans have been extensively covered by different human rights reports,” she said.

Degefa said sexual violence was also used to humiliate survivors and their families and cited a case of an Amhara woman who was beaten and raped in the presence of her husband and child by two members of Tigrayan forces. Men and boys were also sexually assaulted, she said, adding that the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission found in Samre town, in Tigray, 600 men and boys who were stripped and forcibly paraded, some completely naked, while Eritrean female soldiers mocked them and took pictures.

She said women with disabilities and other vulnerable communities were also at particular risk during this conflict. “Many women with disabilities were specifically targeted in the Tigray region as they were presumed to be fighters in the previous war. Girls, older women, and women belonging to a minority or indigenous communities also faced higher risks, Degefa added.

The lack of access to the region for independent human rights monitoring means it has been tough to document the impact of the conflict in minority communities and especially those living in disputed areas on the Eritrean border, such as the Irob and Kunama in Tigray.

In her opinion, the conflict in Northern Ethiopia, and the effective siege of the Tigray region, in particular, has undermined women’s rights, including access to reproductive healthcare and psychosocial support, exacerbating the impacts of sexual violence.

Degefa said the lack of access to psychosocial support services means that the mental health of survivors of sexual violence hangs in the balance. Many have already died by suicide, adding that the story of a 50-year-old Amhara woman from Shewa-Robit in central Ethiopia, who was gang-raped by Tigrayan fighters in the presence of her son in the next room and later died of suicide.

Following their study, Berhane said he would expect the Ethiopian government and the international community “to provide immediate action such as supporting survivors, their children and provide the opportunity for medical, psychological and economic rehabilitation.”

In addition, there is a need for the supply of adequate medical supplies and medications to health facilities in the war zone. The government must also work with all partners and NGOs to try and trace survivors at the community level for further medical and psychological support.

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Graham Lang, Education Cannot Wait Director of the High-Level Financing Conference and Chief of Education, enjoys a performance during the joint high-level mission to Ethiopia that included Anne Beathe Tvinnereim, the Minister of International Development for Norway, and Birgitte Lange, CEO of Save the Children Norway to take stock of urgent education needs. Credit: ECW

By Joyce Chimbi
Addis Ababa, Dec 8 2022 (IPS)

A silent catastrophe is unfolding in Ethiopia on the backdrop of years of inter-communal conflict and the most prolonged and severe drought in recent years. High inflation and food insecurity in the drought-ravaged country is among the worst in the world.

The risk of losing an entire generation of children is imminent as nature’s wrath and conflict stand in the way, undermining access to education, school infrastructure, and functional educational administrative systems. Girls, especially teenage girls, children with disabilities, and displaced children, are among the most at risk.

Graham Lang, Education Cannot Wait (ECW) Director of the High-Level Financing Conference and Chief of Education, visited Ethiopia on a joint high-level mission that included Anne Beathe Tvinnereim, the Minister of International Development for Norway, and Birgitte Lange, CEO of Save the Children Norway to take stock of urgent education needs.

“Ethiopia is facing one of the largest education crises in the world. The government estimates that over 13 million children are out of school. Of these 13 million, 3.6 million are out of school as a result of conflict and climate-related emergencies. This has increased from 3.1 million children in just a few months,” Lang told IPS.

“It is estimated that the worst drought in four decades is now impacting 1.6 million children alone, of whom over 500,000 have now dropped out of school. Additionally, there are over 430,000 refugee children, of whom close to 60 percent are out of school.”

He said the scale of the crisis is staggering and rapidly increasing. Within this context, Lang, Tvinnereim, and Lange visited schools and communities benefiting from holistic education support funded by ECW and delivered in partnership with UNICEF, Save the Children Ethiopia, and local partners in support of the Government.

ECW is committed to supporting crisis-impacted communities in Ethiopia and beyond to reach as many vulnerable children as funds will allow. ECW’s strategic plan for 2023/2026 aims to reach 20 million children over the next four years. Credit: ECW

“Education in crisis and conflict is a priority for the Norwegian government. In conflict, especially, girls drop out of school. What this field visit has shown us is that if you manage to bring children back into school, they will eventually help build the societies they live in,” said Tvinnereim.

ECW has invested $55 million in Ethiopia to date, which has reached over 275,000 children thus far, and is about to approve an additional $5 million for the drought response. The mission was an opportunity to highlight the needs, not just in Ethiopia but globally, and to further highlight the ongoing effort to get children back into school and keep them there.

The funding ECW provides through its multi-year resilience programme has supported the construction and rehabilitation of safe and protective learning environments such as schools, latrines, and canteens.

“It has also supported gender clubs. We witnessed boys and girls discussing issues such as gender-based violence and menstrual health management. Challenging deeply held norms around girl child education and empowering a new generation of girls to articulate their needs and fight for their right to education,” Lang expounded.

Anne Beathe Tvinnereim, the Minister of International Development for Norway, said the field visit showed the positive impacts of bringing children back to school. Credit: ECW

“The delegation also saw ‘speed schools’ – an innovative program – where through a condensed programme, over-age children can complete three years of primary education in just ten months. Thereafter, these children can re-enter the system in grade 4. A lifeline for children who have dropped out of school because of conflict-related violence and displaced or climate changes.”

The delegation also encountered climate clubs where children and adolescents were discussing the impact of climate change, a real and visible phenomenon in Ethiopia, and for the 1.6 million children forced out of school by the drought.

The provision of one school meal a day, Lang affirmed, is such a powerful factor in drawing children into schools and keeping them there. ECW is also supporting community participation, including community leaders, parents, and teachers’ engagement to encourage children to return to school and stay in school.

The impact of these ongoing efforts on affected children and host communities was visible to the delegation. For instance, Lang says enrollments in targeted schools have significantly increased, in some cases three-fold and in other cases even quadrupled.

“The main challenge we see is funding at the global level, for example, to funds such as ECW and country level through donor governments, private sector institutions, and other means. This is the critical issue,” Lang emphasized.

“Partners on the ground are working with the governments to implement activities and make desired tangible changes. They have the capacity, commitments, and ability to scale these actions up so that all children can benefit, but there is not enough financing.”

The high-level mission saw gender clubs and other innovative programmes in action during their visit to ECW-supported schools in Ethiopia. Credit: ECW

ECW is committed to supporting crisis-impacted communities in Ethiopia and beyond to reach as many vulnerable children as funds will allow. In this regard, Lang spoke about ECW’s new strategic plan for 2023/2026, which starts in January through which ECW aims to reach 20 million children over the next four years.

To do that, ECW needs at least $1.5 billion to provide safe, inclusive, quality education for 20 million children. To launch action towards raising the much-needed $1.5 billion, Education Cannot Wait’s High-Level Financing Conference will take place in Geneva on 16 and 17 February 2023.

Hosted by Switzerland and Education Cannot Wait – and co-convened by Colombia, Germany, Niger, Norway, and South Sudan – the Conference calls on government donors, private sector, foundations, and high-net-worth individuals to turn commitments into action by making substantive funding contributions to ECW to realize #222MillionDreams.

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Education Cannot Wait’s funding has helped provide education to 140,000 pre-primary, primary and secondary refugee school children — 38 percent of whom are girls — in the Gambella and Benishangul Gumuz regions. South Sudanese girls in grade two learning at Tierkidi School No. 3, Refugee Camp, Itang Woreda, Gambella Region. Credit: UNICEF Ethiopia/2018/Mersha

By Ed Holt
May 4 2021 (IPS)

Eighteen-year-old Chuol Nyakoach lives in the Nguenyyiel Refugee Camp in Gambella, Ethiopia. Chuol is grateful that despite the trauma she has already experienced in her young life, she is able to continue her education in the refugee camp. Learning has given her a reason to wake up every day.

“My life has changed and ECW’s [Education Cannot Wait] education has given me something to look forward to every day in my life. In the future, I hope that I will be able to help my community and my country using the knowledge that I am gaining now in my education while a refugee,” Chuol told IPS.

The Nguenyyiel Refugee Camp is the largest in the area, comprising some 82,000 South Sudanese refugees, many of whom fled their homes in South Sudan after the escalating conflict in 2016 forced thousands to cross into Ethiopia through the Pagak, Akobo and Burbiey border points.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, 68 percent of those who live there are children and adolescents under the age of 18, who need to continue their education.

“I really appreciate all that has been done in support of refugee children like us. Because of ECW’s work we have been able to receive education for almost two years now in a safe environment,” Chuol told IPS.

Education for children in a crisis

A three-year Education Cannot Wait (ECW) initiative was announced in February 2020, which aims to help provide education to 746,000 children, addressing the specific challenges holding back access to the quality education of children and adolescents in communities left furthest behind due to violence, drought, displacement, and other crises. ECW is the world’s first global fund dedicated to education in emergencies and protracted crises.

A year after launching the $165 million initiative, ECW’s funding has helped provide education to 140,000 pre-primary, primary and secondary refugee school children — 38 percent of whom are girls — in the Gambella and Benishangul Gumuz regions through the construction and rehabilitation of school infrastructure, provision of grants, supply of teaching, learning and play material, and training and recruitment of teachers.

This April, ECW also announced an additional $1 million in emergency education grant financing to benefit 20,000 children and youth impacted by the deteriorating humanitarian crisis in the country’s Tigray region, where an estimated 1.4 million girls and boys are deprived of their right to an education.

Thousands of schools have been closed due to violence in Tigray with many being occupied by displaced families. This comes after nine months during which 26 million students were forced out of school because of COVID-19 restrictions.
 
The 12-month ECW grant will be implemented by UNICEF, in collaboration with Ethiopia’s Ministry of Education, Save the Children and local civil societies, targeting 2,000 pre-primary, 12,000 primary and 6,000 secondary school learners, as well as 250 teaching personnel. Overall, 52 percent of beneficiaries are girls and 10 percent are children with disabilities.

“Without the safety and protection of continued education during the crisis, girls face increased risk of sexual and gender-based violence, early pregnancies, child marriage and other atrocities. Boys are exposed to being recruited into armed groups and some are forced into child labor. Without immediate support, they risk never returning to school, and their future will be lost,” said Yasmine Sherif, ECW Director.

Refugee children from South Sudan in Ethiopia’s Gambella region. UNICEF Ethiopia says that continuing education has been crucial in the lives of crisis-affected children. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Education eases the trauma of refugee children

Chuol believes the continuous learning that girls and boys like her are getting has helped many refugee children like her cope with the trauma they have experienced.

“ECW’s work had changed not just me and other refugee children, but the entire refugee community.

“It has enabled child refugees to forget about what happened to them in their home countries, to put the trauma of their experiences behind them and gain some skills,” says Chuol.

Shumye Molla, acting head of the education programme at UNICEF Ethiopia, told IPS why continuing education has been crucial in the lives of crisis-affected children.

“Many children are happy to be in school and learning. Moreover, school provides an environment for them to play, socialise and develop life skills to improve livelihoods. For uprooted children, education provides them with the knowledge and skills to unlock their potential for a better future,” Molla told IPS.

She added that where uprooted children share education services like schools, sports and play activities, “education provides a unique opportunity for them to forge social relationships with children from host communities, which enhances coexistence and integration.”

“Schools and other learning institutions serve as entry points for other services including nutrition and health, which support holistic growth and development for uprooted children. In a nutshell, education offers a safe haven for crisis-affected children,” Molla said.

Providing targeted support for girls

ECW’s funding provides targeted support for the most vulnerable children, including girls and children with disabilities. 

Based on their social norms, some refugee communities do not value girls’ education. Despite interventions by other protection practitioners, refugee and displaced girls are still subject to female genital mutilation, child marriage and early pregnancy. In addition, households still prioritise boys’ education over girls’, and hold back girls at home to attend to domestic chores.

ECW’s support is making a difference in helping to protect girls and increase their school attendance.

“Adolescent girls’ have particularly been appreciative of the additional latrines and menstrual hygiene management rooms constructed in their schools through ECW funding. The privacy these facilities provide has boosted their dignity and confidence and encouraged them to attend school more regularly,” said Molla.

ECW’s support to refugee girls extends well beyond the classroom, with partners implementing social mobilisation drives, educating communities and education practitioners on the importance of sending and supporting girls to remain in school and perform better.

The fund says that because of these interventions, girls’ enrolment increased by an incredible 21,422 girls – from 82,040 in 2016-17 to 103,462 in 2019-20 – in the Gambella and Benishangul Gumuz regions.

Pioneering integration of refugee education into national systems

ECW works with local partners, including the Ministry of Education and the government agency for refugee protection and intervention, the Administration for Refugee & Returnee Affairs (ARRA), to further develop the delivery of education to refugee children in Ethiopia within the framework of an inclusive national education system.

This includes extending national systems into refugee education including inspection and supervision, refugee teacher training and provision of grants, as well as helping the Ministry of Education collect, analyse, and publish refugee education data alongside host community schools to help in planning refugee children’s schooling.

ECW’s partners say that the group’s investments in the country have been vital in helping improve refugee children’s education opportunities.

“What ECW is doing is absolutely unique. Usually, when families are displaced in an emergency situation, it is health and food that is provided as aid priorities, and education is always last. But ECW, in all situations, no matter what, tries to provide education to give kids hope,” Alemsalam Fekadu, senior education programme manager at Save the Children in Ethiopia, told IPS.

He added that projects his organisation was working on with ECW, such as distributing sanitary products to internally displaced girls at schools, were “simple, but have incredible impact.”

“These kinds of things make a massive difference. They not only help keep girls’ school attendance up, as many of them would have missed school otherwise, but they also raise the girls’ self-esteem enormously,” said Fekadu.

It’s a success because children are eager to learn

But perhaps the clearest example of the success the ECW programme has had is in the positive experiences of the refugee children and youth who have been helped.

Twenty-year-old Wie Chut also fled his home in South Sudan and, like Chuol, lives in the Nguenyyiel Refugee Camp.

Chut believes he has received a better education here in the camp than he did at home in South Sudan.

“There, we did not get any real materials, we just went to school. Here, we get educational materials and learn more and develop skills and a positive attitude.

“We want to keep learning because education is powerful for the human mind and pushes children forward,” he told IPS.

Chuol agrees: “I see that most of the students are eager to learn as well as improve their academic performance and are committed to creating a better future for themselves.”

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The rugged landscape of Tigray, Ethiopia’s most northern region, stretches away to the north and into Eritrea. The Tigray Region has been rocked by conflict since November 2020, and the International Crisis Group believes the conflict is far from over despite the federal government gaining administrative control of the Tigrayan capital, Mekelle, and other main cities in the region. (File photo) Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By Nalisha Adams
BONN, Germany, Feb 19 2021 (IPS)

While Ethiopia’s federal government may have administrative control of the Tigrayan capital, Mekelle, and other main cities in the region, including Shire, Adwa, and Aksum, after removing the regional government from power in late November — armed resistance in Tigray is not over and could continue for months.

According to William Davison, the International Crisis Group’s Senior Analyst for Ethiopia, “there is still considerable conflict ongoing in Tigray, which runs against the narrative being propagated by Ethiopia’s federal government that the fighting ended when they took control of Mekelle”.

“It seems that in large chunks of rural Tigray, away from the main roads, away from the main cities and the bigger towns — normally about 15 to 20 km into the countryside — especially in central Tigray, the federal government and allied entities are not in control.

“We presume in those areas there is a significant presence of forces directed by the ousted Tigray leadership, now known as the Tigray Defence Forces, although it is hard to be sure due to the continued telecoms and access restrictions,” Davison told IPS.

The Tigray region has been rocked by conflict since Nov. 3, 2020, when the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF)-run regional government clashed with federal authorities following a dispute over the autonomy of the region that was related to the TPLF’s loss of power at the federal level.

A briefing published last week by ICG noted that the presence of the Eritrean military in Tigray — repeatedly denied by the Ethiopian government and not admitted by Eritrea’s leadership — is exacerbating tensions as there were credible reports of widespread Eritrean looting and atrocities.

Davison said Eritrea’s military has largely been active in northern and central Tigray, including some cities, such as Adigrat, and has used the conflict to reclaim disputed territory that was the focal point of Ethiopia and Eritrea’s 1998-2000 war. 

In addition, Amhara region security forces and administrators who are in control of large portions of western Tigray (West Tigray Zone) and also districts of South Tigray Zone “claim these parts of Tigray as rightly belonging to their region, and say they intend to stay”, according to the ICG briefing. “The Amhara takeover of territory within Tigray, along with Tigrayan anger at Eritrea’s role, are inflaming the situation,” the briefing said.

However, the unfolding humanitarian situation in the region is also a pressing concern.

A report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs stated that before the conflict just under a million people in the region needed emergency food aid. However, in January that figure was thought to have grown to 4.5 million people, including 2.2 million internally displaced persons – out of a regional population of around 6 million.

While the Ethiopian government has said it can handle aid distribution itself, last Monday it granted some approvals for United Nations agencies to provide more assistance to people in Tigray, although it is not yet clear what impact that has had on the ground.

