Economic and development analysis: Perspectives on economics, society, development, freedom & social justice. Leading issues in Oromo, Oromia, Africa & world affairs. Oromo News. African News. world News. Views. Formerly Oromia Quarterly
A survey says the al-Bashir & Fifa scandals and the xenophobic attacks have damaged the country’s image.
Media Tenor conducted a 20 day analysis of overseas news outlets this month looking at the major stories emanating from this country. Picture: AFP.
– A survey has found that South Africa’s image overseas has suffered substantially due to a number of major news stories with sport being the country’s only positive media export.
Media Tenor conducted a 20 day analysis of overseas news outlets this month looking at the major stories emanating from this country.
It says the stories on Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir and the xenophobic attacks have made world headlines substantially damaging the country’s image.
The research included 1,000 reports from 15 TV shows.
This involved major broadcasters in countries including the US, Britain, Italy, France, Germany and China.
The hasty exit by Sudan’s president, contrary to a court order, achieved the most South African coverage overseas, with the Fifa scandal and corruption also making news headlines.
Prior to the al-Bashir scandal and xenophobia, the Oscar Pistorius murder trial also made news headlines worldwide, adding to negative publicity.Media Tenor says the only notable good news about South Africa was the cricket World Cup in January and February with the Proteas making notable progress, but losing to New Zealand.
We spoke today with Ms. Veta Byrd-Perez of WhenAndWhereIEnter.org about the on-going struggle of African women in Latin America, and with Dr. Fido Ebba about the Oromo people in East Africa all in the context of what continues to be misrepresentations of White supremacist symbolism and violence.
From the start of Christianity introduction to Ethiopia, the North Western Cushitic Agaw people was suffering from multidimensional socio-economic prospective (such as religion, politics, social, economic, culture and language) for over 1600 years. With the rising and expansion of Christianity in the fourth century, the majority of Agaw were forced to accept Christianity following the conversion of the two Agaw king brothers, Aezana and saezana and received Christian name as Aberha and Atsibeha. Those who resisted and adhered to their original and former belief (Judaism and paganism) fled from North to South and South-East direction along Tekeze River and settled in Gondar and around Gondar and Lasta and gradually to North Shewa, Jemma and Abay rivers and beyond. The Agaw population who resisted for centuries long the state religion after conversion of majority had been divided into smaller enclaves (Awi, Kementy, Himita, Blen, Alien/Falasha and more others)…
Affordable and reliable electricity underpins every aspect of social and economic life. But Sub-Saharan Africa has an energy crisis that demands urgent political attention. Two in every three Africans, around 621 million in total, have no access to electricity at all.
Ethiopia, with a population of 94 million, consumes one-third of the electricity supplied to the 600,000 residents of Washington D.C. Greater London consumes more electricity than any country in Africa other than South Africa. By international standards much of Africa’s energy infrastructure is dilapidated, reflecting several decades of under-investment. According to the IEA, the average efficiency of Sub-Saharan Africa’s gas-fired power plants is around 38 per cent. Similarly, most of Africa’s coal-fired power plants employ sub-critical technologies, rather than the super-critical technologies that could generate far more electricity from the same amount of fuel. Recent super-critical coal-fired power plants built in China generate on average 30 per cent more electricity than those operating in Africa. Economic growth has intensified pressure on Africa’s creaking energy infrastructure. One symptom of that pressure is a boom in leasing of emergency power. Unable to meet base-load demand through the grid, governments are turning to high-cost energy providers using technologies designed to meet emergency needs. Low levels of power generation are both a symptom and a cause of wider development challenges. In part, Africa’s limited power generation is the product of low average incomes. But it is also a contributory factor in keeping incomes low. In that context, the widening energy gap between Africa and other regions is a matter of concern. There is a very real sense in which today’s inequalities in energy are tomorrow’s inequalities in economic growth, international trade and investment.
