To many people land is much more than a resource or corporate commodity to
be bought, developed and sold for a profit. Identity, cultural history and
livelihood are all connected to ‘place’. The erosion of traditional values
and morality (which include the observation of human rights and
environmental responsibility) are some of the many negative effects of the
global neo-liberal economic model, with its focus on short-term gain and
material benefit. The commercialisation of everything and everybody has
become the destructive goal of multi-nationals, and their corporate
governments manically driven by the desire for perpetual growth as the
elixir to life’s problems.
Land for Profit
Since the food crisis in 2008 agricultural land in developing countries has
been in high demand. Seen as a sound financial investment by foreign brokers
and agrochemical firms, and as a way to create food security for their home
market by corporations from Asia and the Middle East in particular.
Three quarters of worldwide land acquisitions have taken place in
Sub-Saharan Africa, where poverty ridden and economically vulnerable
countries (many run by governments with poor human rights records) are
‘encouraged’ to attract foreign investment by donor partners and their
international guides. The World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and
donor partners, powerful institutions that by “supporting the creation of
investment-friendly climates and land markets in developing countries” have
been a driving force behind the global rush for agricultural land, the
Oakland Institute (OI) report in Unheard Voices (UV).
Poor countries make easy pickings for multi-nationals negotiating deals for
prime land at giveaway prices and with all manner of government sweeteners.
Contracts sealed without consultation with local people, which lack
transparency and accountability, have virtually no benefit for the ‘host’
country (certainly none for indigenous groups), and as Oxfam make clear
“have resulted in dispossession, deception, violation of human rights and
destruction of livelihoods.”
Ethiopia is a prime target for investors looking to acquire agricultural
land. Since 2008 The Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front
(EPRDF) government has leased almost 4 million hectares, for commercial farm
ventures. Land is cheap – they are virtually giving it away, tax is
non-existent and profits (like the food grown) are smoothly repatriated.
Local people are swept aside by a government unconcerned with human rights
and the observation of federal, or international, law. A perfect environment
then, where shady deals can be done and large corporate profits made. In
their desperation to be seen as one of the ‘growth gang’ and “to make way
for agricultural land investments”, the Ethiopian government has “committed
egregious human rights abuses, in direct violation of international law,” OI
state.
Forced From Home
Bordering South Sudan the fertile Gambella region (where 42% of land is
available), with its lush vegetation and flowing rivers, is where the
majority of land sales in the country have taken place. Deals in the region
are made possible by the EPRDF’s ‘villagisation programme’. This is forcibly
clearing indigenous people off ancestral land and herding them into State
created villages. The plan has been intensely criticised by human rights
groups, and rightly so – 1.5 million people nationwide are destined to be
re-settled, 225,000 (over three years) from Gambella.
More concerned to be seen as corporate buddy than guardian of the people,
the Ethiopian government guarantees investors that it will clear land leased
of everything and everyone. It has an obligation, OI says, to “deliver and
hand over the vacant possession of leased land free of impediments”, swept
clear of people, villages, forests and wildlife, and fully plumbed into
local water supplies. Bulldozers are destroying the “farms, and grazing
lands that have sustained Anuak, Mezenger, Nuer, Opo, and Komo peoples for
centuries”, Cultural Survival (CS records: and dissent, should it occur, is
brutally dealt with by the government, that promises to “provide free
security against any riot, disturbance or any turbulent time.” (OI) ‘Since
you do not accept what government says, we jail you.’” The elder told from
Batpul village told Human Rights Watch (HRW). He was jailed without charge
in Abobo, and held for more than two weeks, during which time “they turned
me upside down, tied my legs to a pole, and beat me every day for 17 days
until I was released.”
Hundreds of thousands of villagers, including pastoralists and indigenous
people are being forcibly moved by the regime, HRW reports, they are
“relocating them through violence and intimidation, and often without
essential services”, such as education (denying children ‘the right to
education’), water, and health care facilities – public services promised to
the people and championed to donor countries by the government in their
programme rhetoric.
Murder, rape, false imprisonment and torture are (reportedly) being
committed by the Ethiopian military as they implement the federal
governments policy of land clearance and re-settlement in accordance with
its ‘villagisation programme’. ”My village was forced by the government to
move to the new location against our will. I refused and was beaten and lost
my two upper teeth”. This Anuak man told the NGO Inclusive Development
International (IDI), His brother “was beaten to death by the soldiers for
refusing to go to the new village. My second brother was detained and I
don’t know where he was taken by the soldiers”.