This was preceded by a visit from UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) chief Filippo Grandi earlier this month, who met with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed as well as Eritrean refugees who had been housed in Tigray. UNHCR said that refugees had resorted to eating leaves because there was no other food available.

Meanwhile Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which has moved around the region since the conflict began, raised concern about the humanitarian situation in rural areas as they had been unable to travel to them because of either insecurity or lack of authorisation.

“We are very concerned about what may be happening in rural areas…But we know, because community elders and traditional authorities have told us, that the situation in these places is very bad,” said Albert Viñas, who has been involved in almost 50 emergency responses with MSF and prepared medical teams to access areas of eastern and central Tigray and assist people affected by the current crisis. 

He added the MSF  did not know “the real impact of this crisis”.

Crisis Group says that the federal government needs to insist on the withdrawal of Eritrean and Amhara forces in order to reduce Tigrayan opposition to the federal intervention and so open up the space for some kind of dialogue at the national level over Tigray’s autonomy and the related constitutional-electoral debate that escalated the tensions that led to war.

“Steps need to be taken to reduce the huge political challenges in Tigray. Because that Amhara and Eritrean presence and the atrocities means that much of the Tigrayan population seems, at the moment, more inclined to support the Tigrayan armed resistance than the federal interim administration for the region.”

Excerpts of the interview follow. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Inter Press Service (IPS): Tigrayan leaders and the UN say fighting is still widespread?

William Davison (WD): In January and February there have been regular reports still of large-scale confrontations between the Tigray Defence Forces and opposing allied contingents, primarily the Ethiopian National Defence Force and the Eritrean Defence Force. Although it is hard to be sure about the details, there is little doubt that significant clashes are occurring, and at times they are corroborated by humanitarian actors.

What is always hard to verify is whether the claims of battlefield victories are accurate, including the claims of the capture of enemy equipment, which often come from the Tigrayan side. Or the claims of the huge fatalities that the opponent has suffered, again that often come from the Tigrayan side.

The bigger picture here is that when the federal government and allied forces took control of the regional capital Mekelle, on Nov. 28, and ousted the Tigrayan regional leadership, that was indeed a very significant moment. But, it did not mean the elimination of Tigrayan armed resistance.

Moreover, there are still a lot of the fugitive political and military leaders are at large, with only perhaps a third of those sought have been captured. Therefore, there is still a significant armed confrontation in Tigray, which runs against the narrative being propagated by Ethiopia’s federal government that “normalcy” is returning to the region and no substantive resistance remains.

IPS: A briefing by ICG last week said there is the possibility of the conflict continuing for some time to come. Can you explain?

WD: I think that is definitely a possibility and indeed a fairly likely possibility. But at the same time, we, and others, did not expect the TPLF government to be ousted from regional power within a month of this conflict beginning – so possibly the current resistance will also prove less sustainable than expected. Still, as of now, it does seem that since losing control of the regional government, the armed resistance of the ousted Tigray leadership has been relatively resilient.

As discussed, by no means are all the leaders captured, significant fighting is ongoing, and the federal government and allied forces do not control anything like all of Tigray’s territory. In conjunction with that there is also reason to believe that the presence of those allied forces — the Eritrean military and the Amhara factions — is opposed by a large proportion of Tigray’s population. And so that portion of Tigrayans appear more inclined to support the ousted leadership than the federal interim administration, and many even seem to now back Tigray’s secession from Ethiopia.

It is these factors that lead us to think that this conflict could be entrenched, and that fighting will continue for weeks, possibly months, and maybe even for longer than that. And, of course, that outlook has hugely worrying ramifications for an already critical humanitarian situation.

IPS: With regards to the humanitarian situation, until recently not all aid agencies were allowed access to the region. What are some of the concerns around the current situation?

WD: Tigray, like other places in Ethiopia, suffers from chronic food insecurity, meaning that large numbers of people every year need support. Last year this was exacerbated by the desert locust invasion – and then the outbreak of war occurred around harvest time. This created a major humanitarian crisis in Tigray.

During the conflict, the federal government has been very keen not just to control territory and try and win the war, but also to control the flow of information from Tigray and so set the narrative about the intervention.

This has contributed to a continued federal unwillingness to allow media access, bureaucratic restrictions on aid agencies, and also the failure to restore telephone and, particularly, internet services across large swathes of Tigray. 

All this exacerbates the humanitarian situation, as little is known about the fate of millions of people, including possibly up to one million who were displaced from western to central Tigray when Amhara elements reclaimed land there in the first weeks of the war.

The overarching desire to maintain control has meant that the federal government – which is party to this conflict – has largely kept itself in charge of aid distribution. This goes against core humanitarian principles. And furthermore, there are widespread concerns that, firstly, the government does not have the capacity to deliver aid at the scale needed in the time needed.

Secondly, there is a major doubt regarding political will because the government is still very keen to control the information that is emerging about the conflict. For example, the presence of Eritrean troops and the atrocities that have been committed by them, that is not something which has been acknowledged by the federal government. Therefore, maintaining that narrative is contributing to the decision to restrict information and restrict access to conflict areas, leading to increased civilian suffering.

Additionally, with the federal government denying that an organised opponent still exists, as part of efforts to manage the story, that means there is very little aid reaching large parts of rural central Tigray where allied forces are not in control of territory and large numbers of civilians are thought to have fled to.

IPS: Is there anything else that you would like to add that is particularly important?

WD: When Tigray’s ousted leaders recently made statements, there was no focus on a cessation of hostilities, a humanitarian corridor, or even really the humanitarian situation overall. Instead, like the federal government, they are fixated on trying to win the war.

Given these dynamics, it is likely that this is going to get worse; the fighting will continue and that will exacerbate the civilian suffering, both in terms of direct attacks and also the humanitarian impact. Therefore, there is a desperate need for a rethink.

First, what is needed is for the federal government to acknowledge the heavy cost of the war so far and that it is likely to get more damaging. This reality means that there is an incentive for Addis Ababa to roll back the involvement of the Eritrean and Amhara forces, as this would hopefully reduce the intensity of the fighting, ease Tigrayan anger, and allow greater space for urgently required humanitarian relief.

However, by no means will this resolve the political disputes. Instead, as Crisis Group and many other have repeatedly argued, what is needed is a fundamental country-level political negotiation, addressing all of Ethiopia’s deep fault lines, such as over the legacy of the imperial era and the merits and demerits of current federal system, probably through the vehicle of an all-inclusive national dialogue.

One of the concerns that Crisis Group had at the outset of the war is the cocktail of problems— such as mounting killings in Benishangul-Gumuz region, growing tensions with Sudan, simmering discontent in Oromia—and violent political rifts that threaten to widen. In short, the country was already fragile and volatile. Falling into this war, which split the Ethiopian military and was a huge shock to the federation, came at a moment when it was not clear Ethiopia could absorb such at destabilising blow.

While Ethiopia and Ethiopians are incredibly resilient, there is a risk that this predicament could lead to some sort of spiralling nationwide unrest, which would of course threaten Ethiopia’s overall stability and so therefore the wider region’s. That is why is it is so important that de-escalatory steps are immediately taken to move Ethiopia off this trajectory.

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The rugged landscape of Tigray, Ethiopia’s most northern region, stretches away to the north and into Eritrea. The Tigray Region has been rocked by conflict since November 2020, when forces loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front clashed with federal soldiers over the autonomy of the region and the composition of the federal government. (File photo) Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 11 2021 (IPS)

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) has called for unimpeded access to all parts of Ethiopia’s Tigray Region, to locate an estimated 20,000 unaccounted for refugees and assess damage to its Hitsaats Camp which was looted and set alight in early January.

“3,000 of the refugees have been relocated or have been able to move themselves to camps in southern Tigray, but that leaves possibly as many as 20,000 completely unaccounted for and that’s the real problem. We don’t know where those people are,” Jeremy Taylor, NRC’s head of Advocacy, Media and Communications for East Africa and Yemen Region, told IPS. He added that according to satellite imagery, NRC believes that the camps were empty at the time of the looting and burning.

The NRC’s Shimelba and Hitsaats camps provided shelter and food for about 25,000 Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers. The Tigray Region has been rocked by conflict since November 2020, when forces loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front clashed with federal soldiers over the autonomy of the region and the composition of the federal government. Recent satellite imagery received by the NRC shows the camp among buildings looted and burned between Jan. 5 and 8. A school and a health clinic were also damaged.

Operations at the NRC camps stopped in November, at the start of the conflict. The camps house education facilities including eight classrooms, child friendly spaces and Youth Education Pack Centre which provides instruction in literacy and life skills for children separated from their parents. The interruption in services to the displaced coincided with a blackout of the Tigray Region. Telecoms services were cut and roads were blocked.

The NRC has condemned the destruction of its buildings, stating that the “rampage of burning and looting by armed men deepens an already dire crisis for millions of people”. It has called on the government and donor nations to investigate the destruction and hold perpetrators to account.

Taylor said NRC employees fled to their villages and some later travelled to urban areas to send word about the dire situation in Tigray.

“For three months that region has been completely blocked off from the world. The reports that have trickled out speak to extensive violence, extensive conflict and extensive impact on civilians,” he said.

The NRC says three months since the start of the conflict, fighting and tough bureaucratic challenges are impending humanitarian access into Tigray and rendering independent verification of the fate of refugees and facilities impossible.

The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Feb. 6 that it had struck an access deal with the Abiy Ahmed government that would boost transportation capacity and ensure strengthened partnership with the authorities to deliver humanitarian assistance into Tigray.

“WFP has also agreed to provide emergency food relief assistance to up to 1 million people in Tigray and launch a blanket supplementary feeding intervention to assist up to 875,000 nutritionally vulnerable children and pregnant and lactating mothers,” the statement added.

In Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region. Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) says that for three months Ethiopia’s Tigray Region has been completely blocked off from the world. The reports that have trickled out speak to extensive violence, extensive conflict and extensive impact on civilians, the humanitarian agency says. (File photo) Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Acknowledging that the food and nutrition security situation is “especially challenging,” the WFP called for “strong partnership between the government and the entire humanitarian community” to quickly heighten response to the humanitarian needs. The NRC says, a good start would be unfettered access to the area for aid agencies.

“Some aid has got in, but it is a trickle of it. It has been patchwork and it has only reached certain parts of the Region – mostly main towns and main roads controlled by the government. It is not being sustained,” said Taylor.

The NRC has welcomed the WFP’s statement, but says while it is indicative of progress, some major challenges remain.

“Until we are able to access all parts of Tigray, until we are able to access the areas where the camps were we just will not be able to know what happened to them and we will not know the full extent of the damage to our facilities because satellite imagery can only show so much,” said Taylor.

The NRC says for Tigray, a response that aligns with the scale and breadth of the crisis has not started. Taylor says humanitarian aid work would require an assessment to people’s location and their needs. For now, the NRC is not able to do that.

“What is needed is complete access to all parts of the region to bring in supplies and people. The real issue here is what happened to the people and that is our main concern.”

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Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed shrugged off concerns that Ethiopia could descend into civil war, even as reports of clashes between federal soldiers and those loyal to the Tigray region’s governing party continued. Courtesy: GCIS

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 10 2020 (IPS)

Already reeling from conflict, extreme weather events and growing displacement due to the COVID-19 pandemic, escalating tensions in Ethiopia’s Tigray region have placed the country on the brink of civil war and many are looking to Nobel Peace Prize-winning Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to avert a potential humanitarian disaster.

The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) has called the Prime Minister an ‘illegitimate leader,’ after Abiy announced that he would postpone elections due to the pandemic. The country’s parliament has in turn declared the Tigray administration illegitimate and last week voted for its dissolution. Prime Minister Abiy confirmed that air strikes had been carried out in the region and warned of further action against military targets.

In a social media post on Nov. 9, the Prime Minister however shrugged off concerns that Ethiopia could descend into civil war, even as reports of clashes between federal soldiers and those loyal to the Tigray region’s governing party continued.

Abiy’s statement came less than a week after United Nations Secretary General António Guterres expressed ‘grave concern’ over the reports of violence and attacks on civilians, while calling for ‘inclusive dialogue’ to diffuse tensions.

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) has joined the growing number of agencies calling for dialogue to end the conflict. The NRC operates in seven regions in Ethiopia, including the northern Tigray region. The Council’s Regional Director for East Africa and Yemen, Nigel Tricks, spoke to IPS about the current refugee situation in Ethiopia and why the country can ill afford further escalation in violence.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): In your statement you noted that the escalating tensions in Ethiopia are adding to an already tenuous situation that includes mass displacement. What are some of the current humanitarian needs in Ethiopia?

Nigel Tricks (NT): Ethiopia has been a centre for humanitarian response for some time; a situation driven by conflict and erratic weather that have caused cyclical droughts and floods. In 2020 alone, over 19 million people across the country are in need of humanitarian assistance, a situation that has been compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result of recurring food crises, the U.N. estimates 687,000 children will require treatment for severe acute malnutrition. On top of that, Ethiopia is home to 792,000 refugees mainly from Somalia and South Sudan as well as close to two million internally displaced people. The country has also been affected by the recent desert locust infestation, which risks further aggravating the food situation for millions of people. 

More specifically to Tigray and according to the U.N., more than two million people in the region need some form of humanitarian assistance, including 400,000 people who are food insecure, or unable to meet their food needs. The region is also home to 96,000 refugees, approximately 12 percent of the total number of refugees in Ethiopia.

IPS: What would heightened tensions mean for the people of the Tigray region?

NT: Escalating tensions that could result in conflict threaten the safety of thousands of people. Both local communities and displaced people and refugees hosted in the area, are at the risk of being caught up in violence. Conflict would also make it more difficult for vulnerable families, who already rely on aid, to safely exercise their right to access humanitarian assistance like food, health and education especially in the context of a global pandemic. As a result, more people will be forced to migrate, putting them at different risks and making them dependent on humanitarian aid.

IPS: You called for an end to military action. What do you think it would take now to diffuse this situation?

NT: Concerted efforts between the national government as well as leaders in the Tigray region will be paramount in de-escalating tensions. Given the country’s influence across the region, actors such as the African Union can also play a role in helping Ethiopia find a lasting solution to the crisis and enhance greater regional stability.  We would also like to see Ethiopia’s many friends in the wider international community offer their help in finding satisfactory outcomes for all parties.

IPS: Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Do you think that this situation presents an opportunity for him to live up to the ideals of this award and prove that a peaceful resolution is possible?

NT: Ethiopia, in general, has been perceived as a beacon of reconciliation since Prime Minster Abiy Ahmed initiated reforms in the country in 2018. Regionally, the country has also been an important regional influence for good, for example in South Sudan’s peace processes. Ethiopian leaders, including regional and national authorities, have the opportunity now to focus efforts towards a peaceful resolution to the crisis and avoid more violence.

IPS: The eyes of the world are on the United States’ elections, but is it time for world leaders to address the ongoing conflict in Ethiopia?

 NT: World leaders, including international governments, have played their part in supporting Ethiopia both in responding to the current humanitarian situation as well as in their nation-wide development efforts. However, the international community including African regional leaders should step up the involvement in helping Ethiopia find peaceful solutions before there is widespread conflict. The U.S. can make a difference.  How it communicates on the conflict in the coming days could contribute to or reduce tension. 

IPS: The NRC has spoken out on the Ethiopian humanitarian situation. Going forward, how do you proceed? Is it a case of monitoring the situation and continuing to provide shelter and assistance on the ground or does it also mean preparing for a possible influx of refugees?

NT: NRC will continue to monitor the situation while delivering its humanitarian mandate across the country including in the Tigray region where we have been working for several years. We will also work closely with government authorities as well as local and community organisations to ensure that aid reaches those that need it the most in an efficient manner and ensure that, should the situation call for it, we are sufficiently prepared to increase our response.

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Sahle-Work Zewde is Ethiopia's first female president. Since coming to power in 2018, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has reorganised the cabinet to ensure that 50 percent of the government’s top ministerial positions have been given to women. Never before in Ethiopia have so many high-ranking government positions been held by women. Courtesy: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By James Jeffrey
YORK, United Kingdom, Apr 10 2020 (IPS)

Recent gains by women in the Ethiopian political landscape offer a chance to improve gender equality around the country and put an end to long-standing societal iniquities.

Since coming to power in 2018, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has reorganised the cabinet to ensure that 50 percent of the government’s top ministerial positions have been given to women.

Sahle-Work Zewde became the country’s first female president, while Aisha Mohammed became the country’s first defence minister. Never before in Ethiopia have so many high-ranking government positions been held by women.

In 1991, the share of seats held by women in the Ethiopian parliament was under 3 percent. Today it stands at 38 percent, almost twice the ratio of women in the United States Congress.

But, at the same time, stark gender disparities persist all around the country. The hope is that improved representation in the federal government will tangibly affect and improve the status of Ethiopia’s more than 50 million women and girls.

“There is strong evidence that as more women are elected to office, there are more policies enacted that emphasise quality of life and reflect the priorities of families, women and minorities,” Katja Iversen, president of Women Deliver, an international organisation advocating around the world for gender equality and the health and rights of girls and women, tells IPS.

