Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2013 15:05:38 +0200
East Africans told to resettle: Are these 'land grabs' or progress?
In Ethiopia, a plan known as 'villagization' has freed up vast tracts for
foreign corporations and brought a storm over methods of development at the
World Bank.
By William Davison, Correspondent / June 6, 2013
Gambella District, Ethiopia
....... Yet simultaneously Ethiopia is trying to lease up to 42 percent of
Gambella - a state the size of the Netherlands - for agricultural investors.
India's Karutui Global Ltd and Saudi Star are the most prominent. Both have
started huge farms for export of rice and other crops. Saudi Star is owned
by Ethiopian-born Saudi billionaire Mohamed al-Amoudi and is the nation's
largest single investor.......
A 15-hour drive west from <http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Ethiopia>
Ethiopia's capital past coffee forests and jigsaw fields brimming with
cattle and people, the road leaves the high country and enters the Gambella
region - an expanse of flatter bush and forest with rich grasslands and
rivers.
The land is sparsely populated; locals are taller and darker than their
upcountry compatriots. Most are of Nuer or Anuak ethnicity. The Nuer, whose
statuesque men display parallel horizontal markings on their foreheads, herd
cattle and grow maize in the water-blessed expanses.
Gambella, long ignored if not invisible, has recently become a battleground
over development, modernization, and human rights - one creating a furor
inside the <http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/The+World+Bank+Group> World
Bank, which approved programs worth $920 million in Ethiopia last year.
Ethiopia's effort to resettle local farmers into main villages while also
leasing land to foreign corporations or wealthy Ethiopians has put Gambella
under scrutiny for charges of violent forced relocations.
Now the issue is coming to a head: Ethiopian authorities since 2010 have
embarked on a plan known as "villagization" to move some 45,000 households.
The plan takes scattered families and consolidates them into fewer
settlements. It is sold as a scheme for better schools, clinics, cleaner
water, and, authorities say, more democracy.
Yet simultaneously Ethiopia is trying to lease up to 42 percent of Gambella
- a state the size of the Netherlands - for agricultural investors. India's
Karutui Global Ltd and Saudi Star are the most prominent. Both have started
huge farms for export of rice and other crops. Saudi Star is owned by
Ethiopian-born Saudi billionaire Mohamed al-Amoudi and is the nation's
largest single investor.
The result is a bitter dispute in which NGOs like
<http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Human+Rights+Watch> Human Rights Watch
(HRW), and local people, some of them now in
<http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Kenya> Kenyan refugee camps, allege
that villagization mirrors previous brutal resettlement campaigns. They
charge the government with Stalin-style collectivization that has increased
poverty, carried out by beatings, rape, and killings. They say forced
relocation occurred to clear land for investors.
The government denies all allegations. Former regional president Omod Obang
Olum oversaw the plan in Gambella and says it was voluntary and successful.
Some 35,000 families were gathered to 100 new or enlarged villages, putting
them closer to roads and services.
"You're going to transform the economic structures, the social structures,
even political structures," Mr. Omod affirms. "It's an area for good
governance, not only development."
The situation is a dilemma for Western donors in Ethiopia who deliver over
$3 billion a year. They trust Ethiopia,
<http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Africa> Africa's second most populous
nation, for growing the economy, building infrastructure, and reducing
poverty.
Yet the essentially one-party state's use of authoritarian methods to quash
dissent and affect radical change has put institutions like the World Bank
and UK overseas aid programs into a difficult spot. Ethiopia is infamous
among NGOs for its repressive tactics and restrictions on media and open
expression.
In coming weeks the Bank must decide whether to enable a panel to further
investigate allegations of funding involuntary or forced resettlements (
<http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2013/0605/East-Africans-told-to-reset
tle-Are-these-land-grabs-or-progress#worldbank> see sidebar below) of local
people.
The aid program financed by the Bank and other donors pays up to 60 percent
of teachers, nurses and development workers in Gambella.
Also, a London law firm on behalf of a "Mr. O," an Anuak man in a Kenyan
refugee camp, is suing the UK Department of International Development for
helping fund the means by which he alleges he was tortured and forced to
flee Gambella.
There is little doubt that civil servants indirectly taking World Bank and
UK development funds have staffed the resettlement sites. But donors say the
poor would have suffered if the funding was withheld.