To the Anuak People, who are the majority tribal group in the affected
areas, their land is who they are. It’s where the material to build their
homes is found it’s their source of traditional medicines and food. It’s
where their ancestors are buried and where their history rests. By driving
these people off their land and into large settlements or camps, the
government is not only destroying their homes, in which they have lived for
generations, it is stealing their identity. Indigenous people tell of
violent intimidation, beatings, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture in
military custody, rape and extra-judicial killing. State criminality
breaching a range of international and indeed federal laws, that Genocide
Watch (GW) consider “to have already reached Stage 7 (of 8), genocide
massacres”, against the Anuak, as well as the people of Oromia, Omo and the
Ogaden region.
The Ethiopian government is legally bound to obtain the ‘free, informed and
prior consent’ of the indigenous people it plans to move. Far from obtaining
consent, Niykaw Ochalla in Unheard Voices, states that, “when [the
government] comes to take their land, it is without their knowledge, and in
fact [the government] says that they no longer belonged to this land, [even
though] the Anuak have owned it for generations”. Consultation, consent and
compensation the ‘three c’s required by federal and international law.
Constitutional duties and legal requirements, which like a raft of other
human rights obligations the regime dutifully ignores. Nyikaw Ochalla
confirms that “there is “no consultation at all”, sometimes people are
warned they have to move, but just as often OI found the military “instruct
people to get up and move the same day”. And individuals receive no
compensation “for their loss of livelihood and land.“ In extensive research
The Oakland Institute “did not find any instances of government compensation
being paid to indigenous populations evicted from their lands”, this despite
binding legal requirements to do so.
‘Waiting here for death’
The picture of state intimidation in Gambella is a familiar one. Refugees in
Dadaab, Kenya, from the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, recount stories of the
same type of abuse, indeed as do people from Oromia and the Lower Omo
valley. Tried and tested Government methodology used to enforce repressive
measures and create fear amongst the people. “The first mission for all the
military and the Liyuu is to make the people of the Ogaden region afraid of
us”, a former commander of the Liyuu police told me. And to achieve this
crushing end, they are told “to rape and kill, to loot, to burn their homes,
and capture their animals”. From a wealth of information collated by HRW and
the OI, it is clear that the Ethiopian military in Gambella is following the
same criminal script as their compatriots in the Ogaden region.
We were at home on our farm, a 17-year-old girl from Abobo in Gambella
(whose story echoes many), told HRW “when soldiers came up to us: ‘Do you
accept to be relocated or not?’ ‘No.’ So they grabbed some of us. ‘Do you
want to go now?’ ‘No.’ Then they shot my father and killed him”, a villager
from Gooshini, now in exile in South Sudan, described how those in his
settlement “that resisted…. were forced by soldiers to roll around in the
mud in a stagnant water pool then beaten”.
The new settlements that make up the villagisation programme, are built on
land that is “typically dry and arid”, completely unsuitable for farming and
miles from water supplies, which are reserved for the industrial farms being
constructed on fertile ancestral land. The result is increased food
insecurity leading in some cases to starvation. HRW documented cases of
people being forced off their land during the “harvest season, preventing
them from harvesting their crops”. With such levels of cruelty and
inhumanity the people feel desperate, “as one displaced individual told
Human Rights Watch, “The government is killing our people through starvation
and hunger . . . we are just waiting here for death”.
