Date: Sat Nov 15 08:04:32 2014
'Nightmare' for Ethiopian pastoralists as foreign investors buy up land
Thinktank accuses Ethiopian government of stirring ethnic tensions as Suri
displaced to make way for large plantations
* David Smith <http://www.theguardian.com/profile/davidsmith> , Africa
correspondent
*
* Monday 15 November 2014 14.00 GMT
Ethiopia’s policy of leasing millions of hectares of land to foreign
investors is encouraging human rights violations, ruining livelihoods and
disturbing a delicate political balance between ethnic groups, a thinktank
report has found.
The US-based <http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/> Oakland Institute says that
while the east African country is now
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/22/-sp-ethiopia-30-years-famine-h
uman-rights> lauded as an economic success story, the report, Engineering
Ethnic Conflict, “highlights the unreported nightmare experienced by
Ethiopia’s traditionally pastoralist communities”.
A
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/06/britain-supporting-dictatorshi
p-in-ethiopia> controversial “villagisation” programme has seen tens of
thousands of people forcibly moved to purpose-built communes that have
inadequate food and lack health and education facilities, according to human
rights watchdogs, to make way for commercial agriculture.
<http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/datablog/2012/sep/26/uk-aid-m
oney-key-datasets> Ethiopia is one of the biggest recipients of UK
development aid, receiving around £300m a year.
The Oakland Institute’s research, conducted in 2012 and 2013, focused on
34,000 Suri pastoralists who have lived in south-west Ethiopia for up to
three centuries. Suri livelihoods consist of herding cattle, goats and
sheep, shifting cultivation, and hunting and gathering.
But the recent introduction of large-scale plantations “has not only made
important grazing lands unavailable to the Suri and devastated their
livelihoods, but disturbed political order between the Suri and other local
ethnic groups, escalating violent conflicts”, the report says.
The investigation was prompted by 2012
<http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/feb/07/ethiopian-dam-pro
ject-devastating-remote-tribes> reports of violence at Koka, a foreign-owned
30,000 hectare (74,000 acres) plantation established two years earlier to
produce palm oil, although it has since expanded to grow moringa trees and
maize, with plans for rubber trees.
According to a Kenyan NGO, <http://www.friendsoflaketurkana.org/> Friends
of Lake Turkana, the government cleared grass and trees to allow Malaysian
investors to establish the plantation. Water was diverted from the Koka
river to these plantations, leaving the Suri without water for their cattle.
In response, the Suri
<http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/feb/07/ethiopian-dam-pro
ject-devastating-remote-tribes> took up arms and battled government forces,
Friends of Lake Turkana said. Government forces killed 54 unarmed Suri in a
marketplace in retaliation. There have been more killings and arrests since.
Based on interviews with victims’ families, officials and other witnesses,
the Oakland Institute found that the plantation exacerbated tensions between
the Suri and another ethnic group, the Dizi, seen as collaborating with the
government. The first episode of violence in February 2012, in which three
Dizi police officers were killed, occurred over police marking land for
expansions of the plantation.
The institute accuses the Ethiopian government of manipulating these
tensions, for example, by favouring the Dizi in employment. “According to
field research, the increase in violent clashes between the Suri and Dizi
can be linked to the intrusion of the Koka plantation and displacement of
Suri from lands vital for cattle raising, one of their most important
livelihood resources.”
A generation after
<http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/series/ethiopia-30-years-on-f
rom-the-famine> the famine that was screened around the world, Ethiopia
claims it is on track to meet most of the millennium development goals and
become a <http://allafrica.com/stories/201409230843.html> middle-income
country by 2025. But the report contends that the government puts foreign
and political interests above the rights and needs of local populations,
especially historically marginalised and neglected ethnic groups.
It also argues that the
<http://www.worldbank.org/projects/search?lang=en&searchTerm=&countrycode_ex
act=ET> World Bank’s support of three phases of Ethiopia’s pastoral
community development project implicates western funds in the coerced
settlement of pastoral communities and the conditional – and coercive –
distribution of food aid.
“The dramatic reconfiguration of land for foreign investment in the Koka
plantation, as well as its alleged failure, illustrates the haphazard manner
in which the government of Ethiopia implements its development strategy,” it
says.
“While there have been reports of Suri returning to the plantation lands to
take corn and sweet potatoes, the palm tree-lined land is no longer suitable
for grazing. Although, presumably, investors are unhappy with the failure of
their cheaply-leased land, the local impact has been the increase of local
ethnic conflicts and the drastic altering of local livelihoods.
“As such, the Koka plantation is representative of the Ethiopian strategy of
pursuing foreign investor-led development at the expense of local
inhabitants.”
Felix Horne, Ethiopia researcher at <http://www.hrw.org/africa/ethiopia>
Human Rights Watch, said: “Unfortunately, the Suri and other marginalised
groups have no ability to voice their concerns over these developments on
their land.
“There is little in the way of an independent media in Ethiopia that is
permitted to cover this story, civil society that could advocate on these
issues have been decimated by repressive laws, any criticism of government
is met with harassment and detention. So what options are left for the
Suri?”
MDG: Suri herders with cattle, Ethiopia, Omo Region, TulgitSuri boys with
water gourds herd cattle along a road in Tulgit, Omo valley, Ethiopia.
Photograph: Danita Delimont/Alamy
(image/jpeg attachment: image001.jpg)