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 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.
Members
of the Nyangatom, one of the communities affected by the project,
loading donkeys by the river. Photograph by William Davison.
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”.
Source: Think Africa Press, ECADF
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