“Studies also show that women are more likely than men to work across party lines, help secure lasting peace, and prioritise health, education and other societal priorities key to the wellbeing and prosperity of both constituents and societies at large.”

At the same time, there are concerns that Ethiopia’s most recent female politicians are not in elected positions rather are making up a quota. 

“The women who are in power are more loyal to the prime minister than the public that is why they find it difficult to act—for fear of disappointing the person who put them there,” Hadra Ahmed, a freelance Ethiopian journalist, tells IPS.

“We can only say women are in politics when they are represented as candidates and as decision makers,” she adds.

Women in Ethiopia have long faced systemic inequities. The discrepancies begin early and often persist throughout Ethiopian women’s lives. Nearly twice as many men than women over age 25 have some secondary education. Women often face more economic constraints than men, including less access to credit and limited market access.

“Ethiopians strongly believe that women can never be as good as men and this is specially heart breaking when it comes from your mother [or] a well-educated person that you probably look up to [such as] your teacher,” Ahmed says.

“And the whole system tells you that you are not as capable through different policies like affirmative actions that lower the passing grade rather than helping girls to study and making sure they make it to school in time.”

Female genital mutilation rates remain high, with 74 percent of girls and women aged 15 to 49 years of age experiencing FGM, according to UNICEF. Child marriage still occurs, with about 58 percent of Ethiopian females marrying before they turn 18.

Eighty percent of Ethiopia’s population resides in rural areas and women provide much of the agricultural labour in these communities, while shouldering the majority of child-rearing duties.

But the contributions of women can go largely unrecognized. Fathers or husbands often restrict access to resources and community participation. One in three women experience physical, emotional or sexual violence, according to USAID.

“Ethiopian society practices negative social norms that reinforce inequality and perpetuate deep power and gender imbalances,” Dinah Musindarwezo, director of policy and communications for Womankind Worldwide, a global women’s rights organisation working in partnership with women’s rights organisations and movements, tells IPS.

“The perceptions and attitudes that women should belong to the kitchen and men in the board room are widely spread across the world. Although we have seen changes and progress towards women participating in public sphere including in political leadership, we are seeing less progress of men entering the kitchen and taking leadership in care work. Globally, women still perform majority of unpaid and domestic work.”

Ethiopia is no exception, Musindarwezo says, illustrated by the widespread expectation that women should not only be the primary childcare providers but they should also perform the majority of unpaid and domestic work.

In Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, life for the majority of women follows a traditional course, centred on family and agriculture. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

In 2017, Ethiopia ranked 121 out of 160 countries on a Untied Nations gender equality index based on various social, health and political factors.

“If you look at the experience of other countries like India, the media representation of strong women is what helped women become stronger in the society,” Ahmed says. “Seeing a stronger version of us somewhere pushes us to be better. Assigning to women a quota in government positions and exploiting them in these positions will not solve anything.”

Iverson says that in order to make sure women’s political participation is not only symbolic, governments must also fully commit to gender equality through equal pay, affordable childcare, gender sensitive budgeting and auditing, and paid parental leave.

Parental leave—including paternity leave—has proven a significant “norm changer” in improving women’s participation in the workforce, Iverson says. When men take paternity leave, she explains, it both affirms that caregiving is everyone’s responsibility, helps improve pay equity, and makes it easier for more women to be successful and climb the career ladder.

Despite the Ethiopian government’s bold moves to empower female politicians, the country’s fraught political realm—which can be dangerous for anyone, regardless of sex—still poses many hurdles for women to overcome, especially given the pernicious influence of social media.

“Women politicians face unique forms of online and offline attacks and deliberate actions to discourage their participation in politics,” Daniel Bekele, commissioner of the Ethiopia Human Rights Commission, said during the keynote speech at the “Women’s Political Participation and Election in Ethiopia: Envisioning 2020 and Beyond for Generation Equality” national conference at the end of 2019.

“This reflects how patriarchal [our] society is in its functions.”

Musindarwezo notes that in addition to having women in political leadership, it’s just as important to create an environment that is conducive for women to be effective leaders.

“Often times we expect women to magically address all the issues especially gender issues without removing structural barriers they face,” Musindarwezo says. “Women political leaders face barriers such as their voices being overshadowed by political parties’ voices, limited access to adequate resources they need to make a difference and being held to different standards to those of men. Women leaders often face biased public criticism, harassment and intimidations just because they are women.”

Bekele says that Ethiopian women face particular challenges in times of elections that seriously impact and discourage their participation. Ethiopia is due to hold an all-important national election this year, but currently it has been delayed due to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak.

“There must also be implemented legal protections for women including laws against gender-based violence, policies regarding sexual harassment, and accessible justice systems for accountability,” Iverson says. “Countries must ditch discriminatory laws that are holding women back and enact legal frameworks that advance gender equality at work, in society and at home.”

Those at Women Deliver note how, to Ethiopia’s credit, it has brought in a new law that annulled previous legal provisions that gave authority to a husband over a couple’s assets and whether his wife could work outside of the home.

As a result of the legal change, spouses are now equal with regard to the administration of assets, and a husband cannot unilaterally prevent his wife from working. The World Bank estimates that this law has enabled an increase in the participation rate of women in productive sectors.

Despite continuing challenges for Ethiopian women, change is afoot beyond the political level. In the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, Setaweet is the country’s first feminist research and training company, which offers tailor-made gender equality services for schools, agencies and corporate companies. Its flagship project is a feminist curriculum for secondary school students dealing with femininity and masculinity, healthy relationships and positive self-images.

“Women are powerful agents of change, and their participation at all decision-making levels is a prerequisite for politics and programs that reflects societies and are effective, sustainable and inclusive,” Iversen says.

Excerpt:

Credit: Fanabc

By GGGI
Sep 19 2019 (IPS-Partners)

In 2019, the Ethiopia government, led by Prime Minster Dr. Abiy Ahmed, launched the ambitious Green Legacy campaign that set a milestone to plant 200 million tree seedlings within 12 hours as integral part of an annual target to plant 4 billion tree seedlings.

July 29, 2019 was declared to be Green Legacy day, which aimed to plant 200 million seedlings in a day countrywide by all stakeholders based on the Prime Minister declaration to all Ethiopian citizens, governmental and Non-governmental institutions, Civil and Private organizations, Embassies, Agencies and others. Subsequently, the GGGI Ethiopia country office joined the campaign, with Environment, Forest and Climate Change Commission (EFCCC) as a key partner on the country’s green growth initiatives, to be part of this historic event.

This campaign has shown substantial government dedications towards green development actions, mobilizing stakeholders and forest development initiatives as a country.

Following the Prime Minster national call, a core national technical committee was established and led this campaign to coordinate and ensure tree planting activities across different parts of the country properly and effectively at respective planting sites.

Moreover, a national archive and communication center was established to record and communicate planting tallies as they happen on the site through the application of GPS and modern communication technology. National and international medias have recorded and broadcasted the events, which enabled global outreach to demonstrate Ethiopia’s efforts and achievements on tree planting.

Credit: Fanabc

The core technical team disclosed the outcome that both targets have been met, in which annual achievement has reached more than 4 billion seedlings. It’s also reported that more than 350 million seedlings have been plated on a single day, which was recorded to be the world’s highest tree seedling planting event ever.

This is a significant measure for Ethiopia to address forest problems, especially to reduce deforestation and enhance forest development, and thereby, improve forest goods and services that have crucial social, economic and environmental roles.

Various scholars have reported that historically, Ethiopia is said to have about 40% forest coverage, which currently has declined to less than half. A recent EFCCC report indicated that Ethiopia has about 15.5 percent forest cover. Apparently, no one would argue about the fact that Ethiopia forest resources have been declining in size and quality through time and deficit between annual forest gain and loss.

Credit: Fanabc

For Ethiopia, forest development and management is not a matter of choice, rather it’s compulsory to ensure sustainable development and to achieve overarching Climate Resilient Green Economy (CRGE) and Growth Transformation Plan (GTP) strategies.

Ethiopia’s land features are characterized by mountainous and rugged topographic landscapes that are suitable for natural resources conservation including flora and fauna, water reservoirs and multiple functions.  Therefore, landscapes and watersheds management though natural regeneration and restoration have important contributions for the country and beyond the territory. For instance, forestry development has a critical role to address climate changes effects through mitigation and adaptation measures, which have national and international significance.

Credit: Fanabc

Ethiopia hydro dams have been under serious challenges due to watershed degradations that led to soil erosion and siltation that impacts electricity generation and power supply. In turn, this has been impacting industry and manufacturing sectors due to power shortages, which have direct implications on the economy and livelihoods.

Afforestation and reforestation activities reduce wood supply and demand gaps, as Ethiopian rural communities significantly depend on the forest products for their livelihood, which includes income generation, construction materials, energy, farm tools, foods and so on, both for home consumption and commercial uses. Agroforestry practices have critical roles to improve land management and productivity, which contribute to household incomes and reducing forest pressure.

The forest sector is one of the four pillars under the CRGE strategy to promote green growth development and address climate change mitigation actions.  Generally, this forest development action has multiple contributions and effects that encompasses social, economic and environmental aspects at local, national and global scales.

Credit: Fanabc

This event is the beginning of long journey, which requires building on this momentum and transforming it into an institutional and strategic approach to realize the intended objectives. It’s believed that the ultimate goal of tree planting is to enhance forest resources to provide improved goods and services sustainably.

Hence, it needs silvicultural and management interventions, scientific knowledge and technology to devise a sustainable management system, demonstrate economic contributions and impacts, forest products value addition and benefit sharing mechanisms, technical supports and law enforcement, knowledge management and sharing on best practices and lessons.

Finally, beyond the accomplishment, this is a lesson that demonstrates how leadership, coordination and joint efforts can make a difference on a pertinent issue. Furthermore, it’s good to reiterate that many individuals, organizations and countries have witnessed how the Ethiopia Green Legacy action has been landmark and exemplary. With this, GGGI commends and is honored to be part of this event and looks forward to further supporting the country’s inclusive green growth efforts.

When war broke out in 2013 in South Sudan, refugees poured into neighbouring Gambella. Today, 485,000 South Sudanese refugees lived in the Gambella region, according to UNHCR, the United Nations refugee organisation. Some displaced Nuer brought arms across the border, destabilising an already tense region. “The fact that the Nuer and Anuwak exist on both sides of the border makes it easy for people of both communities to pass backwards and forwards, taking with them their conflicts both between the two tribes but also at the national level,” says John Ashworth, who has been working in South Sudan and the surrounding region for the last 30 years. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
GAMBELLA, Ethiopia, May 6 2019 (IPS)

Right up against the border with South Sudan, the western Gambella region of Ethiopia has become a watchword for trouble and no-go areas as its neighbour’s troubles have spilled over. But now there may be reason for optimism on either side of the border.

The brown waters of the Baro River meandering through the Ethiopian city of Gambella—from which the surrounding region takes its name—coupled with an atmosphere of tropical languor creates an almost cliched archetype of the Western idea of an African river port. Except for the fact that there is not a single boat on the river. The 2013 outbreak of civil war in South Sudan, whose border lies 50 kilometres from the city, put an end to the thriving trade that once plied this waterway between Gambella and Juba, the South Sudanese capital. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

It is hard to visit Gambella and not be struck by the height of many locals, some with horizontal scarification lines across their foreheads. The Nuer are one of five ethnic groups populating the region. Close ties and tensions between the Nuer and Anuwak, the two largest ethnic groups, representing about 45 percent and 26 percent of the population, respectively, date back centuries. The modern border between the two nations does not delineate where either group lives nor is movement across the South Sudan-Ethiopia border a new phenomenon. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

When war broke out in 2013 in South Sudan, refugees poured into neighbouring Gambella. Today, 485,000 South Sudanese refugees lived in the Gambella region, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the UN refugee organisation. Some displaced Nuer brought arms across the border, destabilising an already tense region. “The fact that the Nuer and Anuwak exist on both sides of the border makes it easy for people of both communities to pass backwards and forwards, taking with them their conflicts both between the two tribes but also at the national level,” says John Ashworth, who has been working in South Sudan and the surrounding region for the last 30 years. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

This is the closest you will come to finding a boat in Gambella nowadays. “The river used to be full of boats and trade before 2013 and the war broke out,” one Gambella local says of the Baro River and its tributaries flowing across the border. Nowadays the most urgent traffic around the city comes from the plethora of white SUVs, plastered with the logos of almost every NGO to be found in Ethiopia. Some locals are employed by NGOs as drivers and translators, but the vast majority of locals struggling to get by see little of the money generated by Ethiopia’s refugee industry. In 2018 the budget required for Ethiopia’s total refugee population—around 900,000 people—was estimated at 618 million dollars. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Gambella city has an intriguing modern history, in which the Baro River plays a crucial part. In the late 19th century, Britain came knocking, seeing the Baro’s navigable reach to Khartoum as an excellent highway for exporting coffee and other produce to Sudan and Egypt. The Ethiopian emperor granted Britain the use of land for a port and Gambella was established in 1907. Only a few hundred hectares in size, this tiny British territory became a prosperous trade centre as ships from Khartoum sailed regularly during the rainy season when the water was high. The Italians captured Gambella in 1936 but it was back with the British after a bloody battle in 1941. Gambella became part of Sudan in 1951, but was reincorporated into Ethiopia five years later. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Here a woman sells fish in a small market. Everyday life appears slow and peaceful. But the Gambella region has gained a reputation as a no-go area among foreigners and Ethiopians alike. Back in 1962, the first of several civil wars broke out next door in Sudan at the start of a 50-year quest for South Sudanese independence, and from which Gambella could not remain immune. The stigma attached to the region hasn’t been helped by the Ethiopian government’ tendency to take a dismissive view of the region, underscored by a prejudice—one that extends throughout Ethiopian society—that the blacker one is the less Ethiopia you are, says Dereje Feyissa, a senior advisor at the Addis Ababa-based International Law and Policy Institute. “The Ethiopian centre has always related to its periphery in a predatory way,” Dereje says. “This is not only because of the geographic distance but also the historical, social and cultural differences which the discourse on skin colour signifies.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Local men carrying wrapped-up dried fish on their heads walk through an Anuwak village. The Gambella region is something of an anomaly in Ethiopia, displaying stronger historical, ethnic and climatic links to neighbouring South Sudan. “This was not the Ethiopia of cool highlands and white flowing traditional dress, but Nilotic Africa, in the blazing southwestern lowlands near the Sudanese border,” recalls Steve Buff, a former Peace Corps Volunteer. “This was much closer to our childhood National Geographic images of Africa than any place we’d seen before in Ethiopia.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Since the latest peace agreement between South Sudan’s warring factions late last year, the indications seem more promising than with previous peace agreements that fell apart. By December 2018, the security situation in South Sudan had significantly improved, stated Jean-Pierre Lacroix, head of United Nations Peacekeeping. And by February this year, David Shearer, head of the UN Mission in South Sudan, told reporters in New York that political violence has “dropped dramatically.” Shearer added that the success of the peace agreement will be partly measured by the extent to which people return to home towns and villages. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

This year the UNHCR has reported spontaneous movements of South Sudanese refugees from various Gambella-based camps heading toward South Sudan, an estimated 5,000 since mid-December. Perhaps a good sign of what Shearer discussed? Interviews with the refugees, however, indicated they were returning to South Sudan for fear of retaliatory action following clan-based conflicts in camps, while some said they were going to visit their families, and would eventually return to the camps in Gambella. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

“This time it is different, as the international community is involved,” a South Sudanese refugee in Gambella remarked while reading Facebook posts on his smartphone about the latest peace deal. At the same time, the time it has taken to overcome the animosity of the past and get to the current stage of the peace process suggests there will be South Sudanese refugees in Gambella for some time yet. Meanwhile, the Baro River will flow on undisturbed by river traffic through a land of limbo caught up in the surrounding troubles, its seemingly placid surface deceiving to the eye. “There are plenty of crocodiles, though you won’t see them as the water is high,” a local man says. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Even the Afar can be shy: Here a young Afar woman consents to be photographed, though only after covering part of her face. Afar women often have intricate frizzed and braided hairstyles, and wear bright coloured bead necklaces, heavy earrings and brass anklets. Many Afar women cover their heads in public. This helps ward off the relentless sun. At the same time, the vast majority of Afar are Muslim. Despite Afar’s ancient trade links with the Christian highlands to the west, Islam was widely practiced in the region as early as the 13th century. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
ADDIS ABABA, Mar 6 2019 (IPS)

Once made infamous through explorers’ tales of old, Ethiopia’s remote northeast Afar region both conforms to and contradicts stereotypes.

