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From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Tue Nov 23 2010 - 16:39:34 EST
Ethiopia: the aid-politics trap
Tom Porteous <http://www.opendemocracy.net/author/tom-porteous> ,
23 November 2010
The Ethiopian government's political use of international humanitarian aid
is a test of donors' commitment to human-rights principles, says Tom
Porteous.
Ethiopia is the largest recipient of western development assistance in
Africa. In 2005-08, aid to Ethiopia more than doubled - from $1.9 billion to
$3.4 billion. Yet the country's domestic politics are becoming less
democratic and more repressive. Could there be a link between aid and
repression?
That's a question <http://www.hrw.org/africa/ethiopia> Human Rights Watch
(HRW) has set out to answer in recent months; and a report we published on
19 October 2010 gives an unsettling answer. In the course of several months'
research involving interviews with over 200 people in three regions of
Ethiopia and the capital Addis Ababa, we uncovered evidence that
multi-billion dollar programmes funded by the World Bank and others have
been politicised and manipulated by the Ethiopian government and are used as
a powerful tool of political control and repression (see
<http://www.hrw.org/node/93605> Development without Freedom: How Aid
Underwites Repression in Ethiopia, Human Rights Watch, 19 October 2010).
Meanwhile the donors, particularly Britain and other European Union donors,
have failed properly to acknowledge the problem - let alone challenge the
Ethiopian government over it or propose remedies.
A state of insecurity
Ethiopia is a de facto one-party state masquerading as a democracy. Its
ruling party, the
<http://www.eprdf.org.et/EPRDFE/faces/ssi/aboutus.jsp?type=aboutus>
Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), permeates the
state and goes to great lengths to ensure citizens' political loyalty. In
parliamentary <http://www.eueom.eu/ethiopia2010/home> elections in May
2010, the EPRDF won 99.6% of the seats. In local elections in 2008 it won
more than 99%.
When the opposition protested against the declared results of the election
in 2005 - which took place in an unusual atmosphere of freedom, though the
process was still flawed - the security forces shot dead 200 protesters and
arrested and detained tens of thousands of opposition supporters, including
dozens of politicians.
Now, HRW's research indicates that the coercive mechanisms by which the
EPRDF <http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300141634>
maintains control of the country have come to include the politicisation and
manipulation of aid. The report documents numerous instances of government
officials distributing and withholding the benefits of donor-funded
programmes - such as fertilisers, agricultural seeds, food, microcredit, and
job and training opportunities - on the basis of party affiliation.
In a country where half of the population lives below the poverty line and
many are dependent on food aid, these abusive practices - in addition to
being in violation of international human-rights law - send the chilling
message that failure to support the ruling party may lead you and your
family to starve.
The evidence of these practices includes testimony by fifty people
interviewed by researchers in three of Ethiopia's
<http://go.hrw.com/atlas/norm_htm/ethiopia.htm> regions, including Amhara
and Oromia. They alleged that the World Bank's "productive safety-nets
programme" - worth $1.7 billion over three years and
<http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/main?print=Y&pagePK=64193027&
piPK=64187937&theSitePK=523679&menuPK=64187510&searchMenuPK=64187283&siteNam
e=WDS&entityID=000333037_20080812235954> designed to provide food to people
at risk of starvation - was being used as a political tool. "The safety-net
is used to buy loyalty to the ruling party", a farmer in Dessie, in the
Amhara region, told us. "That is money that comes from abroad.. Do those
people who send the money know what it is being used for? Let them know that
it is being used against democracy."
Human Rights Watch documented some instances of the withholding of
donor-funded food aid from families with malnourished, hungry children on
the basis of political affiliation.
Ethiopian civil society might once have protested. But over the last five
years, the Ethiopian government has cracked down with
<http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE6AE0LQ20101115> harsh
effectiveness on independent media and human-rights organisations that might
have sought to expose these violations and hold the authorities to account.
Again the donors have turned a blind eye to this repression.
A need to rethink
This situation reveals that <http://www.dagethiopia.org/> donors in
Ethiopia have created for themselves a sharp dilemma. They are aware of the
government's poor human-rights record and of their own role in supporting
the state. But they also believe that confronting the government on human
rights could imperil their efforts to feed those at risk and stimulate
economic development. So instead of confronting the government politically,
they have tended to address the problem of "governance" as a technical one
that can be solved through "capacity building" - i.e. more aid.
But this simply perpetuates the problem. The donors' failure to address the
fact that their own policies are contributing to the worsening human-rights
crisis in Ethiopia is influenced by Ethiopia's strategic importance as a
western ally in a turbulent region prone to Islamist militancy, as well as
by the real (if sometimes exaggerated) progress that Ethiopia has made in
reducing poverty.
Ethiopia's importance, however, should be a reason to break the links
between aid and repression, rather than to ignore them. A fundamental
rethink of the donors' approach to Ethiopia is overdue, and Britain - the
largest EU donor to Ethiopia - should lead the way.
As a first step, all major
<http://www.dagethiopia.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5&I
temid=29> donor-funded aid programmes should be independently monitored and
audited with a view to establishing how and to what extent they contribute
to political repression and to recommending serious reforms. At the same
time, donors should confront the Ethiopian
<http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/Butty-Ethiopia-HRW-Report-React-
Simon-21october10-105413168.html> government over its human-rights record,
including violations of the right to non-partisan treatment in the
distribution of the benefits of aid. Ethiopians deserve no less.
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