Mass land appropriation is a very new trend in Africa. (
<http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2013/0605/Masai-herders-appear-victim
s-of-land-deal-with-Dubai-hunting-firm> See accompanying print story on
Masai lands in Tanzania under bitter dispute.) But the controversy around
opening up land for corporate use is hardly restricted to this continent,
but can be traced across the equator, to Cambodia and Indonesia among other
places.
Land is marketed for mining, farms, tourism, suburbs, and multi-purpose
crops like palm oil.
The core question: Are these crass "land grabs," or a messy yet progressive
move?
Today the scale and speed of land deals are larger and faster, says a
Western expert with Ethiopia experience, and the interests of people are
brushed past in the competitive market.
"In Ethiopia part of the government may be interested in land rights. But it
doesn't stand a chance against the agriculture and commerce wing," the
expert says.
The degree to which mass displacement has been used to turn around
commercial farms is unclear. One village in a Karuturi farm remains unmoved.
Mr. Omod says commercial agriculture and resettlement in Gambella are
designed to achieved "accelerated development."
The government of Ethiopia has said however it will not cooperate with a
larger look at the issue by donors.
Government like a father?
The village of Pulkoat lies off a sweltering Gambella road that leads to
next-door South Sudan. After dusk, Nypuk sits outside her sturdy new
tin-roofed hut. She is a mother of three and one of tens of thousands who
relocated. She gives a more affirmative account, at least to a Western
reporter:
Some three years ago Nypuk walked four hours from her old village to a new
home here. Previously, people couldn't "grow enough food," she says. "We
have been moved by the government so we can be close to the road, so we can
get development quickly."
Pulkoat has a water pump. A school is being built with contributions from
the community. A maize grinder was provided but is broken. Planting is hard
as the area is covered with tangled scrub common to Gambella. "It's very
difficult to cut down with an axe," she says. "We expected the government to
come and cut down the trees."
Villagers are expected to play their part by rebuilding huts and clearing
land, things that the government cannot afford to do, says Omod.
Despite drawbacks, Nypuk, says the village is an improvement: "Even if some
services are not perfect we believe God will give them to us."
She describes her decision to relocate in paternal terms of the state and
people. "Since the government is like a father, you accept whatever he
says," is her view.
Questionable track record and bad memories
Resettlement has a notorious history in Ethiopia. A decade after unseating
Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974, Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam's military junta
responded to the famine that inspired "Live Aid" - by trucking people
hundreds of miles from drought zones to Gambella and other fertile climes.
An estimated 50,000 died in transit, or in new locations, from starvation
and disease. The socialist government then separately conducted its own form
of villagization. The idea was "to streamline distribution of basic
services." But it was also a counter-insurgency tactic causing mass
suffering, according to historian Bahru Zewde.
The current government took power in 1991 after a 17-year rebellion. Ten
years later it began its own resettlement, and encouraged at least two
million people to move, mostly within their own regions.
Rather than reducing hunger, settlers' lives became harder. The rushed plan
was botched and services were not provided, a
<http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/United+States> US government report
found.
Now the same type of approach is being applied to Gambella, a place so wild
that conservationists recently found what may be Ethiopia's only remaining
elephants and giraffes during aerial surveys.
A visit to Gambella does not yield the graphic findings HRW reported as
villagization went into full swing. In several stops, no one said they saw
killings or beatings - a story heard in refugee camps.
HRW says research in Gambella won't reveal abuses as people are scared to
talk. Yet in the village of Pokedi, locals did feel free enough to describe
a slaying of civilians by soldiers last year. They describe 11 soldiers who
came in search of insurgents behind an attack on the Saudi farm.
"They never said anything, they just arrived and started shooting," says a
resident. Five men including three security officials were killed.
Omod denied any innocent people suffered in counterinsurgency operations
against Anuak rebels who murdered 19 highlanders on a bus. Workers from a
sub-contractor of Saudi Star were also killed by gunmen a month later.
What is evident in Gambella is that resettlement has failed to deliver
services and that the challenges of relocating may have made many people's
lives harder.
Officials who tout their achievements cite Tegni village as a model. Tegni
does have a school, clinic, corn grinder, and water. But the land given to
each of the 159 Anuak families is uncleared forest that most of them feel
helpless to develop.