Tough neighbourhood: Ethiopia’s remote northeast Afar region contains the Danakil Depression—the hottest place on earth where temperatures in the naked plains frequently soar above 50 degrees centigrade, exacerbated by the fierce blowing of the Gara, which translates as Fire Wind. Such inhospitable conditions haven’t stopped the Afar, who regard themselves as the oldest of Ethiopia’s ethnic groups having occupied their arid homeland for at least 2,000 years. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Armed but amiable—fortunately: Here a young Afar man unsheathes the sword he carries attached to his waist. Historically, the Afar menfolk gained a reputation for ferocity and intolerance of outsiders, including the habit of cutting off the testicles of any foreigner found in their territory. The reality now is far removed from the stereotypes of travellers’ tales—the majority of Afar that the author met proved friendly, as well as patient about his photographic requests. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Less on the move nowadays: A kite bird of prey rests on a rooftop in the town of Asaita overlooking the Awash River, beside which can be seen distinctive dome-shaped Afar homes. Traditionally the Afar are nomadic pastoralists, living in light, flimsy houses which they transport from one location to the next on camel back. Recent decades have seen a trend towards an increased dependence on agriculture in the fertile and well-watered areas around the likes of Asaita. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Pastoralist past not forgotten: Here a woman weaves palm frond into the matting used to cover traditional Afar homes. Afar women are typically responsible for constructing a family’s nomadic home from the ground up when a family moves to another location. Despite a visitor encountering friendliness, you still sense a robust mentality among the Afar, shaped by that tough nomadic pastoralist past, and which still continues, evidenced by the camels continuing to plod across the desert, and the clusters of domed houses dotting the parched plains. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

What’s that shimmering in the heat haze?: In the plains surrounding Asaita an enormous sugar factory towers over surrounding Afar homes, evidence that there appears to no longer be any part of Ethiopia immune to the country’s ambitions to develop. In recent years the government has made a concerted effort to establish sugar factories to meet growing local demand, create jobs and boost economic growth. This has included locating factories in remote areas instead of being concentrated in one region. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Even the Afar can be shy: Here a young Afar woman consents to be photographed, though only after covering part of her face. Afar women often have intricate frizzed and braided hairstyles, and wear bright coloured bead necklaces, heavy earrings and brass anklets. Many Afar women cover their heads in public. This helps ward off the relentless sun. At the same time, the vast majority of Afar are Muslim. Despite Afar’s ancient trade links with the Christian highlands to the west, Islam was widely practiced in the region as early as the 13th century. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Renowned for distinctive hairstyles: It’s not just Afar women who embrace eye-catching hairstyles. Afar men often wear their hair in thick Afro style or equally distinctive long curls, and dress in a light cotton toga. While these two men aren’t armed, Afar men rarely venture far without a sword or dagger, and these days the traditional knife can be supplemented or replaced by an AK-47 slung casually over the shoulder. Such weapons are still frequently put to fatal use in disputes between local clans. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Trading salt and more: The main thoroughfare through the city of Logiya sees a constant stream of trucks on the way to and from ports across the nearby border in Djibouti. At the same time more modern goods are being taken into Ethiopia to sustain the growing needs of its developing population, the Afar continue to load up camels with bars of salt, cut out of the desiccated ground, to transport to the region of Tigray along the ancient caravan routes. Until modern times, the Afar region effectively served as Ethiopia’s Mint, producing the amoles—salt bars—that served as the main currency in the highlands. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Beguiling mix: At Asaita the Awash River cuts a green swathe through the desert, evoking images of Egyptian pastures watered by the Nile. As the sun begins to set over Asaita, the muezzin can be heard calling the faithful to prayer, while electric lights start appearing in the sugar factory in the distance. It’s a striking impression of old and new, tradition and modernisation co-existing together. “Things are simpler here,” Yohannes, a young man in Logiya, says about the local way of life. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Still embracing the low-tech way of life:
Despite Ethiopia undergoing great changes as it rapidly develops, the nomadic lifestyle lives on in Afar away from its urban centres. Afar men can be seen driving their precious camel herds alongside roads, or as small specks in the distance stretching out across the sands before finally disappearing in the hot horizon. Traveling around Ethiopia and the likes of the Afar can leave a visitor pondering what countries in the Global South might teach more developed countries rushing headlong into a high-tech-focused future about better balancing tradition and modernisation. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

In Haiti, more than half of the population of Haiti face hunger while 22 percent of children are chronically malnourished. Credit: Valeria Vilardo/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 23 2019 (IPS)

While news of political scandals and tweets may inundate social media feeds, numerous humanitarian crises have slipped under the radar, leaving victims “suffering in silence.”

In a new report, humanitarian organisation CARE shines a spotlight on global crises that have been neglected—a neglect that has led to dire consequences.

“We see more and more complex and chronic crises competing for public attention,” said CARE International’s Secretary General Caroline Kende-Robb.

“Media coverage has always been a strong driver of funding for crises as well as creating political pressure to protect those in need. With dwindling international coverage, under-reported crises are at a risk of falling completely off the radar,” she added.

In a recent survey by the Aurora Humanitarian Index, 61 percent of respondents from 12 countries said that there were too many humanitarian crises around the world to keep up with. More than half also felt they constantly heard the same stories from the same countries.

Whether the public heard about it or not, over 132 million people worldwide faced hardship as a result of natural disasters and conflict.

Among them were Haitians who have faced a severe food crisis in 2018, yet received the least media attention.

In fact, of the one million online articles monitored between January and November 2018, a little over 500 were about the Caribbean state.

With one of the highest levels of chronic food insecurity in the world, more than half of the population of Haiti face hunger while 22 percent of children are chronically malnourished.

On top of the threat of hurricanes, drought conditions in the Caribbean nation caused reductions in crop production, leaving families without food and thus almost three million people in need of humanitarian assistance.

Marie-Melia Joseph, a mother of eight children, told CARE that all they had was a small family plot and a little money to get food.

“Some days were better than others, but I can’t recall the last decent meal we had,” she said.

According to the 2019 Climate Risk Index, Haiti ranks fourth among countries most affected by extreme weather events. Additionally, a majority of the population live in poverty, earning less than two dollars per day.

In Ethiopia, the escalation of violence forced over one million people to flee their homes, the highest number seen in 2018.

Amreh recounted the evening when she heard gunshots and screams.

“We looked outside and saw people fleeing when we realised something was wrong. My husband went outside to look. That was the last time I saw him,” she told CARE.

“I would give everything to go back to the days when things were normal. I am weak and I depend on help from aid organisations now. I see no future for us,” she added.

After the death of her husband, one of her son’s committed suicide, unable to cope.

In addition to the devastating conflict, drought and food insecurity has also left families struggling to survive.

CARE urged not only international media, but also policy makers and civil society to raise awareness about the many neglected crises around the world in order to help garner funds and aid for those in need.

In 2018, 56 percent of Ethiopia’s humanitarian plan was funded while only 13 percent was funded for Haiti.

“Media outlets, politicians, states and aid agencies need to join forces to find innovative ways to draw public attention to humanitarian needs,” said Kende-Robb.

“Given the challenges the media industry faces with shrinking funds, with coming under attacks that are undermining, and with limited access to some of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, we are all responsible for raising the voices of those affected,” she added.

Shared bonds and styles: “We have a strong affinity with Eritreans,” says Mekelle resident Huey Berhe, noting how most Tigrayans have Eritrean relatives, and vice versa. “We are the same people. I can feel the agony of isolation they have endured; I have lots of friends whose families were separated by the war.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
ADDIS ABABA, Feb 6 2019 (IPS)

The sudden peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and the opening of their previously closed and dangerous border, sent shockwaves of hope and optimism throughout the two countries. But a new issue has arisen: whether Eritreans coming into Ethiopia should still be classed as refugees.

“Asmara! Asmara! Asmara!” There is a new cry from the boys leaning out of minibuses picking up customers in the cities of Ethiopia’s Tigray region, which straddles the border with Eritrea. Here a minibus stops for a lunch break during its 300-kilometer journey between Mekelle, the Tigray capital, and the Eritrean capital, Asmara. The historic shift in Ethiopia-Eritrea relations means Eritreans can cross one of the world’s former most dangerous borders without a passport or permit. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

More nuanced reality: Eritreans cuing at the Eritrean border check point, before heading north to Asmara, illustrates how not all Eritreans want refugee status in Ethiopia, despite most media narratives leaving out the nuances and portraying an endless flow of feeling Eritreans. “I went from Addis Ababa to Asmara after the border opened to see my father for the first time in 26 years—he died 10 days after I arrived,” says Senait, an Eritrean who moved to the Ethiopian capital after marrying an Ethiopian but wasn’t able to visit her family after war broke out in 1998 between the two countries, thereby closing the border. “Now I am going back to take his brother, my uncle, to live in Asmara. It will be better for him to be with family there than in Addis. But I will return to my family in Ethiopia.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Long awaited freedom of movement: The wide palm tree-lined avenues of Mekelle, and its marketplace, have seen a rush of Eritreans coming to reunite with family and enjoy the more vibrant social life and shopping scene, before returning to Eritrea. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Long awaited freedom of movement: Once known for hosting convoys of camels carrying salt from the Danakil desert, Mekelle’s bustling market has lately seen an increase in sales of cereals, construction materials and petrol. “In Eritrea they are limited to how much they can take out of the bank each month, but here they can get money sent by relatives abroad,” says Teberhe, a Mekele entrepreneur. “They are taking back construction materials in case building restrictions are reduced at home.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Shared bonds and styles: The back and forth over the border is helped by many people in Eritrea and Tigray having shared the same language, religion and cultural and social traditions going back centuries before Eritrea’s independence from Ethiopia in 1993. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Shared bonds and styles: “We have a strong affinity with Eritreans,” says Mekelle resident Huey Berhe, noting how most Tigrayans have Eritrean relatives, and vice versa. “We are the same people. I can feel the agony of isolation they have endured; I have lots of friends whose families were separated by the war.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Peace—but also prosperity?: “Business is pretty good,” says Tesfaye, who usually works at the cement factory outside Mekelle but at the weekend earns extra money by exchanging Ethiopian birr and Eritrean nakfa for travelers crossing the border. “It’s a good opportunity while the banks aren’t changing money yet.” The open border has seen merchandise and trade flowing freely both ways, and merchants in Tigray cities and in Asmara profiting by the uptick, with talk of only more economic activity to come. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Motoring to Mekelle: Tired-looking cars with the distinctive Eritrean registration plate beginning ER1 can be seen joining minibuses on the main road through Tigray to the border or parked around Mekelle. “We’ve had lots of Eritreans staying,” says Ruta who owns Lalibela Hotel in the center of Mekelle. There’s also been a surge in room rentals in Mekelle thanks to Eritreans looking for work. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Refugee process still continues: A worker photocopying refugee application forms at the Tigray office for Ethiopia’s Administration for Refugee and Returnee Affairs, known as ARRA. “Ethiopia is a signatory to the Geneva convention on refugees, so for now there is no change in their refugee status,” says Tekie Gebreyesas with ARRA. “The relationship between the two countries has improved, but the internal situation in Eritrea is still the same.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Glued to the reforming prime minister: Lunchtime diners watch a broadcast showing Ethiopia’s popular new leader, Abiy Ahmed, who shocked all by offering peace to Eritrea. The dilemma that Ethiopia now faces over Eritrean refugees reflects a challenge at a global level to better understand the realities of refugee life. “Refugees are always portrayed as victims,” says Milena Belloni, who has researched Eritrean refugees for a decade. “It misses the reality, that they have capabilities and come with dreams, desires and aspirations.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Refugees and peace not a contradiction: The Tigray city of Shire, not far from the border and where the UNHCR’s regional office is, has also seen its fair share of Eritrean arriving. A UNHCR worker who wasn’t willing to be quoted noted that around the world almost all countries receiving refugees do so while at peace with the country refugees are leaving—hence there is nothing unusual about Ethiopia and Eritrea reconciling while the refugee flow continues. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Travel opens eyes: Ethiopian airlines has restarted flights to Asmara, though Ethiopians often choose the cheaper option of taking a domestic flight between Addis Ababa and Mekelle, before continuing by bus. The overall situation and options available remain fluid, and there could be even more changes ahead. “I don’t think there is any way back now for the Eritrean government,” Teberhe says. “Eritreans are experiencing freedom—the genie is out of the bottle.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

*Some names have been changed or omitted due to the requests of those interviewed.

Excerpt:

Ethiopia is not an industrialised country but is looking at alternative economic activity that allows a low-carbon economy and means of living. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
ADDIS ABABA, Oct 15 2018 (IPS)

As Ethiopia undergoes a period of unprecedented change and reform, the Global Green Growth Institute(GGGI) is partnering with the Ethiopian government to try and ensure this vital period of transition includes the country embracing sustainable growth and avoiding the environmental mistakes made by Western nations.

The basis of this effort comes from GGGI supporting the Ethiopian government in the development and implementation of its Climate-Resilient Green Economy (CRGE), a strategy launched in 2011 to achieve middle-income status while developing a green economy.

As elsewhere in Africa where GGGI is partnering with other member countries—Ethiopia was the first country to sign up among the current group of 10—the goal is to act now to enable countries to have a future comprising economic growth and poverty reduction while building resilience, promoting sustainable infrastructure and ensuring efficient management of natural resources.

“Countries like Ethiopia aren’t industrialised, so they have a chance to leapfrog in their development that means they wouldn’t follow us and make the mistakes we did when we industrialised,” Dexippos Agourides, GGGI’s head of programmes for Africa and Europe who is based in Addis Ababa, tells IPS. “We are talking about an alternative economic activity that allows a low-carbon economy and means of living.”

The global effort toward green growth gained momentum after the Paris Agreement in which signatories agreed to collectively tackle climate change through the mechanism of implementing nationally determined contributions (NDC), a country’s tailored efforts to reduce its emissions and enable it to adapt to climate change-induced challenges.

“The government has made big commitment and set very ambitious targets, so even if they only go halfway to their targets that would still be a significant achievement,” Agourides says. “There are big gaps in the plan, which is where we come in to accompany the government in this ambition.”

Hence GGGI’s 12-person team in Addis Ababa providing embedded expert and advisory technical support and capacity building to the Ethiopian government.

Their main effort is to ensure CRGE strategies and financing go toward six sectors identified as key for green growth: energy, reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation, agriculture (land use and livestock), green urbanisation and cities, transport, industry and health.

Ethiopia’s goal is to act now to enable it to have a future comprising economic growth and poverty reduction while building resilience, promoting sustainable infrastructure and ensuring efficient management of natural resources. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

One example of how this looks on the ground is Ethiopia’s programme of building industrial parks becoming greener, through schemes such as waste sludge from factories being used by other industries.

Another example is Ethiopia’s ambitious programme of reforestation and management of existing forest cover, which had reduced from covering about 35 percent of the country a century ago to around 3 percent in 2000—it’s now back up to around 15 percent.

GGGI is also working with the government on adaptation plans for areas prone to drought and flash flooding that appear increasingly volatile due to climate change.

“We look at past patterns and predict who suffers and how, so we can make plans so people are not hit,” says Innocent Kabenga, GGGI’s country representative for Ethiopia.

At the same time, Kabenga notes, methods such as reusing water, hydro-power, wind and solar are all being considered as means of mitigating Ethiopia’s carbon footprint. Such a plethora of renewable energy options comes from Ethiopia having one of the most complex and variable climates in the world due to its location between various climatic systems and its diverse geographical structure.

When it comes to the often-contentious issue of more foreign funds going to Ethiopia—already one of the world’s biggest recipients of overseas aid—those at GGGI point out that it is not necessarily a case of more funds but making sure existing funding go to the right place.

At the same time, there is no getting around the financial costs involved, both for Ethiopia’s green growth goals—in 2017, GGGI helped Ethiopia access USD 135 for its programme reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation, as well as access the Green Climate Fund—and for GGGI. Its budget comes from a mixture of developed and developing countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, Mexico and Indonesia, a geographic spread reflecting the nature of the challenge that GGGI is engaged with.

“These are issues that have no boundaries, that no one country can solve, which is why we need to implement these national agreements that will help the world to survive,” Kabenga says. “Western countries have more money, and it their actions [contributing to climate change] that have affected the developing world.”

Despite governmental willingness, those at GGGI acknowledge much more is needed to turn words into concrete actions, especially within the complex context of Ethiopia’s federal democracy that devolves significant power to each region.

Furthermore, each ministry involved in the CRGE must do its job, and the government policy at the federal level must be successfully transmitted to Ethiopia’s regional governments—who must then do their bit.

Tying all that together—and as the country is going through one of its most significant political upheavals in 27 years as a new prime minister attempts to initiate significant reforms throughout government and society—is no easy thing, Agourides acknowledges. But if it can be done, then the economic and environmental benefits for Ethiopia could be huge, while allowing it to avoid the pitfalls elsewhere of growth at any cost that has done untold damage to this precious planet.

“Ethiopia stands at the top of least developed countries in terms of commitment, engagement and awareness,” Agourides says. “But implementation is the issue given the size and complexity of the country.”

Women living in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, which is particularly prone to drought, say how hard it is to live off the land and support their families. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
ADDIS ABABA, Sep 24 2018 (IPS)

Faced with worsening droughts due to climate change, Ethiopia is joining an international initiative seeking to build global resilience against the problems caused by it, and enable developing countries to become part of a united solution to the ongoing problem. 