Unreliable power supply has created a buoyant market in diesel-powered generators. Around 40 per cent of businesses in Tanzania and Ethiopia operate their own generators, rising to over 50 per cent in Kenya.15 In Nigeria, around four in every five SMEs install their own generators.16 On average, electricity provided through diesel-fuelled back-up generators costs four times as much as power from grid.17 Diesel fuel is a significant cost for enterprises across Africa, even in less energy-intensive sectors such as finance and banking. According to McKinsey, diesel fuel represents around 60 per cent of operator network costs for mobile-phone operators.18 High cost and unreliable supply add to the cost of doing business in Africa, with damaging consequences for economic growth, investment and tax revenues. The World Bank has estimated the losses at 2-4 per cent of GDP.19 Lack of reliable and cost-effective electricity is among the top constraints to expansion in the manufacturing sector in nearly every Sub-Saharan country.20 Small and medium enterprises account for most of the job creation but face particularly severe problems, with around half citing the high cost and unreliability of supply as a barrier to enterprise development. Lack of electricity reinforces the poverty trap Restricted access to electricity has direct and damaging consequences for household poverty. Africa’s poor typically pay higher unit costs for energy than the rich. This is partly because the rich are subsidized, but also because the poor use inefficient energy sources including batteries, candles, and charcoal.If the poor could use more efficient energy sources they could reduce the share of income that they spend on energy and free up resources for other priority areas. It could also reduce the amount of time that women and girls spend collecting firewood and cooking. Households across Africa, including very poor households, spend a significant share of their income on energy. Data from 30 countries showed that the average share of household spending directed to energy was 13 per cent.21 The poorest households typically spend a larger share of their income on energy than richer households. In Uganda, the poorest one-fifth allocated 16 per cent of their income to energy, three times the share of their richest counterparts. Women and girls spend a lot of time collecting firewood and cooking with inefficient stoves. Factoring in the costs of this unpaid labour greatly inflates the economic costs that come with Africa’s energy deficits. Estimates by the World Bank put the losses for 2010 at US$38 billion or 3 per cent of GDP.
“We all witnessed the brutality and nihilism of the horrific attacks by Pakistani Taliban and Boko Haram on schoolchildren, the assassinations of Charlie Hebdo journalists, and numerous outrages and killings carried out by ISIL. The rise of ISIL was in part a consequence of, and illustrated the dangers of, atrocities committed by the government of Syria and failures of inclusive governance in Iraq. Meanwhile, governments in China, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iran, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, among others, continued to stifle free and open media and the development of civil society through the imprisonment of journalists, bloggers, and non-violent critics. In Thailand, the military overthrew a democratically-elected government, repealed the constitution, and severely limited civil liberties; subsequent efforts by the military government to rewrite the country’s constitution and recast its political intuitions raised concerns about lack of inclusivity in the process. In the face of all this, the human aspiration for political liberty and honest, non-abusive governance remained strong.” – Secretary’s Preface
Ethiopia is a federal republic. The ruling Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), a coalition of four ethnically based parties, controls the government. In 2012, following the death of former prime minister Meles Zenawi, parliament elected Hailemariam Desalegn as his successor. In national parliamentary elections in 2010, the EPRDF and affiliated parties won 545 of 547 seats to remain in power for a fourth consecutive five-year term. Although the relatively few international officials allowed to observe the elections concluded technical aspects of the vote were handled competently, some also noted an environment conducive to free and fair elections was not in place prior to the election. Authorities generally maintained control over the security forces, although Somali Region Special Police and local militias sometimes acted independently.
