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From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Thu Aug 19 2010 - 09:25:49 EDT
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/ETHIOPIA+RIGHTS/3414196/story.html Some
see worsening rights situation in aid donor 'darling' Ethiopia
By Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times August 18, 2010
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Like many in the West, former U.S. Ambassador to
Ethiopia David Shinn watched the country's recent elections for signs that
democracy was finally taking root.
When the results of the May vote were announced, all but two of 547
parliamentary seats went to the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic
Front, the coalition that has been in power here for nearly 20 years, or its
allied parties.
"How do you win 99 per cent of the vote?" Shinn said. "That's un-American."
And yet, he said, "Ethiopia remains a darling of the donor community."
The U.S. gives about $1 billion annually to Ethiopia, more than to any other
country in sub-Saharan Africa except Sudan. But even as U.S. and other
international aid to Ethiopia has surged in the last decade, activists
charge that the government has become more authoritarian.
"There's been an inverse ratio of rising donor aid and a worsening human
rights record," said Leslie Lefkow, a researcher with Human Rights Watch.
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's government has won a degree of favor from the
West for sending troops to fight radical Islamists in neighboring Somalia,
but reports of rights abuses and a string of draconian laws that have
constricted political space have put donor countries in an awkward position.
"It's a dilemma for the international donor community, which doesn't want to
walk away from Ethiopia because the needs are so great," said Jennifer
Cooke, the director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies.
Recent allegations of aid corruption have caused further unease among donor
countries.
A March report by Human Rights Watch alleged that there is a countrywide
pattern of local government leaders denying aid to opposition supporters.
Eligibility for many major aid programs is determined by local government
officials, almost all of whom belong to the ruling coalition or its
affiliates.
One former Ethiopian aid worker, who didn't want to be named out of fear of
government retribution, told the Los Angeles Times that aid is leveraged by
local leaders to consolidate power.
"Aid is a tool for development," the aid worker said. "It is also a tool for
politics."
Ethiopian officials deny such claims. Communications Minister Bereket Simon
said that Human Rights Watch was "engaged in the continuous fabrication of
allegations" and that Ethiopia "has put in place a transparent mechanism for
the distribution of food aid."
But Western donors appear to be taking the allegations seriously.
Reports that aid programs had fallen victim to political distortion prompted
an investigation of U.S.-funded food programs in seven districts in
December, said an official with the U.S. Agency for International
Development.
The inquiry "found no indication of political discrimination," the official
said.
A report released last week by a consortium of donors that includes the
United States, several European countries and the World Bank conceded that
Western aid programs would benefit from more transparency and independent
monitoring.
The Donor Assistance Group report said donor countries would work with the
Ethiopian government "for continued strengthening of safeguards" against
fraud.
Africa experts agree that walking away from Ethiopia is out of the question.
Almost a sixth of Ethiopia's 85 million people depend on food aid. In an
added geopolitical dimension, twin bombings in Uganda last month by the
al-Qaida-linked Somali militant group al-Shabab underscored the importance
of having U.S. allies in the troubled Horn of Africa.
Ethiopia's rise to "donor darling" is due in large part to its savvy leader,
Cooke said.
Meles, the former Marxist guerrilla leader who has ruled Ethiopia since
1991, "is good at talking the donor speak and the rhetoric of development,"
she said.
Hailed by former President Bill Clinton as part of a new generation of
African leaders who would bring stability to the continent, Meles was
invited to sit on then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Commission for
Africa in 2004.
The commission argued that economic growth and democracy would come to
Africa only after hunger, poverty and the spread of disease were stamped
out, an expensive proposition that required a "big push" of new aid.
The year after he was named to the commission, security forces loyal to
Meles killed nearly 200 people who were protesting that year's election and
arrested tens of thousands of opposition supporters, including Birtukan
Mideksa, an opposition leader who is now serving life in prison for
violating the conditions of a 2007 pardon.
The U.S. has been cautious in its criticism, though some say the Obama
administration has been taking a tougher tone. In May, a top U.S. diplomat
said the recent elections "were not up to international standards."
Meles bristles at such statements and has suggested that Ethiopia could
forgo its dependence on Western aid for a closer relationship with China,
which has lent money for a dizzying number of development projects in recent
years.
"If (the U.S.) feels the outcome of the elections are such that we cannot
continue our relationship," he said in May, "that's fine and we can move
on."
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