Funded by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Green Climate Fund (GCF) was established to help developing countries achieve national efforts to reduce national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and adapt to the unavoidable impacts of climate change.

The GCF is part of a united global response fuelled by the urgency and seriousness of the climate change challenge. That clarion call gained momentum worldwide after the 2015 Paris Agreement in which signatories agreed to collectively tackle climate change through the mechanism of implementing nationally determined contributions (NDC), a country’s tailored efforts to reduce its emissions and enable it to adapt to climate change-induced challenges.

Ethiopia is taking this multilateral global endeavour particularly seriously due to the massive changes the country is undergoing as it develops economically.

“Ethiopia is one of the few countries that have submitted a very ambitious and conditional NDC to the UNFCCC,” says Zerihun Getu with Ethiopia’s Ministry of Finance and Economic Cooperation. “Ethiopia aims to cut 64 percent of emissions by 2030 and build a climate resilient and middle-income economy.”

Currently Ethiopia has a relatively low carbon footprint compared to many other countries, having not industrialised, but Zerihun notes why it is important to take action now.

“Projections indicate that with population and economic growth, Ethiopia’s level of emissions will grow significantly, from 150 million tonnes in 2010 to 450 million by 2030,” Zerihun tells IPS. “Hence Ethiopia should focus both on mitigation and adaptation measures in order to reduce emission as well as build resilience and reduce vulnerability to the impacts of climate change.”

Approved in October 2017, Ethiopia’s GCF-backed project will be implemented over the course of five years at a cost of USD50 million—with USD5 million co-financed by the government—to provide rural communities with  critical water supplies all year round and improve water management systems to address risks of drought and other problems from climate change.

The funding will go toward a three-pronged approach: Introducing solar-powered water pumping and small-scale irrigation, the rehabilitation and management of degraded lands around the water sources, and creating an enabling environment by raising awareness and improving local capacity.

Guidance on the project’s implementation is coming from the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), a treaty-based international organisation that promotes green growth: a balance of economic growth and environmental sustainability.

Climate change has a disproportionately worse impact on the lives and livelihoods of societies which depend on the natural environment for their day-to-day needs. In Ethiopia, about 80 percent of the population remain dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods.

Those who are subsistence farmers are especially vulnerable to shifting weather patterns that can result in severe water shortages, devastating food production and livelihoods.

When such natural disasters strike, the situation of vulnerable populations can quickly deteriorate into a food and nutrition crisis, meaning the poor, many of whom in Ethiopia are women, are disproportionately affected.

This is what the Ethiopian GCF project seeks to mitigate, hence its focus on improving economic and social conditions for women.  Over 50 percent of the project’s aimed for 1.3 million beneficiaries will be women, with 30 percent of beneficiary households being female-headed.

During the past three years, regions of Ethiopia have experienced terrible drought exacerbated by the ocean warming trend El Niño that is causing unusually heavy rains in some parts of the world and drought elsewhere.

While El Niño is a complex and naturally occurring event, scientific research suggests that global warming could be making this cyclical event occur more frequently and intensely.

Despite there being some scientific uncertainty about how the naturally occurring El Niño event and human-induced climate change may interact and modify each other, Ethiopia has experienced enough climate-related trouble so that its government doesn’t want to take any chances.

Hence Ethiopia is an example of an early adopter of green growth. In 2011 the country launched its Climate-Resilient Green Economy (CRGE), a strategy to achieve middle-income status while developing a green economy.

“The government’s goal is to create climate resilience within the context of sustainable development,” says Mitiku Kassa, Ethiopia’s state minister of agriculture and commissioner for its National Disaster Risk Management Commission. “Then, one day, we will be able to deal with drought without any appeals.”

In addition to challenges posed by El Niño, most of the world’s scientific community agrees that long-term significant changes in the earth’s climate system have occurred and are occurring more rapidly than in the past.

Furthermore, continued emissions into the earth’s atmosphere are projected to cause further warming and increase the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible effects on every continent, including increasing temperatures, greater rainfall variability with more frequent extremes, and changing the nature of seasonal rainfalls—all of which threaten Ethiopia’s agricultural backbone.

It’s not just scientists making such claims. Ethiopian pastoralists in their seventies and eighties who have lived with frequent droughts say the recent ones have been the worst in their lifetimes—and they aren’t alone in noticing worrying trends.

“While working in Central America, East Africa, and the Middle East, I’ve always talked to elder people, especially those in agriculture, and the message from them is consistent,” says Sam Wood, Save the Children’s humanitarian director in Ethiopia. “Weather patterns are becoming less predictable and when rain comes it is too much or too little.”

As of May 2018, the GCF portfolio has 76 projects worldwide worth USD12.6 billion with an anticipated equivalence of 1.3 billion tonnes of CO2 avoided and 217 million people achieving increased resilience.

“We’re working with GCF in Senegal and Tajikistan [and] we think their work will be vital,” the World Food Programme’s Challiss McDonough tells IPS. “WFP’s goal of ending hunger cannot be achieved without addressing climate change.”

But the GCF can only do so much. The overall bill just for empowering Ethiopia to effectively respond to climate change is estimated at USD150 billion, Zerihun notes, a sum that can only be achieved through “huge investment.”

“Ethiopia allocates its domestic resources for climate actions [but it] should also mobilise support from international communities including the GCF to realise its vision and achieve its NDC targets,” Zerihun says. “The GCF will make a significant contribution to Ethiopia’s vision through financing projects and programmes as well as through helping Ethiopia build capacity to mobilise other climate finance sources and leveraging other investment.”

A group of Eritrean men, women and children who have just been dropped off dusty and tired at the entry point in the small town of Adinbried, about 50km southeast of Badme, having crossed the border during the preceding night. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
BADME, Ethiopia, Jun 18 2018 (IPS)

The utterly inconsequential-looking Ethiopian border town of Badme is where war broke out in 1998 between Ethiopia and Eritrea, lasting two years and devastating both countries. 

Ever since the the town has remained, in spite of its ramshackle, unassuming appearance, an iconic symbol for both countries, primarily because despite the internationally brokered Algiers Peace Accord that followed the 2000 ceasefire, and led to a ruling that Badme return to Eritrea, Ethiopia defiantly stayed put in the town.“The country [Ethiopia] is undergoing a seismic change—the likes of which it has never seen in such a short time span." --Yves Marie Stranger

Hence Badme festered as a source of rancour during years that turned into decades, with the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments coming to loathe each other, while all along the border the countries remained at loggerheads, each military eyeing the other warily.

But all of a sudden at the start of June, Ethiopia announced its readiness to fully comply and implement the Algiers Peace Accord, one of a number of unprecedented reformist actions this year, and which show no sign of slowing down since the April election of a new prime minister who has pledged to take Ethiopia in a new and more democratic and hopeful direction.

The Ethiopian government also announced it would accept the outcome of a 2002 border commission ruling, which awarded disputed territories collectively known as the Yirga Triangle, at the tip of which sits Badme, to Eritrea.

“Ethiopia’s change of heart towards Eritrea is genuine, and is directly tied to the momentous changes taking place domestically,” Awol Allo, a lecturer in law at Keele University in law and frequent commentator on Ethiopia, wrote in an opinion piece for Al Jazeera. “Ethiopia’s new Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has reconfigured the Ethiopian political landscape and its strategic direction, moving with incredible speed to drive changes aimed at widening the political space and narrowing the social divisions and antagonisms within the country.”

This has included the prime minister linking the political, social and economic transformation in Ethiopia to regional dynamics, especially Eritrea, with which Ethiopia once had particular close economic, cultural and social ties—Eritrea was part of Ethiopia until gaining independence in 1991.

“Every Ethiopian should realise that it is expected of us to be a responsible government that ensures stability in our region, one that takes the initiative to connect the brotherly peoples of both countries and expands trains, buses, and economic ties between Asmara [the Eritrean capital] and Addis Ababa,” Abiy announced.

The rift between Eritrea and Ethiopia has had significant regional fallout. Both countries have engaged in hostile activities against each other, including proxy wars in the likes of neighbouring Somalia, thereby destabilising an already volatile region.

The rugged landscape of Tigray, Ethiopia’s most northern region, stretches away to the north and into Eritrea. Once Eritrea was Ethiopia’s most northern region until gaining independence in 1991. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Meanwhile, Eritrea continued to come off worse against Ethiopia’s stronger regional sway and diplomatic clout, becoming increasingly isolated, and subjected to international sanctions.

As a result, life became increasingly miserable for Eritreans—hence the unending exodus of Eritrean refugees into Ethiopia—as their government used the border war with Ethiopia and the subsequent perceived existential threats and belligerencies against Eritrea as an excuse for the state becoming increasingly repressive and militarised, with its leader Isaias Afewerki tightening his ironclad rule.

But the Eritrean government’s narrative has had the rug pulled out from under it.

“The Eritrean regime seems confused, unprepared and clueless about how it should respond to Ethiopia’s peace offer,” Abraham Zere, executive director of PEN Eritrea, part of a global network of writers in over 100 countries across the globe who campaign to promote literature and defend freedom of expression, wrote in another Al Jazeera opinion piece. “Ethiopia’s call for normalization and peace puts President Afewerki in a very difficult position, as it undermines his current strategy of blaming Ethiopia for his repressive rule.”

So far the response from the Eritrean government has been conspicuous by its absence. Eritrea’s Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel when pressed to comment on the issue on Twitter replied elliptically: “Our position is crystal clear and has been so for 16 years.”

Previously, the Eritrean government has consistently demanded full compliance by Ethiopia with the EEBC’s decision and unilateral withdrawal of all troops from the disputed territories before any chance of normalizing relations—a demand that fails to take account of the EEBC’s terms and the  complex situation on the ground.

“The insistence on unilateral withdrawal as a condition for normalising relations is not tenable, not least because Badme was under Ethiopia rule before the EEBC’s ruling and continues to be under the effective control of the Ethiopian government,” Awol says. “The two countries must come together in good faith to hammer out a number of details including the fate of the population there.”

It’s unlikely to be easy. Already in Badme and in other of the disputed territories, both Eritreans and Ethiopians are protesting Abiy’s decision to implement the commission’s arbitrarily drawn border that would divide communities between the two countries.

“We have no issues over reconciling with our Eritrean brothers. But we will not leave Badme,” Teklit Girmay, a local government official, told Reuters. “We do not want peace by giving away this land after all the sacrifice.”

“It took us four days traveling from Asmara,” a 31-year-man said of the trek from the Eritrean capital, about 80km north of the border, holding all the money he has left: 13 Eritrean nakfa (80 cents). “We travelled for 10 hours each night, sleeping in the desert during the day.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Furthermore, across Tigray, Ethiopia’s most northern region that straddles the border, there are reports of increasing anger and protests about the announcement, while the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front regional party that has dominated Ethiopian politics since its founders spearheaded the 1991 revolution that brought the current government to power has issued a veiled warning to Abiy.

“The Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front will not take part in any process that harms the interests of the people of Tigray,” it said in a statement, demanding that any withdrawal be linked to additional concessions from Eritrea.

Tigray’s proximity to Eritrea and the previous war means its people are acutely sensitive to the potential ramifications, which is further complicated by how people on both sides of the border share the same language – Tigrinya – as well as Orthodox religion and cultural traditions: a closeness that can also heighten resentment.

In 1998 Eritrea invaded Badme before pushing south to occupy the rest of Ethiopia’s Yirga Triangle, claiming it was historically Eritrean land. Ethiopia eventually regained the land but the fighting cost both countries thousands of lives and billions of dollars desperately needed elsewhere in such poor and financially strapped countries.

At the time of the EEBC’s ruling on Badme, the Ethiopian government felt the Ethiopian public wouldn’t tolerate the concession of a now iconic town responsible for so many lost Ethiopian lives—hence it and the rest of the Yirga Triangle remained jutting defiantly into Eritrea, both figuratively and literally.

“Although Badme was a mere pretext to start a conflict fuelled by much deeper political problems, it has since been etched into the imagination of many Ethiopians and Eritreans and has taken on a deeper meaning,” Awol says. “The name Badme condenses within itself a series of fundamental political and economic anxieties and hegemonic aspirations, acting as a byword for brutality, anguish, guilt, shame, fear and pride.”

In addition to potential internal resistance from the Ethiopian government’s TPLF old guard, coupled with potential intransigence from the Asmara regime, the reaction of the international community could also play a significant role.

“The international community, particularly the West, has ignored the dispute for too long,” Awol says. “Now that there is a newfound optimism for peace, the international community must seize the opportunity and act proactively and pre-emptively before local and regional dynamics change.”

Ethiopia is at a potentially exciting crossroads—though nothing is assured, and may well hang in the balance, one that the international community can influence due to Ethiopia’s increasing integration in the global system.

“The country is undergoing a seismic change—the likes of which it has never seen in such a short time span,” says Yves Marie Stranger, editor of “Ethiopia: Through Writers’ Eyes,” and a long-time Ethiophile. “Ethiopia, a land of barter and subsistence farming, a land where very little money changed hands until recently,  now depends on world oil prices,  wheat imports and  the dollar rate—just as much as on the next rainy season. In other words, Ethiopia’s unorthodox economics must now worship in the global church.”

Depending on what happens next, the repercussions for Ethiopia and Eritrea, and the wider Horn of Africa region, could be enormous.

“If Ethiopia does follow through with its stated intention, it’s doubtful that Eritreans would accept any further fear mongering from the Aferwerki administration regarding Addis Ababa’s actions and intentions,” Abraham says. “If Aferwerki attempts to dismiss or undermine this long-awaited gesture from its neighbour, the population may openly turn against the regime.”

Tewodrose Tirfe, chair of the Amhara Association of America, addresses press and supporters outside Washington’s Capitol Building after passage of House Resolution-128. Behind and to his left is Congressman Chris Smith and behind and to his right is Congressman Mike Coffman, both of whom played key roles in the resolution’s successful passage. Photo courtesy Tewodrose Tirfe/Congressman Mike Coffman’s office.

By James Jeffrey
WASHINGTON, May 10 2018 (IPS)

The April inauguration of Ethiopia’s new Prime Minister came amid much fanfare and raised expectations for the future of true democracy in Ethiopia, while far less publicized though relevant developments in the American capital could also play a significant role in shaping that future.

At a relatively youthful and spritely 42 years of age, Abiy Ahmed is widely seen as a reformer who can take the necessary steps to calm a nation that has been engulfed in unprecedented levels of political unrest since the end of 2015.“The new resolution by the US House of Representatives is a reminder to the Ethiopian government that should it fail to reform, it can no longer rely on US largesse to contain problems at home.” --Hassen Hussein

Crucially, he heralds from the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO), which represents the Oromo, Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, and who have spearheaded protests against the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition party, of which the OPDO is a key member.

After the resignation of previous Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, many warned that if the EPRDF chose a figure from its old guard it might well lead to more, perhaps worse, unrest.

That has been avoided with the party embracing a politician with greater public support, and the first Oromo head of government in Ethiopia has already traveled to several areas of the country, promising to address grievances and strengthen a range of political and civil rights.

But, as everyone knows and agrees on, Abiy faces numerous challenges domestically and externally in bringing stability back to Ethiopia and settling a discontented populace that is the second largest in Africa.

One problem is the state of emergency declared in Ethiopia in February following the last prime minister’s surprise resignation (and which is the second state of emergency after the first ended in August 2017). This could hinder Abiy in moving forward with any reform agenda, because the new prime minister’s hold on the state security apparatus is much reduced than normal during a state of emergency, with a group of military officers referred to as the “Command Post” effectively in control of the mechanism of the state.

Also, the very fact of Abiy’s reluctance to push for the lifting of the state of emergency illustrates, observers say, how the internal dynamics of the EPRDF that played a large part in the undoing of Desalegn are still a force to be reckoned with.

The historical dominance of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in the EPRDF continues to wield force and means Ethiopia’s new, apparently reformist, prime minister will need to deal shrewdly with members of the establishment resistant to reform or reconciliation efforts—if Abiy is, in fact, genuinely for reform, that is.

“I like the things [Abiy] has been saying in public—most of the country and many in the opposition at home and abroad resonate with the sentiments expressed in his public statements,” says Alemante Selassie, emeritus professor at the William and Mary Law School in the US.  “Still, I cannot say that I have full confidence in him, because he is a party functionary who rose through the ranks of the EPRDF and probably remains committed to upholding its hegemonic rule for the foreseeable future.”

Nevertheless, whatever the inner workings of the new prime minister’s mind, as an ex-army officer he understands the military-security apparatus and its culture; he has a strong party mandate and public support behind him, and he comes to power at a time when those previously in charge are reviled by the populace, thereby putting him in a unique position to potentially resolve many of the country’s problems.

Furthermore, recent developments in the US Congress may also have a bearing on what happens next. On April 10, the US House of Representatives unanimously adopted House Resolution-128: “Supporting respect for human rights and encouraging inclusive governance in Ethiopia.”