The "basically successful" resettlements faced delays in Gambella due to
poor infrastructure, inefficient officials and low-grade contractors say
minister of federal affairs Shiferaw Teklemariam. "The planning, the
implementation and the follow through were not as strong as you would
expect," he added.
Karmi, a new site, is dishevelled. There's a school but no kids playing and
few women cooking. People fled to Gambella town after highland soldiers
intimidated them following the bus shooting, said Ajulu Obang as she tied
strips of bark together for a bird trap. In Karmi, as elsewhere, people felt
they had no choice but to move.
For Nypuk, who earlier compared the state to a parent, moving from her old
village had a practical element since not to move could bring officials to
ostracized her: "The government will think that you are people opposing the
government."
World Bank draws fire over funding in Ethiopia
By Robert Marquand
The World Bank's $30 billion annual budget makes it the world's top aid
giver - and impoverished Ethiopia is a top World Bank recipient, receiving
billions.
Part of those funds, which meet the needs of a US ally in Africa, come from
US taxpayers.
But all may not be well: The World Bank's executive board is divided over
whether the bank inadvertently aided forcible relocations of families in
Ethiopia.
The case is sensitive enough for the board to balk on whether even to allow
its own watchdog monitors to examine the case.
Last fall, about the same time the bank bestowed $600 million to Ethiopia
for salaries for local officials, many of them in the Gambella Region, a
small California-based nongovernmental organization, Inclusive Development
International (IDI), wrote the board a complaint citing "credible evidence"
of "gross human rights violations" in Gambella and copied new bank president
Jim Yong Kim.
Many of the same people in Gambella that the bank helps are also part of a
coercive resettlement program called "villagization," the NGO said,
representing ethnic Anuak refugees.
Since 2006 the bank has given $1.4 billion for a program that covers
salaries.
The Ethiopian government, since Human Rights Watch called it out last year,
has denied any links between those receiving bank funds and villagization, a
program it says in any event is harmless and useful.
In the development world, the World Bank is influential, sets standards and
rules, and has an internal inspection panel that reviews complaints of harm
and lack of accountability.
IDI said Ethiopia's denial is laughable. It urged the bank to use its
investigative panel.
On Feb. 8 the panel did find grounds for a look, citing "conflicting
assertions and differing views" on who is being helped by bank aid, and
saying the "context" in Gambella is one in which bank aid and villagization
are happening at the same time and "may mutually influence the results of
the other."
Officials in Ethiopia and at the bank have denied any overlap of salaries
and officials. Ethiopia says it won't cooperate with a panel.
That puts the bank in a dilemma. It delayed making a decision at its last
board meeting, on March 19, to hear an Ethiopian presentation. Since then it
has said nothing.
A World Bank spokesperson, asked when a decision might be made, told the
Monitor: "Executive directors rescheduled the discussion of the Ethiopia ...
project originally set for March 19, 2013, at a date to be determined. As is
standard procedure in Inspection Panel cases, World Bank staff are not
authorized to comment prior to the Board discussion."
For the World Bank to squelch a look at possible violations would harm its
credibility, say activists. "Human Rights Watch remains hopeful that the
government of Ethiopia and the World Bank board of executive directors will
support the Inspection Panel investigation," says Jessica Evans of Human
Rights Watch's Washington office. "The complaint raises serious concerns of
violations of bank safeguards and human rights that deserve full
investigation."
An official at one London NGO says, "The question is whether the bank will
end up covering for the Ethiopian government's bad behavior. That would be a
terrible blow."
*
<http://www.csmonitor.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/content/graph
ics/2013/0610-weekly/0610-olandgrab-ethiopia-gambella-regionmap-g1/15949421-
1-eng-US/0610-OLANDGRAB-ethiopia-gambella-regionmap-g1_full_600.jpg?nav=6777
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Graphic:
<http://www.csmonitor.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/content/graph
ics/2013/0610-weekly/0610-olandgrab-ethiopia-gambella-regionmap-g1/15949421-
1-eng-US/0610-OLANDGRAB-ethiopia-gambella-regionmap-g1_full_600.jpg?nav=6777
09-csm_article-leftColRelated> Gambella Region
(Rich Clabaugh/Staff)
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