http://hornofafrica.de/aiding-and-abetting-uk-and-us-complicity-in-ethiopias-mass-displacement/
November 6, 2013
Aiding and Abetting: UK and US Complicity in Ethiopia’s Mass
Displacement<
http://hornofafrica.de/aiding-and-abetting-uk-and-us-complicity-in-ethiopias-mass-displacement/>
<
http://hornofafrica.de/aiding-and-abetting-uk-and-us-complicity-in-ethiopias-mass-displacement/>
by David Turton, thinkafricapress.com | In the face of evidence, the UK and
US continue to deny systematic human rights abuses are occurring in the
Lower Omo as thousands are displaced for an
irrigation<
http://hornofafrica.de/aiding-and-abetting-uk-and-us-complicity-in-ethiopias-mass-displacement/#>
scheme.
The US-based think tank, the Oakland Institute, recently accused the UK and
US governments of aiding and abetting the eviction of thousands of people
from their land in Ethiopia’s Lower Omo Valley.
The accusation was not new – it had been made before by Survival
International and Human Rights Watch amongst others. What was new about
this report was that it made use of transcripts of interviews conducted by
officials from the UK Department for International Development (DfID) and
the US Agency for International Development (USAID), during a field visit
to the lower Omo in January 2012.
The interviews were recorded by the report’s author, Will Hurd, who
accompanied the officials and acted as their interpreter. The recordings
contain vivid first-hand accounts of the abuses suffered by local people at
the hands of the government, the police and the army.
Hurd, an American human rights activist who speaks one of the local
languages, decided to release the recordings to journalists when both
agencies claimed publicly, months after their visit, that they had found no
evidence of the ‘systematic’ abuse of human rights. Having spent 40 years
working as an anthropologist in the area myself, I am confident of the
accuracy and authenticity of the report and of the interviews on which it
is based.
The abuses being carried out by the Ethiopian government in the Lower Omo
are incontrovertible. Thousands of agro-pastoralists are being evicted by
government fiat and without compensation from their most valuable
agricultural land along the banks of the Omo in order to make way for
large-scale commercial irrigation schemes. By far the largest of these
schemes is being set up by the state-owned Ethiopian Sugar Corporation. The
evictions are being accompanied by a resettlement or ‘villagisation’
programme which, although described by administrators as ‘voluntary’, is
forced in the sense that those affected have no reasonable alternative but
to comply.
This is a glaring example of how *not* to do river-basin development. No
impact assessments, feasibility studies or resettlement plans have been
published. No plans have been announced for compensation, benefit sharing
or livelihood reconstruction. And no attempt has been made to give the
affected people a genuine say in decision making. In short, the project
appears to have been conceived as a quasi-military operation, with the
police and army acting as an occupying force amongst a recalcitrant and
‘backward’ civilian population. Not surprisingly in these circumstances,
there have been reports of beatings, arrests and sexual violence by
military personnel.
We know from 50 years of academic research on ‘development-forced
displacement and resettlement’ as well as from countless reports by NGOs
and development agencies that, if the project continues in this way, it
will have a devastating impact on the economic, physical, psychological and
social wellbeing of the displaced population. To use an expression from
Michael Cernea, formerly the World Bank’s Senior Adviser on Social Policy
and Resettlement, river-basin development in the lower Omo looks like its
becoming yet another “disgracing stain on development itself.”
Aiding and abetting
Ethiopia receives $3.5 billion a year from international donors, which
amounts to approximately half its annual budget. In March 2011, it was
announced that the UK would be giving $2 billion in development aid to
Ethiopia over the following four years, making Ethiopia the biggest single
recipient of British aid money. The UK is also the biggest state
contributor to the World Bank’s ‘Promoting Basic Services’ (PBS) programme
for Ethiopia. PBS funds provide budget support for local government
expenditure on education, health, agricultural extension and road
construction. Since resettlement in the Lower Omo is the responsibility of
the local administration, it would be stretching credulity beyond
reasonable bounds to believe DfID’s claim that no UK money is being used to
finance this activity.
Over the past two years I have tried to alert both the Ethiopian government
and DfID to what I believe is a disaster in the making. The Ethiopian
officials I have spoken to simply denied that there was any basis for my
concerns. I have learnt that critics of Ethiopian government policies are
liable to be treated either as ‘enemies’ of Ethiopia or as well meaning
friends in need of remedial education. DfID staff were interested in what I
had to say but the official line is that the British Government takes a
‘robust stand’ on human rights and, ‘where it has concerns’ it raises them
‘at the very highest level’ – to which the only answer, if you’ve had to
stand by and watch your fields and grain stores flattened by a sugar
corporation bulldozer, is ‘Yeah, right’.
Whatever is going on behind closed doors, public statements made by British
officials about allegations of human rights abuses in the lower Omo have
been consistently supportive of the Ethiopian government. On 5 November
2012, the Minister for International Development, Justine Greening,
announced in reply to a question in Parliament that DfID had not been able
to “substantiate” the allegations made to it during its visit to the lower
Omo in January that year. She promised that another visit to the area would
be made “to examine these further.”
Another visit was indeed made, by DfID and USAID staff, a week after the
Minister’s reply. But no report of this visit has been released despite a
Freedom of Information request from Survival International. Meanwhile, Sir
Malcolm Bruce, Chairman of the International Development Committee of the
UK’s House of Commons, repeated the Minister’s line on a visit to Addis
Ababa in March 2013. Speaking to a local newspaper, he said “we cannot make
decisions based on allegations….what we have now is mostly allegations,
many of which the government has already addressed”.
A robust stand with Ethiopia
On this showing, DfID’s proud boast that it takes a ‘robust stand’ on human
rights looks like empty rhetoric – cynical, politically expedient and
morally bankrupt. Nor would one have to be a great cynic oneself to at
least wonder whether the allegations made to DfID and USAID staff by lower
Omo residents in January 2012 would have seen the light of day if they had
not been tape-recorded and published by Will Hurd.
It needs to be stressed that the allegations were not principally about
rapes, arrests and beatings. These have certainly occurred, but they may or
may not have been part of a systematic campaign of intimidation. What is
undeniable is the forced, large-scale, ongoing and *systematic* eviction of
whole communities from their land by their own government, without
consultation and without compensation. And it is clear from the interview
transcripts, published along with the Oakland Institute report, that this
was the most deeply felt, vehemently expressed and frequently repeated
allegation of human rights abuse made to DfID and USAID staff during their
January 2012 field visit. Any “further examination” of this allegation, if
indeed it is necessary, should not take long to complete.
The British government is helping to sustain, with its financial, moral and
political support, a project which, if it continues without change, will
lead to the needless suffering of thousands of people. This is not a
technical problem. We know very well what practical steps should be taken,
*now,* to prevent or at least mitigate the worst consequences of the
project. But the UK’s politicians are not only “turning a blind eye” to the
problem, as the Oakland Institute’s report puts it, but repeatedly denying
it exists. We must conclude that they will only have second thoughts about
this policy if they come to doubt its political expediency. Or, as a
colleague of mine once put it, more colourfully, if it “comes back to bite
them in the bum”.
*Think Africa Press <
http://thinkafricapress.com/>welcomes inquiries
regarding the republication of its articles. If you would like to republish
this or any other article for re-print, syndication or educational
purposes, please contact: editor_at_thinkafricapress.com
<editor_at_thinkafricapress.com>*
http://thinkafricapress.com/ethiopia/politics-stupid-uk-aid-and-human-rights-abuses-lower-omo-valley
Received on Thu Nov 07 2013 - 11:15:50 EST