The resolution—uunusually outspoken for US public policy in it criticism of Ethiopia’s government—condemns “the killings of peaceful protesters and excessive use of force by Ethiopian security forces; the detention of journalists, students, activists, and political leaders; and the regime’s abuse of the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation to stifle political and civil dissent and journalistic freedoms.”

The resolution and its wording deeply angered the Ethiopian government, which even suggested it might cut off security cooperation with the US if the resolution was passed. Ethiopia is viewed by the US as its most important ally in the volatile East African region, and hence receives one of the largest security and humanitarian aid packages among sub-Saharan African countries.

“The passage of HR-128 by the US House of Representatives without any opposition was a historical achievement,” says Tewodrose Tirfe, chair of the Amhara Association of America, a US-based advocacy group for the Amhara, Ethiopia’s second largest ethnic group. “The main difference this time, compared to previous attempts to get legislation through, was Ethiopian-American advocacy organizations working in coordination with human rights groups to bring to the attention of [US state] representatives the humanitarian and political crisis that has been unfolding in Ethiopia, especially the past three years.”

Congressman Chris Smith, Chairman of the House Subcommittee of Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations, introduced HR-128, and played a major role, along with Congressman Mike Coffman, in achieving the passage of the resolution.

“Chairman Smith has held more hearings and authored more legislation on Ethiopia then anyone in Congress—he has been a voice for the Ethiopian diaspora for many years,” Tewodrose says. “Congressman Coffman put his political capital on the line for this resolution and helped us overcome every hurdle encountered.”

The vast sum of humanitarian aid and bi-lateral support Ethiopia receives from the US is not at risk—yet.  That said, Tewodrose notes, the Senate is considering a partner bill, which is even stronger in its wording. Senate Resolution 168 calls on the Department of State and USAID “to improve oversight and accountability of United States assistance to Ethiopia and to ensure such assistance reinforces long-term goals for improved governance.”

Essentially, Tewodros explains, this would tie aid to improved governance and more scrutiny of support given, because even though resolutions aren’t laws and are non-binding, if they have strong bipartisan support—like HR-128—coupled with the fact that Congress has the power of oversight, then agencies named in the resolutions would seriously consider implementing the terms of these declarations.

Furthermore, the Amhara Association of America and other advocacy partners are working to introduce binding legislation that would be signed by the president and would become the law directing how the US deals with Ethiopia.

“We believe this is a much easier task now since the Ethiopian diaspora groups are activated and engaged, the policy makers are educated, and we have built strong bipartisan support in Congress,” Tewodrose says.

That said, opposition exists in the Senate to the senate resolution, and there is still some way to go before a new law guiding US foreign policy towards Ethiopia emerges. But any resolution about Ethiopia, such as HR-128, could still have an impact on the actions of the Ethiopian regime and the new prime minister’s reform agenda.

Previously, though the US government was aware of well-documented problems with regards to human rights abuses, lack of democracy promotion and corruption at the highest levels of the Ethiopian state, it didn’t forcefully act to pressure Ethiopia’s government.

But the House resolution signals a shift in that approach. Besides condemning killings, detentions, and abuse of Ethiopia’s Anti-Terror Proclamation, the resolution also makes more ambitious demands of the Ethiopian regime including reforms that would protect the Ethiopian people’s civil liberties and release political prisoners, views that the new prime minister is also believed to share.

“The resolution could give Abiy a freer hand to deal more decisively with those resisting change—so far he has been very conciliatory and accommodating,” says Hassen Hussein an academic and writer based in Minnesota.  “The new resolution by the US House of Representatives is a reminder to the Ethiopian government that should it fail to reform, it can no longer rely on US largesse to contain problems at home.”

While HR-128 is an important development, what further US legislation, if any, follows it, is likely to have the most tangible impact on strengthening—or not—the hand of the new prime minister in persuading those power brokers within the EPRDF who control country’s security apparatus and the intelligence and economic sectors, to participate in negotiations for reform.

“The TPLF has ruled Ethiopia for the last 27 years with the support of the US and the UK,” Alemante says. “If it loses this support— financial, military, diplomatic, etc.— it has very little else to stand on.”

A manuscript from Maqdala now at the British Library. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
LONDON, Apr 23 2018 (IPS)

A new exhibition that opened April 5 at London’s famous Victoria and Albert museum of ancient treasures looted from Ethiopia has revived debate about where such artifacts should reside, highlighting the tensions in putting Western imperialism in Africa and the past to rest.

The exhibit comprises 20 royal and religious artifacts plundered during the Battle of Maqdala in 1868, when a British force laid siege to the mountain fortress of Ethiopian Emperor Tewodros.  “We have both a growing opportunity and growing responsibility to use the potential of digital to increase access for people across the world to the intellectual heritage that we safeguard.” -- Luisa Mengoni, head of Asian and African collections at the British Library

After their victory, the British force was at liberty to take what it wanted. The scale of the treasures stolen by the army isn’t widely known—inside the British Library are hundreds of beautiful Ethiopian manuscripts taken too.

While the argument for returning such artifacts appears strong, and perhaps obvious to most, legal issues surrounding a museum’s responsibility as a global custodian, as well as how best to make items available to the public, make the matter more nuanced than it seems.

“Museums have a global responsibility to better understand their collections, to more fully uncover the histories and the stories behind their objects, and to reveal the people and societies that shaped their journeys,” says Tristram Hunt, the Victoria and Albert museum’s director. “To this end, we want to better reflect on the history of these artifacts in our collection – tracing their origins and then confronting the difficult and complex issues which arise.”

The V&A website describes the museum’s collection of Ethiopian treasures as an “unsettling reminder of the imperial processes which enabled British museums to acquire the cultural assets of others.”

Hence efforts over the years by those like Richard Pankhurst, recognised as arguably the most prolific scholar in the field of Ethiopian studies, who helped found the Association for the Return of the Ethiopian Maqdala Treasures (AFROMET), and focused his efforts on the roughly 350 Maqdala manuscripts that ended up in the British Library.

“It is not widely known what happened,” said Pankhurst before his death in 2017. “The soldiers were able to pick the best of the best that Ethiopia had to offer. Most Ethiopians have never seen manuscripts of that quality.”

Tewodros had the country scoured for the finest manuscripts and collected in Maqdala for a grand church and library he planned to build.

“They are so lavish as they were made for kings,” says Ilana Tahan, lead curator of Hebrew and Christian Orient studies at the British Library, whose staff take their duties of guardianship as seriously as those trying to get the manuscripts returned to Ethiopia.

The front page of one of the Makdala manuscripts given to the British Library, on which is written: Pres. [Presented] by H. M. the Queen [Queen Victoria] 21 Jan. 1869. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Tewodros had actually admired Britain, even hoping they would help develop his country. But a perceived snub when Queen Victoria didn’t reply to a letter of his, led to him imprisoning a small group of British diplomats, resulting in General Robert Napier mounting a rescue mission with a force of 32,000.

On Easter Monday, 13 April 1868, with the British victorious in the valleys surrounding his mountaintop redoubt Maqdala and about to launch a final assault, Tewodros bit down on a pistol—a previous present from Queen Victoria—and pulled the trigger.

In Ethiopia today, Tewodros remains revered by many for his unwavering belief in his country’s potential, while the looting of Maqdala continues to spur the efforts of AFROMET and others continuing the activism of Richard Pankhurst.

“Though Richard was unsuccessful with the British Library manuscripts, there was the return of a number of crosses, manuscripts from private collections,” says his son, Alula Pankhurst, himself a historian and author.

Alula Pankhurst notes that the family of General Napier recently returned a necklace and a parchment scroll to the Institute of Ethiopian Studies.

“My father would have argued that the items should be returned as they were wrongly looted,” Alula Pankhurst says. “There is now the technology available to make copies [of the manuscripts] that are indistinguishable from the originals and microfilms mean that copies could be retained.”

But such technology is also seen by those at the British Library as a reason why the manuscripts can remain where they are.

“We have both a growing opportunity and growing responsibility to use the potential of digital to increase access for people across the world to the intellectual heritage that we safeguard,” says Luisa Mengoni, head of Asian and African collections at the British Library.

One of the items in the V&A exhibit: a gold and gilded copper crown with glass beads, pigment and fabric, made in Ethiopia, 1600-1850. Photo courtesy Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

The British Library is continuing its efforts to make the manuscripts accessible to the public through new exhibits. And during the next two years the library plans to digitise some 250 manuscripts from the Ethiopian collection, with 25 manuscripts already available online in full for the first time through its Digitised Manuscripts website.

“The artwork suffers when it is digitalised, plus many of the manuscripts have detailed comments in the margins—there are many reasons scholars need to attend to the originals and which are not met by digital copies,” Andreas says.

But the return of the manuscripts is actually out of the library’s hands. New legislation would have to be passed by the British Parliament for the manuscripts, or any artefacts held in British museums, to be returned.

“While some restitutionists may grumble that the majority of items have not been returned, much has been done to spread knowledge of their existence – and great artistry – to Ethiopian scholars, and to the world at large,” says Alexander Herman, assistant director of the Institute of Art and Law,  an educational organisation focused on law relating to cultural heritage. “This has been made possible by the willingness of the British Library to invest in this once-overlooked part of its collection.”

The complex issue of repatriating looted objects has rumbled on in Europe and the United States for years without much resolution, though now there appears an increasing openness to engage with the issue, both on the part of major Western museums and governments.

President Emmanuel Macron of France said in November that the restoration of African artefacts was a “top priority” for his country, and at a speech in Burkina Faso said that “African heritage can’t just be in European private collections and museums.”

In the meantime, other options treading a middle ground are beginning to be talked about more openly. Hunt says he is “open to the idea” of a long-term loan of the objects to Ethiopia, a move Alula Pankhurst says “would be a step in the right direction.”

But that’s still not good enough for others.

“The restitution of Ethiopian property is a matter of respecting Ethiopia’s dignity and fundamental rights,” says Kidane Alemayehu, one of the founders of the Horn of Africa Peace and Development Center, and executive director of the Global Alliance for Justice: The Ethiopian Cause.

“Looting another country’s property and offering it on loan to the rightful owner should evoke the deepest shame on any self-respecting country.”

Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn (sitting with hands clasped in lap) attending the 2016 opening of the new Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
ADDIS ABABA, Mar 9 2018 (IPS)

The dominoes keep falling in Ethiopia, with one of the most significant crashing down.

Just over a month after the Ethiopian government’s surprise decision early January to close a notorious prison and release political prisoners, Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn announced on Feb. 15 his shock resignation in another apparent bid to placate the turmoil that’s plagued the country for more than two years.“It is time for Ethiopians to decide whether they want the former empire that is Ethiopia to be one country or several countries.” --Sandy Wade, a former EU diplomat

He was the first ruler in modern Ethiopian history to step down—previous leaders having been overthrown or dying in office. The day after the announcement, another state of emergency was declared in Ethiopia—a preceding 10-month state of emergency, the first in 25 years, having ended in August 2017—casting further uncertainly over the second most populous country in Africa with one of the continent’s fastest growing economics, a staunch ally of the West in the fight against terrorism, and a country that has previously managed to hold out as a relative oasis of stability in the Horn of Africa as countries around it have descended into anarchy.

“There is no guarantee that Ethiopia will not descend into further chaos and violence,” says Awol Allo, an Ethiopian lecturer in law at Keele University in the UK and media commentator on the protests. “There is no magic formula here that doesn’t exist in other African countries. After all, we share a large measure of cultural and institutional similarities.”

Some have seen Hailemariam’s resignation as a desperate act of self-preservation by a tiny Tigrayan ethnic elite accused of using Hailemariam to continue and entrench since the end of the country’s civil war in 1991 the domination of its Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) within the ruling Ethiopia People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) four-party coalition, and thereby over Ethiopia itself. Others, however, say this misses the point about the scale of change forced on Ethiopia’s political space.

“The resignation of the prime minister was not in the interest of the TPLF,” Awol says. “While TPLF is still trying to arrive at a resolution that will continue to preserve its undeserved influence, the resignation is an outcome of the relentless protests of the last two years.”

Having succeeded Ethiopia’s long-term and charismatic ruler Meles Zenawi who died in 2012, Hailemariam never managed to shake off accusations of being a caretaker figure without real power; there to implement the orders of more influential figures in the army and in the TPLF.

A more sympathetic analysis is that Hailemariam, a proclaimed and committed Christian, was always surrounded by a viper’s nest of a government and was increasingly caught between a rock and a hard place.

Concessions he has made have emboldened protesters, while hardliners in the party have bristled at the speed and scale of such concessions. On top of which, as the protests have continued, the EPRDF has become increasingly riven by divisions as its Oromo and Amhara wings have fought back against the Tigrayan over-lordship.

Rumors were circulating widely that he would resign after the party congress scheduled for this month. Some observers say the early resignation was brought forward because the ruling party wants a more assertive person in charge during a time of crisis when the Ethiopian equation that underpinned previous decades of stability is proving increasingly hard for the government to square.

Ethiopia has aped the Chinese developmental state model of providing its populace with material gains to offset curtailments of civil liberties. But after a decade of double-digit growth, based largely on state investment in infrastructure, growth in Ethiopia has slowed in recent years amid severe droughts and social unrest. Furthermore, even during that growth most Ethiopians felt entirely excluded from material benefits that they could see being relished by only a small minority, the disparity made even more galling by the all-pervading restrictions on basic freedoms compounded by economic pressures such as rising prices and stagnant wages.

That bundle of iniquities finally came to a heard with the Oromo protest movement erupting at the end of 2015. Having not lost steam during a repressive crackdown when no concessions were made, it seems even less likely to stall now, while its future course could have existential implications for Ethiopia as a nation state.

“It is time for Ethiopians to decide whether they want the former empire that is Ethiopia to be one country or several countries,” says Sandy Wade, a former European Union diplomat in Addis Ababa during the protests.  “If they want one country the current obsession with ethnic nationalism needs to change because it will lead to several countries not one.”

That said, some in Ethiopia note there’s a limit to what protesters will endure, added to which Ethiopia’s security and military apparatus remains potently capable. Hence all eyes are on who will succeed Hailemariam—March 11 has been set as the date on which deliberations to choose a successor will begin—and whether the new prime minister will continue to pursue rapprochement with disaffected segments of society or initiate a crackdown.

“If TPLF implemented reforms as it said it would and EPRDF elected a leader from the restive region of Oromia, the nerve center of the protests and activism, things would have changed for the better,” Awol says. “The current situation suggests that things will continue to unravel.”

Who such unraveling might benefit, if anyone, is hard to say, but the opposition certainly feel that the wind is in their sail.

“Stopping the protest is impossible now,” says Jawar Mohammed, a prominent US-based Oromo opposition activist commanding a huge social media following, and a hero to some and villain to others. “It is possible to prevent them further intensifying and over-running the regime by taking bold concrete action very, very quickly that should include appointing a capable, popular prime minister with proven reformist credential.”

But Ethiopia has a long history of being led by authoritarian strongmen figures—before Meles Zenawi it was the military dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam and before him Emperor Haile Selassie, continuing back to the 19th century and Emperor Tewodros who began building the empire that became modern Ethiopia.

If the EPRDF chooses a figure from its old guard rather than a rising politician with greater public support, it’s feared this will lead to more, perhaps worse, unrest. But whoever is chosen, even if acceptable to the protesters, will be faced with a gargantuan task.

“Once appointed the new prime minister should quickly hit the ground [running] making it clear he would lead the country to transition, meet with opposition, begin charting a roadmap for transition,” Jawar says.

This must include, Jawar and others note, rapidly liberalizing the political sphere so that opposition groups and the media can build their capacity to play a role in building durable democracy, the establishment of the latter being ultimately, most commentators highlight, what will put an end to the protests.

“Unless you have a coherent organized roadmap that would fit into the power vacuum that you create, if you are lucky you end up with a dictatorship, or if you are unlucky you just open up a Pandora’s Box of chaos,” says Abebe Hailu, a human rights lawyer in Addis Ababa, who lived through the emperor’s fall and the following communist dictatorship. “In my life I have seen that worse things can happen than what you think.”

Ethiopia has always viewed itself as different to, even separate from, the rest of Africa. But there remains enough concern it could repeat the same mistakes and disasters seen too many times on the continent, or that so deep runs vitriol and resentment among the competing elements that emotions will fuel actions that prove self-defeating for everyone.

“You have to understand one thing about the Ethiopian mentality, it is circular,” Abebe says. “Our churches are circular, our mosques are circular, the injera we eat is circular—everything is circular. With such a mentality you go on and on arguing the thing, but you never reach a decision.”

The influences of key donors and international partners such as the US, UK and European Union could have an impact, although previously international diplomacy has long appeared to specialise in tip-toing around the Ethiopian government for fear of upsetting it, and, beyond releasing somewhat admonishing embassy press releases, has appeared unwilling to bring much of tangible persuasive effect to bear. The impact of the heavily influential Ethiopian diaspora opposition, especially in the US, could well swing matters, proving far more decisive, harbouring the potential to call for compromise or further stoke tensions.