And should families try to leave the new settlement (something they are
discouraged from doing), and return to their village homes, the government
destroys them totally, burning houses and bulldozing the land. “The
government brought the Anuak people here to die. They brought us no food,
they gave away our land to the foreigners so we can’t even move back,” HRW
record in ‘Waiting Here for Death’. People forced into the new villages are
fearful of government assault, parents “are afraid to send their children to
school because of the increased army presence. Parents worry that their
children will be assaulted”. (UV)
In the face of such government atrocities the people feel powerless; but
like many suffering injustice throughout the world, they are awakening
demanding justice and the observation of fundamental human rights. “We don’t
have any means of retrieving our land” Mr.O from the village of Pinykew in
Gambella, told The Guardian (22/01/2013). “Villagers have been butchered,
falsely arrested and tortured, the women subjected to mass rape”. Enraged by
such atrocities, he is bringing what could be a landmark legal case against
Britain’s Department for International Development (DfiD). Leigh Day & Co,
solicitors based in London, have taken the case, “arguing that money from
DfiD is funding the villagisation programme”, that “breaches the
department’s own human rights policies.” DfiD administer the £324 million
given by the British government to Ethiopia, making it the biggest recipient
of aid from the country. They deny supporting forced re-location, but their
own documents reveal British funds are paying the salaries “of officials
implementing the programme and for infrastructure in new villages”, The
Daily Mail 25/05/2013 reports. Allegations reinforced by HRW, who state that
“British aid is having an enormous, negative side effect – and that is the
forcible ending of these indigenous people’s way of life”. (Ibid)
In an account that rings with familiarity, Mr.O, now in Dadaab refugee camp,
says he was forced from his village at gunpoint by the military. At first he
refused to leave, so “soldiers from the Ethiopian National Defence Force
(ENDF) beat me with guns.” He was arrested, imprisoned in military barracks
and tortured for three days, after which time he was taken to the new
village, which “did not have water, food or productive fields”, where he was
forced to build his house.
Government Duplicity, Donor Complicity
The government unsurprisingly denies all allegations of widespread human
rights abuse connected with land deals and the ‘villagisation programme’
specifically. They continue to espouse the ‘promised public service and
infrastructure benefits’ of the scheme that “by and large” OI assert, “have
failed to materialise”. The regime is content to ignore documentation
provided by human rights groups and NGOs and until recently had refused to
cooperate with an investigation by the World Bank into allegations of abuse
raised by indigenous Anuak people. The Bank incidentally that gives Ethiopia
more financial aid than any other developing country, $920 million last year
alone. Former regional president Omod Obang Olum oversaw the plan in
Gambella and assures us resettlement is “voluntary” and “the programme
successful”. Predictable duplicitous comments that IDI said “are laughable”.
An independent non-profit group working to advance human rights in
development, IDI, has helped the Anuak people from Gambella “submit a
complaint to the World Bank Inspection Panel implicating the Bank in grave
human rights abuses perpetrated by the Ethiopian Government“. The complaint
alleges, “that the Anuak people have been severely harmed by the World
Bank-financed and administered Providing Basic Services Project (PBS)”. A
major development porgramme, which is described as “expanding access and
improving the quality of basic services in education, health, agriculture,
water supply and sanitation”, OI report. However IDI make clear that
“villagisation is the principle vehicle through which PBS is being
implemented in Gambella”, and claim “there is “credible evidence” of “gross
human rights violations” being committed in the region by the Ethiopian
military. Human Rights Watch (HRW) found that donors are “paying for the
construction of schools, health clinics, roads, and water facilities in the
new [resettlement] villages. They are also funding agricultural programs
directed towards resettled populations and the salaries of the local
government officials who are implementing the policy”. (Ibid)
IDI’s serious allegations further support those made by many people from the
region and Mr.O in his legal action against the DfID. The Banks inspection
panel have said the “two programmes (PBS and villagisation) depend one each
other, and may mutually influence the results of the other.” The panel found
“there is a plausible link between the two programmes but needs to engage in
further fact-finding”. It is imperative the bank’s Inspection Panel have
unrestricted access to Gambella and people feel safe to speak openly about
the governments brutality.
All groups involved in land sales have both a moral duty – a civil
responsibility and – a legal obligation to the people whose land is being
leased. The Ethiopian government, the foreign corporations leasing the land
and the donors – the World Bank and DfID, who, through PBS are funding the
villagisation programme.
The Ethiopian government is in violation of a long list of international
treatise that, in- keeping with their democratic pretentions, they are happy
to sign up to, but less enthusiastic to observe. From the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to the Convention on the
Rights of the Child (CRC) and all points legal in between. Investors if not
legally obliged, are certainly morally bound by the United Nations (UN)
“Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework, which, amongst other things, makes
clear their duty to respect and work within human rights. Donor’s
responsibility first and last is, to the people of Ethiopia, to ensure any
so-called ‘development’ programmes (that commonly focus on economic
targets), support their needs, ensures their wellbeing and observes their
fundamental human rights.
To continue to turn a blind eye to widespread government abuse, and to
support schemes, whether directly or indirectly, that violate human rights
and cause suffering to the people is to be complicit to State criminality
that is shattering the lives of hundreds of thousands of indigenous people,
in Gambella and indeed elsewhere in the country.