“The possibility of real inter-ethnic problems, based probably on jealousy, is there,” Wade says. “Some people are undoubtedly going to die in low level ethnic clashes encouraged by irresponsible, and probably criminal, people who are acting only out of self-interest.”

Displaced Somali at a camp on the outskirts of the city of Dire Dawa in eastern Ethiopia. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Feb 11 2018 (IPS)

In Ethiopia social media is a double-edged sword: capable of filling a sore need for more information but also of pushing the country toward even greater calamity.

Thousands of Ethiopians remain displaced after ethnic violence last September drove an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 from their homes in the neighbouring Oromia and Somali regions.“The problem is a lot of things people view as gossip if heard by mouth, when they read about it on social media they take as fact." --Lidetu Ayele, founder of the opposition Ethiopia Democratic Party

From many of the displaced and those assisting them came accusations of the ethnic unrest being leveraged for political ends, suspected perpetrators ranging from powerbrokers at the regional and federal government levels, all the way to the likes of Ethiopian cab drivers coming off shifts in Washington, D.C., in the United States to Tweet ethnic-laced vitriol on their smartphones.

“It’s political and is hidden—this violence is all man-made,” says Abdishakar Adam, a Somali regional zone vice administrator, at a camp housing ethnic Somali who had to flee Oromia. “Federalism isn’t the problem—people are doing what they are being told to do on social media.”

Since 1995, Ethiopia has applied a distinct political model of ethnically based federalism to the country’s heterogeneous masses—about 100 million people speaking more than 80 dialects.

This political model had proved a successful formula for maintaining stability and generating huge economic growth—but both achievements contain crucial flaws.  Authoritarian rule and lack of civil liberties underpin the stability, while economic growth has barely touched millions of poor Ethiopians, instead benefiting a tiny elite in cahoots with the government.

This reality of life in the so-called Federal Democrat Republic of Ethiopia, proclaimed as one of the fastest growing economies in the word, fed resentment and frustrations.

These reached such levels that since protests broke out over the maladministration of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) party at the end of 2015 among the Oromo—Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, representing about 35 percent of the population—the turmoil hasn’t stopped.

The unprecedented duration of these protests and their scope—the Amhara began protesting in 2016; together the Oromo and Amhara account for over 65 percent of the country’s population—has rendered the country’s inherent ethnic fault lines more fragile and susceptible.

“The problem is a lot of things people view as gossip if heard by mouth, when they read about it on social media they take as fact,” says Lidetu Ayele, founder of the opposition Ethiopia Democratic Party.

Successive waves of emigration during decades of tumult in Ethiopia have formed a worldwide Ethiopian diaspora of around two million people. The largest communities are in the U.S., with estimates varying from 250,000 people to about one million.

The diaspora, understandably, follow events in Ethiopia very closely. They loathe the current authoritarian government—many overseas Ethiopians fled their homes after suffering at the hands of Ethiopia’s authoritarian government and have enough reasons to wish it ill—and embrace satellite television and the internet to influence the political process at home .

The protests are seen by many as a pathway to bringing down the government, hence a growing diaspora movement of writers, bloggers, journalists and activists shaping the coverage of events back in the motherland.

With limited press freedom and frequent blanket shutdowns of mobile internet and the banning of posting on social media in Ethiopia, these diaspora activists, using their contacts in Ethiopia, have offered sources of news on the protests by flooding Twitter and Facebook with videos and photos disputing what they say are inaccurate accounts of protests pushed out by the mostly state-owned media in Ethiopia, or by muddled foreign correspondents unable to gain sufficient access.

“The diaspora does not create news stories, it reports what is reported to them from back home by protesters and protest organizers operating under tough conditions,” says Hassan Hussein, a Minnesota-based Ethiopian academic and writer. ”If anything their greatest desire is to see calm return to their loved ones left behind.”

Displaced Oromo sheltering on an industrial park on the outskirts of the city of Harar in eastern Ethiopia. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

But there is another side to diaspora social media coverage. After clashes between police and protestors at the Oromo Irreecha festival in October 2016 left more than 100 people drowned or crushed to death during a stampede, social media sites buzzed with claims that a police helicopter had fired into the panicking crowd—it was circling dropping leaflets wishing participants a happy festival.

Overseas activists called for “five days of rage.” Although it is not clear what effect this call may have had, the following week, foreign-owned factories, government buildings and tourist lodges were attacked across the Oromia region. The government declared a six-month state of emergency.

That was only finally lifted in August of 2017—having been extended at the six-month point—with the government judging the country’s situation stable enough. By Sept. 12, however, a riot in the eastern city of Aweday that left up to 40 dead triggered further ethnic violence and mass displacements.

“They were crossing their arms and shouting ‘Jawar! Jawar!’” 52-year-old Adamali Meagsu says about local Oromo running amok and burning Somali houses in his village.

When Ethiopian runner Feisal Lyles finished the marathon at the 2016 Rio Olympics, he crossed his wrists above his head in a gesture widely adopted through social media to symbolise the Oromo’s struggle against the government, and mimicked throughout Ethiopia and around the world outside Ethiopian embassies.

Jawar Mohammed is a prominent U.S.-based Oromo opposition activist commanding a huge social media following. To many he is an inspiration. To many in Ethiopia—both local and foreign—he’s a highly dangerous figure.

“They live in a secure democracy and are at liberty to say whatever they want to cause mayhem in Ethiopia,” says Sandy Wade, a former European Union diplomat in Addis Ababa during the protests.

Diaspora satellite television channels broadcast from the United States, such as Oromia Media Network and Ethiopian Satellite Television, do produce decent original reporting. But they are one-sided and virulently anti-EPRDF, as are the views and stories their followers propagate on social media.

The cumulative effect should not be estimated in a country as diverse as Ethiopia, where historical grudges exist between main ethic groups.

In Rwanda, radio programs such as Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines spread much of the toxic hatred that fuelled the country’s genocide. Social media appears similarly capable in spreading untruths and ethnic barbs in Ethiopia.

Many of these have an anti-Tigrayan slant due to the firmly held belief that a Tigrayan elite runs the EPRDF and is to blame for all of Ethiopia’s corruption, inequities, ills and wrongs.

“I hope the women who puked #EPRDF members out of their bodies have their wombs filled with cement and buried like dogs with rabbis,” said one Tweet posted online, a relatively common example.

Making up only 6 percent of the country’s population, ordinary Tigrayans are highly vulnerable to ethnic-based agitation.

Amidst the tragedy, rage, intrigue, blocked communications and difficult travel, it is difficult for the likes of journalists, foreign diplomats and the average Ethiopian to understand what is actually going on.

Hence social media can provide an opening for sorting through the noise and confusion. But it can be used for more nefarious means too, especially in a volatile situation like Ethiopia’s when so many are on edge.

As throughout Ethiopia’s turbulent history, it is ordinary Ethiopians—typically poor, eking out lives of subsistence—who are bearing the fallout from Ethiopia’s current political machinations as different interest groups jostle for power, many of them regardless the human cost.

Ethiopia is not unique in that regard. The political elites of many African countries appear to specialize in this modus operandi. But the overbearing influence of Ethiopia’s diaspora may well be unique, and not appreciated until too late.

Ethiopians are quick to smile but just as quick to anger. Colossal resentment and bitterness seethes beneath the country’s surface waiting for an outlet. Swathes of unemployed young men have no hopes or prospects. This has all played out before in other man-made African infernos.

“I thought my husband was going to kill me, he grabbed my hair and started cutting it with a knife,” says a displaced Somali woman kicked out of her home by her Oromo husband. “He told me, ‘This is Oromia, you must leave now’.”

In early October 2016 a federal policeman stands guard between the Oromo regional flag (left) and Ethiopia’s national flag at the ceremony marking the opening of the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway, an apparent boon for the country's strengthening economy that at the same time angers so many Ethiopians who feel their lives are no better off despite all the economic fanfare and proclamations. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
ADDIS ABABA, Jan 26 2018 (IPS)

Ethiopia’s most notorious prison lurks within the capital’s atmospheric Piazza, the city’s old quarter popular for its party scene at the weekend when the neon signs, loud discos and merry abandon at night continue into the early hours of the morning.

The troubling contrast is one of many in this land of often painful contradictions. The Ethiopian Federal Police Force Central Bureau of Criminal Investigation, more commonly known by its Amharic name of Maekelawi, has for decades been associated with torture and police brutality—a symbol of the dark underside of the authoritarian nature of the so-called Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.The EPRDF has long been criticised for using draconian anti-terrorism charges to detain political prisoners, and then in true Orwellian fashion arguing those charges mean there are no political prisoners in Ethiopia.

But this January 3, Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn announced the government would close the detention centre and release prisoners, including those from political parties.

An unprecedented action by a government not known for compromise rather for its stubborn intransigence to criticism of its oppressive methods, it took most by surprise, resulting in guarded praise from even the government’s staunchest critics such as international human rights organisations.

Since the announcement, though, subsequent proclamations from the government have muddied the issue and led many to question the government’s sincerity amid general confusion on all sides regarding the practicalities and terms of prisoner release.

What most observers seem more sure of is that the episode illustrates the speed and scale of change occurring among the four parties that constitute the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) party.

“The decision was a concession to the very strong demand made by the Oromo People Democratic Organisation (OPDP) which governs the Oromia regional state,” says Awol Allo, an Ethiopian lecturer in law at Keele University in the UK, who can’t return to Ethiopia for fear of arrest.

The EPRDF was the brainchild of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a Marxist-Leninist movement that spearheaded the defeat of Ethiopia’s former military dictatorship the Derg to liberate the Tigray region, whose Tigrayan ethnic group constitute only about 6.5 percent of Ethiopia’s more than 100 million population today.

In the final days of Ethiopia’s civil war, the TPLF orchestrated the creation of three satellite parties from other elements of the rebel force: the OPDO, the Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM), and the Southern Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement (SEPDM) to ostensibly represent their respective ethnic groups but which enabled the TPLF to consolidate its grip on power after the Derg fell in 1991.

That grip became vice like over the years—the TPLF dominates business and the economy as well as the country’s military and security apparatus—much to the consternation of Ethiopia’s other ethnic groups, especially the Oromo.

Constituting 35 percent of Ethiopia’s population, the Oromo are its largest ethnic group. They also constitute the largest proportion of inmates at Maekelawi and in the rest of country’s federal and regional prisons. This, Allo notes, cannot be explained simply by the numerical size of the Oromo population.

“There is a disproportionate and indiscriminate repression of the Oromo because they are suspected to pose a threat by virtue of their status as the single largest ethnic group in the country,” Allo says.

That perceived threat has only increased in the government’s eyes—as well as among some of the other ethnic minorities in the country such as the Somali—since November of 2015 when Oromos took to the streets at the start of a protest movement that continues to this day.

And since the protesting Oromo were joined by the Amhara in 2016—the two ethnic groups representing 67 percent of the population—the government has had to recognise the depth and scale of anger against it.

Hence it is now trying to appease the groundswell of discontent in the country that poses the greatest threat to the country’s stability—perhaps even the survival of the Ethiopian nation state itself—since 1991; the risk of state failure in Ethiopia saw it ranked 15th out of 178 countries—up from 24th in 2016—in the annual Fragile States Index by the Fund for Peace.

The problem, though, with such mollifying efforts by the government, as with the current announcement, is they usually don’t go the necessary distance.

“The EPRDF has taken responsibility for the political crisis in the country and has apologised for its leadership failures and undemocratic actions,” says Lidetu Ayele, founder of the local opposition Ethiopia Democratic Party. “But it has not accepted the presence of political prisoners in the country. These are contradictory outlooks and a clear manifestation that the ruling party is not ready to make genuine reform.”

The EPRDF has long been criticised—domestically and internationally—for using draconian anti-terrorism charges to detain political prisoners, and then in true Orwellian fashion arguing those charges mean there are no political prisoners in Ethiopia. Human rights groups have estimated political prisoner numbers in the tens of thousands.

The Oromo are proud of their cultural traditions and enjoy opportunities to celebrate that heritage. They also share a common language, Afaan Oromoo, also known as Oromoiffa, which belongs to the Cushitic family, unlike Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia, which is Semitic. A different language is only one of many sources of tension the Oromo have within the Ethiopian federation. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

With the announcement about Maekelawi and the prisoner release, however, it initially appeared the government was making a clear break with the past and acknowledging the existence of political prisoners. But soon afterwards it tried to backtrack, with government spokespersons vacillating about what had been meant by political prisoners.

“The announcement of the release of prisoners is highly symptomatic of the disorganization, if not the cacophony, among the leadership,” says René Lefort, who has been visiting and writing about Ethiopia since the 1974 revolution that ended emperor Haile Selassie’s reign and brought in the Derg military dictatorship that would fall to the EPRDF.

“This decision could have been the most resounding proof of the sincerity of the EPRDF to launch a democratizing process. But as it has been announced in successive versions lacking essential points—who exactly is effected; when will they be freed, and will it be unconditionally or, as in the past, only having apologized—this decision has largely lost the impact it could have had.”

Such political flip-flopping and indications of infighting in the government leave some with little confidence about the significance of the promise to end Maekelawi’s history of torture and ill-treatment, as documented in chilling detail by Human Rights Watch.

“The closure of the torture chamber does not signify anything because the government will undoubtedly continue the same practise at other locations,” says Alemante Selassie, emeritus professor at the William and Mary Law School in the US.

Others are less sceptical of the government’s motives.

“It’s not a smokescreen, it’s been under discussion within the context of the interparty dialogue ever since the parties stated their wish lists of issues at the beginning of 2017,” says Sandy Wade, a former European Union diplomat in Addis Ababa. “It is a necessary step in the run-up to the 2018 and 2020 elections—and for the future of the country—if [the government] wants opposition participation, which they do.”

On Jan. 15, Ethiopian Attorney General Getachew Ambaye gave a briefing saying that charges at a federal level brought against 115 prisoners had been dropped as part of the first phase to release jailed politicians and other convicts.

Although the attorney general did not mention names of prominent political figures imprisoned, on Jan. 17. Merera Gudina, leader of the Oromo Federalist Party arrested in 2016, was released.

The attorney general added that the Southern Ethiopia Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Regional State—a region of more than 58 ethnic groups—had dropped charges against 413 inmates also, and that other regions would follow suit in the next couple of months, with political figures in jail who have been “convicted” of crimes given amnesty.

At the same time, though, it appears the jury remains very much out on whether the government is genuinely committed to democratization and achieving a national consensus in the longer term.

“If they are, this would be a transformative moment for Ethiopia,” Awol says. “Either way, Ethiopia cannot be governed in the same way it has for the last 26 years.”

Which leaves the big—possibly existential—question facing Ethiopia: whether the government can and will come up with the necessary strategy and then implement it successfully in time for the 2018 local and 2020 national elections.

“If the EPRDF wants to rescue itself and the country from total collapse, what we need is genuine and swift political reform that will enable the country to have free and fair elections,” Lidetu says. “Anything less than that will not solve the current political crisis.”

Migration has allowed Sahanaz Parben to place her son in an elite cadet college, normally the domain of the well-to-do. She’s bought property in Bangladesh, and when she goes back she hopes to set up on her own. Photo: Shahidul Alam/Drik/Majority World

By Vijay Prashad
DHAKA, Jan 23 2018 (IPS)

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2013.

It is past midnight. The aircraft come in from Saudi Arabia carrying workers who had been hastily ejected. They had gone from Ethiopia to work in a variety of jobs in a Kingdom flush with oil wealth.

It is December 2013. Ethiopian migrant workers descend from the aircraft. They carry plastic bags that hold their belongings. There are few signs that they have benefitted from their hard labor in Saudi Arabia. A few of the migrants walk down without shoes. The air is chilly. They must be cold in their shirts and pants, their feet on the hard ground.

What was the reason for their expulsion? The Saudi authorities said that these were migrants who came into the country without papers. They had crossed the dangerous Gulf of Aden in rickety boats. Saudi Arabia welcomes these migrants, even those without documents, largely because they – under duress – offer their services at very low rates of pay. At punctual intervals, the Saudi government goes after these undocumented workers, arresting them in public, throwing them in deportation camps in Riyadh and then shipping them home.

That was in 2013. Between June of 2017 and the end of the year the Saudi authorities detained 250,000 foreigners and sent home 96,000 Ethiopians. When the Saudi government feels particularly vicious, it carts the Ethiopians to the Saudi-Yemen border and merely leaves them on the Yemeni side. Yemen, still bombed almost daily by Saudi Arabia, is hardly the place to welcome desperate Ethiopians.

The periodic cycle of allowing undocumented workers into the country and then humiliating them by this kind of public ejection maintains the workers in fear and allows the human traffickers and the employers to keep wages as low as possible. There is no one to complain to.

Why do the Ethiopians keep returning to Saudi Arabia? Ethiopia is a country in dire economic distress. Six to nine million Ethiopians have needed food aid of one kind or another last year, as severe drought and poverty have combined to create a near famine situation. Southeastern Ethiopia, from where many of the migrant workers come, has seen the drought destroy livestock herds and reduce crop production.

Bangladeshi migrant worker Abul Hossain says it is against the law to be working at night in construction sites in Malaysia, but it is common practice and expected of the workers. Abul works in a construction site in Ampang in Kuala Lumpur. Photo: Shahidul Alam/Drik/Majority World

It is in this same area that Ethiopia hosts 894,000 refugees from Eritrea, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan. Those refugees come for reasons of hunger and conflict. Last year alone, 106,000 refugees entered Ethiopia, most of them from South Sudan (whose citizens now number 420,000 in Ethiopia). A country that hosts almost a million refugees – itself wracked by distress – sends perhaps a million to the Arabian Peninsula (there are half a million in Saudi Arabia itself). It is a cycle of refugees that now defines the planet.

I can’t get the lack of shoes out of my mind. Ethiopian workers say that they are mistreated routinely in Saudi Arabia – sexual violence against domestic workers, beatings of all workers, harassment by the police. This has become normal. It is the way we live now.

Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2018.

While in Dhaka, I visited the Drik Gallery III, where I saw the exhibition of photographs taken by Shahidul Alam of Bangladeshi migrants to Malaysia. The pictures are vivid illustrations of the hope in the eyes of the migrants and the great sense of disappointment, as life does not turn out as it was promised for most of them. Alam’s photography shines – his own personal compassion draws out emotions of great sincerity from the men and women he photographs.

Alam gave me his book – The Best Years of My Life – which collects the pictures that I saw in the gallery, with a moving text that he wrote to accompany his photographs. The book traces the journey of Bangladeshi migrants – chasing a dream – to Malaysia’s factories and fields, where they work for low wages, get cheated by traffickers, by officials and by their peers. The lure of savings to help their families at home leads the workers to sacrifice their own lives. Sahanaz Parben’s son (age 11) calls her aunty; he barely knows her. Babu Biswas’s children have seen him briefly three times over the past decade. “They are doing well,” he says.

The legal status of these migrants is often unclear. It is precisely their tenuous legal status that forces them to bid down the rate of wages. But the money of the ‘illegal’ migrant is not illegal. It is welcomed into Bangladesh. There are roughly 9 million Bangladeshi migrants (according to the World Bank). They send home 15 billion dollars. Based on a five-year average, this amounts to 10% of Bangladesh’s Gross Domestic Product.

This is not as high a percentage as that of Liberia, where more than a quarter of its GDP comes from remittances from migrant workers. These economies would crumble without the small amounts of money from millions of workers that adds up to large amounts of foreign exchange for these countries. It is worth noting that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into Bangladesh is merely 0.9% of its GDP. The remittance of migrant workers is of far greater economic value than the FDI from foreign banks and corporations.

And yet, as Alam finds, the government of Bangladesh is cavalier towards the migrant. The High Commissioner Mohammed Hafiz seems a nice enough man. But he has essentially given up on his duties. “What can I do?” he asks.

The activists have it correctly. Parimala Narayanasamy of Coordination of Action Research on AID and Mobility (CARAM) tells Alam that “sending governments should come out strong to say that if any country needed workers, then they – the sending countries – should set the terms and conditions.” This is exactly what is not done, neither by the governments of Bangladesh nor of Ethiopia.

They treat the foreign bankers and corporate executives like heroes. They treat their own nationals that send in far greater amounts of money like criminals.

At Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka, I charge my phone. Two men come and ask to use my charger. They are off to the Gulf. I don’t have a charger that fits their phone. A woman comes to me, hands me her boarding pass and asks me when her flight gets into Abu Dhabi. She is to be picked up by her employer. The boarding pass does not have the time of arrival. She looks in her bag for her ticket. There is so little there. One of the men asks her if she has a charger. She does not. They smile at each other. They have so much in common. They will find a way to help each other. It is the way of these workers. They have themselves and their families. Everyone sees them as an inconvenience.

One of KANA TV’s dubbing team in a specially equipped sound-proof studio reading from his Amharic script to dub over a Turkish actor. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
ADDIS ABABA, Dec 21 2017 (IPS)

On a Saturday afternoon in one of Addis Ababa’s khat houses, a group of men and women chew the mildly narcotic plant while gazing mesmerized toward a television featuring a South Korean soldier stripped to his waist and holding a young lady’s hand while proclaiming his undying love—somewhat incongruously—in Amharic.

Broadcast exclusively in the lingua franca of Ethiopia—a necessity with 80 dialects across the country—and after decades of drab Ethiopian state-owned television, KANA TV marks a breakthrough in Ethiopian televised entertainment. It may also signal a shift in Ethiopia’s much criticised media environment.The government appears to finally realise that squeezing private media is a mistake and self-defeating, leaving the field open to the likes of social-media activists with their own agendas.

“Kana” translates as something between taste and flavour, and Ethiopia’s estimated 4 million television households have found that this new private satellite TV channel carrying international standard programming very much to their taste. When it first aired, KANA seized a 40-50 percent share of the prime time market.

“It’s a crazy operation,” says co-founder Elias Schulze, the only non-Ethiopian amid the 180 staff. “At the beginning it took up to 50 man hours to dub one hour and we had to produce 200 man hours of content every day.”

So far KANA has dubbed 2,300 hours of foreign content, requiring a highly coordinated operation: research and analysis to select which shows to secure, then negotiations and purchase, followed by translation, casting, acting, syncing, audio editing, video editing, quality control and then scheduling. Finally, everything is uplinked to satellite.

“TV here used to be so boring, all the channels showed mainly news,” says an Addis Ababa resident and television viewer in her early twenties. “But KANA is pure entertainment, and people really like it.”

Ethiopia’s Amhara, the native speakers of Amharic, only constitute about a quarter of Ethiopia’s 100-million population. But before its launch, KANA conducted research that showed 70 percent of the country’s television viewers understood the language to a reasonable level.

That was an improvement on the 50 percent who couldn’t understand the Arabic-language satellite channels that had come to dominate Ethiopian viewing.

“People watched them because they enjoyed the quality and good storylines,” says Hailu Teklehaimanot, a producer and head of communications at KANA, and a former newspaper editor. “So we thought why not make that quality understandable through dubbing, while at the same time, our staff got on-the-job training we could eventually use for original productions.”

About 90 percent of KANA’s current output is dubbed foreign shows. The eventual goal is for half of output to be home-grown productions like KANA’s new Masters at Work series, which showcases the works of Ethiopian singers, poets, fashion designers, photographers and the like.

“There’s a narrative in mainstream media—both local and international—focusing on development or lack of development at the macro level,” Teklehaimanot says. “But there is a different narrative at the micro level in which inspired young people are doing new things.”

One example of this on Masters at Work is photographer Girma Berta, who specialises in taking photos on his mobile phone of simple images such as street kids and street vendors going about daily life.

“The message I want to send out to young people with interests in photography is not to be scared to try new things,” Berta says during his Masters at Work appearance. “Also, I would advise them to use social media properly to share their pictures, because they can show their pictures to the rest of the world easily; I think until we can find the style of photography that defines us, we must search for it ourselves.”

Staff working at KANA TV. Photo courtesy KANA TV.

Despite such offerings of inspiration, the majority of KANA’s audience watch its shows like viewers anywhere—for entertainment or as escapism from the daily grind.

Others, meanwhile, would rather not watch it at all.

“I don’t let me family watch KANA TV otherwise we’ll never talk to each other when I return from work,” says one taxi driver in Addis Ababa.

Meanwhile, conservative commentators have decried KANA’s foreign soap operas for corrupting Ethiopian culture, while others have similar concerns.

“I believe [the Ethiopian Broadcasting Service] has been doing a far better job than KANA in representing Ethiopia’s indigenous and diaspora [populations],” Addis Ababa-based Mahder Sereke says on Twitter. “Also KANA’s soaps are debasing, not to Ethiopia’s culture but to Ethiopia’s women [through] their false—negatively—gendered depiction.”

EBS is a privately held media company based in the U.S. that targets the global Ethiopian market resulting from successive waves of emigration during decades of tumult in Ethiopia forming a significant Ethiopian diaspora of around two million people. The largest communities are in the U.S., with estimates varying from 250,000 people to about one million.

KANA has also been criticised for undercutting local production and poaching viewers from other TV outlets, thereby actually reducing opportunities for local artists and creative types to illustrate their works.

Meanwhile, some viewer fatigue has seen KANA losing some of its grip on the prime time market. But KANA’s emergence appears to indicate Ethiopian television could be finally changing for the better—albeit not as fast as many would wish.

In the past, Ethiopian government spokespersons haven’t been shy of explaining that media reform shouldn’t be rushed due to Ethiopia’s developmental state.

But now the government appears to finally realise that squeezing private media is a mistake and self-defeating, leaving the field open to the likes of social-media activists with their own agendas.

“The problem is a lot of things people view as gossip if heard by mouth, when they read about it on social media they take as fact,” Lidetu Ayele, founder of the opposition Ethiopia Democratic Party, says of social media’s influence during protests in Ethiopia.

And so, whether out of acknowledgment of the rights of Ethiopians not to be spoon fed state-sponsored propaganda or out of its own self-interest, the Ethiopian government is letting some winds of change finally blow through Ethiopian media.

“We don’t agree with the characterization that Ethiopia’s media landscape is repressed,” says Nazrawi Ghebreselasie, KANA’s managing director and co-founder. “It’s true that the industry in general is in its infancy; however, due to conducive policy environment, we are seeing massive investment going into media.”

Others, however, note that a new entertainment channel like KANA doesn’t connote Ethiopia’s media being unshackled—a fact emphasised by Ethiopian journalists and bloggers arrested for their journalism, often on the basis of terror charges, as highlighted by the international Committee to Protect Journalists.

“Media freedom depends on which yardstick you use,” says Daniel Berhane, a prominent Addis Ababa-based blogger. “The government appears to be relaxing about online and television media, but there are still no opposition newspapers.”

Ethiopia ranked 150th out of 180 countries in the 2017 press freedom index rankings by Reporters Without Borders. The international non-profit organization that promotes and defends freedom of information and the press states that the Ethiopian regime systematically uses the country’s anti-terror law against journalists.

Contrary voices, as a result, often have to come from the likes of ESAT, a popular Ethiopian satellite channel also broadcast from America. It is highly critical of the Ethiopian government and advertises itself as speaking for those who can’t speak in Ethiopia.

But part of KANA’s expanding original production base includes plans for a new news show, hence a whiteboard in the company’s offices covered in green marker pen hashing out its development.

Whether this news platform can be as insightful and demonstrate as much editorial freedom as news channels coming from outside Ethiopia will have to be seen.

But, at the same time, there appears reason for some optimism.

“The [negative] international view of media in Ethiopia is a bit exaggerated,” said Zekarias Sintayehu, editor in chief of Addis Ababa’s Reporter newspaper. “It is not a cakewalk to be journalist in Ethiopia but nobody can deny the prospects of a better media environment in the future.”

Displaced Somali at a camp on the outskirts of the city of Dire Dawa in eastern Ethiopia. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
NEAR THE OROMIA-SOMALI REGIONAL BORDER, Ethiopia, Nov 21 2017 (IPS)

Ethnic animosity unleashed in Ethiopia has displaced hundreds of thousands as well as rendering all manner of usually sacrosanct loyalties obsolete.

“I was making my husband dinner in the evening but an hour after he returned from work he kicked me out of our home,” says Zahala Shekabde, a Somali married to an Oromo. “I pleaded with him, told him I loved him and that I have nothing else, but he said he didn’t want to listen and I must go otherwise he would hurt me.”Both regional governments deny their special police were involved while accusing the other of Machiavellian plots.

She left with nothing other than three children from a former marriage—her husband wouldn’t let her take her youngest child from their marriage.

Other displaced ethnic Somali with Zahala from all over Ethiopia’s Oromia region say there was no warning and explanation given for their evictions, other than the local Oromo where they lived, including local officials, telling them it was revenge for what had happened to Oromo in Jijiga, the capital of the Somali region.

Upwards of 50,000 ethnic Oromo had to leave the Somali region and beyond (officials from the opposing Oromia and Somali regions dispute whether the sum applies just to the Somali region or to the Horn of Africa—Oromo have also left Djibouti and Somaliland, where two Ethiopians were reportedly killed in the capital, Hargeisa).

This sequence of tit-for-tat ethnic-based violence and evictions was sparked after Oromo protests on Sept. 12 in the town of Aweday, between  the cities of Harar and Dire Dawa near the border between the two regions, led to rioting that left 18 dead, according to official figures, the majority being Somali traders of khat, the plant that when chewed acts as a mild stimulant. Somali who fled Aweday say it was closer to 40 killed.

Following Aweday, the Somali regional government began evicting Oromo from Jijiga and the region. Officials say this was for the Oromo’s own safety, and that not one Oromo died from ethnic violence in the region—a fact disputed by displaced Oromo.

“My husband was sick at home when I left for work on Sept. 20,” says Fateer Shafee from a village near Jijiga. “Later I got a call from him saying to come and collect the children as there was conflict nearby. When I got back I found the children but our home was burnt with my husband still inside. Everyone was running and hadn’t been able to get him out.”

Displaced Oromo sheltering on an industrial park on the outskirts of the city of Harar in eastern Ethiopia. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

In the numerous camps that have popped up and public buildings commandeered to absorb the displaced, Oromo and Somali tell equally convincing stories of ethnic violence, primarily carried out, they claim, by each region’s special police, while exhibiting even more convincing physical wounds of that violence.

Meanwhile, both regional governments deny their special police were involved while accusing the other of Machiavellian plots. At the federal level, the government faces accusations ranging from not doing enough to turning a blind eye to even abetting violence for political ends. Another option is it may simply not have the capacity to do enough, so widespread is the violence.

“It’s very difficult to tell if there have been acts of omission or commission at all levels,” says the head of one international humanitarian organization in Ethiopia, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The scale of what’s happened becomes clearer 80km east of Dire Dawa, just over the regional border in the Somali Region, where two giant camps for displaced Somalis are co-located in the lee of the Kolechi Mountains.

In the older camp are 5,300 Somali households—household size varies from 6 to 10 people—displaced by a mixture of drought and ethnic violence since 2015. In the newer camp are 3,850 households displaced by the recent violence.

“It’s uniformed police carrying out the bloodshed,” says one Somali man at the camps.

Another man had to flee Oromia’s Bale zone, hundreds of kilometers to the southwest, though he says that 500 Somali households remain there under constant harassment.

“They are rich farmers and are attacked each day,” he says. “The local Oromo tell the Ethiopian soldiers there one thing and then do another—it’s the worst example of conflict as the farmers are totally isolated and surrounded, and have no way of getting away.”

Displaced Somali at giant camps surrounded by the Kolenchi hills in Ethiopia’s most eastern Somali region. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Inhabitants in both camps pull back clothing to reveal old bullet wounds, scars and lesions from burns, broken bones that never healed, and more.

A number of displaced Somali say they survived thanks to the intervention of soldiers from the national Ethiopian Defense Force. But it wasn’t enough to allow them to remain, or to return.

“If the federal government sends forces to keep the peace they stay for a week or a month and then after they leave it happens again,” says one Somali man. “We can’t risk staying.”

Oromia and Somali are the two largest regions in the country by area size, sharing a border of more than 1,400 km (870 miles). The Oromo constitute the largest proportion of Ethiopia’s population, numbering about 35 million, a factor Ethiopia’s other ethnic groups remain deeply conscious of—especially its 6.5 million Somalis.

Ethnic conflict along the border between the two regions and in the regional rural hinterlands has long occurred, and can be traced to grievances and still standing tensions from the Ethio-Somali war of the 1970s and further back to historical tensions over Oromo migration due to their significant numbers.

But ethnic violence in urban areas well removed from the border is particularly rare. Many say the violence is all the more shocking within communities that integrated peacefully for centuries, and within which intermarriage between Oromo and Somali was the norm.

In 2004, a referendum to decide the fate of more than 420 kebeles around the border—Ethiopia’s smallest administrative unit—gave 80 percent of them to the Oromia Region. This led to thousands of Somalis leaving areas for fear of repercussions.

The referendum still hasn’t been fully resolved, which some say could be one factor behind the current conflict, as may be the on-going drought putting further pressure on pasture and resources—but only to a degree.

“There’s been drought before and no violence happened,” says the vice administrator of one of the Somali regional zones badly hit by the drought. “The main reason is politics and is hidden—this is all man-made.”

Ethiopia’s ethnic federalist system devolves power to regional states. Some observers note how this leaves the government in a quandary of respecting that devolution while also protecting the constitutional rights of Ethiopians, especially minorities, as regions increasingly flex their devolved muscles.

Recent trouble primarily occurred where notable minorities existed: Somali in Aweday, for example, and Oromo in Jijiga. More diverse cities such as Dire Dawa, with a less clear majority, have escaped violence for now.

Meanwhile, accusations go beyond political machinations by regional powerbrokers and the federal government to include the Ethiopian diaspora opposition and social media.

“The Oromo are being directed from Minnesota in America,” says one Somali official. “The Oromo in government don’t have enough respect or influence to coordinate this.”