Other human rights problems included alleged arbitrary killings; alleged torture, beating, abuse, and mistreatment of detainees by security forces; reports of harsh and at times life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; detention without charge and lengthy pretrial detention; a weak, overburdened judiciary subject to political influence; infringement on citizens’ privacy rights, including illegal searches; alleged abuses in the implementation of the government’s “villagization” program; restrictions on academic freedom; restrictions on freedom of assembly, association, and movement; alleged interference in religious affairs; limits on citizens’ ability to change their government; police, administrative, and judicial corruption; violence and societal discrimination against women and abuse of children; female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C); trafficking in persons; societal discrimination against persons with disabilities; clashes between ethnic minorities; discrimination against persons based on their sexual orientation and against persons with HIV/AIDS; limits on worker rights; forced labor; and child labor, including forced child labor.
Impunity was a problem. The government, with some reported exceptions, generally did not take steps to prosecute or otherwise punish officials who committed abuses other than corruption.
Factions of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), an ethnically based, violent, and fragmented separatist group operating in the Somali Region, were responsible for abuses.
Section 1. Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including Freedom from:Share
a. Arbitrary or Unlawful Deprivation of Life
Members of the security forces reportedly committed killings.
On April 30, a peaceful student protest in Ambo, west of Addis Ababa, escalated into violence and resulted in the deaths of at least eight persons. Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that “witnesses said security forces fired live ammunition at peaceful protesters.”
There were no new developments in the credible allegations detainees died in detention as a result of arrests during the August 2013 Eid al-Fitr celebrations.
Scattered fighting continued between government forces–primarily regional government-backed militias–and elements of the ONLF. Clashes between ethnic groups resulted in injury and death.
On October 13, gunmen reportedly killed more than 40 security forces in Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region (SNNPR), according to local press and NGOs in the town of Gambella. According to reports, the clash occurred between a group of ethnic Majanger and Ethiopian national and local security forces.
b. Disappearance
Unlike in previous years, there were fewer credible reports of disappearances of civilians after clashes between security forces and rebel groups.
There were no developments in determining the whereabouts of 12 residents of Alamata town detained in January 2013 by security forces following protests against government plans to demolish illegal housing units.
c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
The constitution and law prohibit such practices; however, there were reports security officials tortured and otherwise abused detainees.
In April, two journalists/bloggers affiliated with the Zone 9 activist group accused police of beating and mistreating them. One journalist reported police beat him across the face, while another stated police beat the undersides of his feet (see section 2.a.). The Federal High Court regularly sought explanations from prison officials on allegations of mistreatment.
Sources widely believed police investigators often used physical abuse to extract confessions in Maekelawi, the central police investigation headquarters in Addis Ababa. HRW reported abuses, including torture, occurred at Maekelawi. In an October 2013 report, the HRW described beatings, stress positions, the hanging of detainees by their wrists from the ceiling, prolonged handcuffing, pouring of water over detainees, verbal threats, and solitary confinement at the facility. Authorities continued to restrict access by diplomats and NGOs to Maekelawi, although some NGOs reported limited access.
In 2010 the UN Committee Against Torture reported it was “deeply concerned” about “numerous, ongoing, and consistent allegations” concerning “the routine use of torture” by police, prison officers, and other members of the security forces–including the military–against political dissidents and opposition party members, students, alleged terrorists, and alleged supporters of violent separatist groups such as the ONLF and the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF). The committee reported such acts frequently occurred with the participation of, at the instigation of, or with the consent of commanding officers in police stations, detention centers, federal prisons, military bases, and unofficial or secret places of detention. Some reports of such abuses continued during the year. Based primarily on interviews with Oromo refugees in Uganda, Somaliland, and Kenya, Amnesty International (AI), which had been denied access to Ethiopia since 2011, reported thousands of ethnic Oromos, whom the government accused of terrorism, were arbitrarily arrested and in some cases tortured.
Prison and Detention Center Conditions
Prison and pretrial detention center conditions remained harsh and in some cases life threatening. There were reports that authorities beat and tortured prisoners. Medical attention following beatings reportedly was insufficient in some cases.
Physical Conditions: In 2012 there were 111,640 persons in prison, of whom approximately 2,500 were women and nearly 600 were children incarcerated with their mothers. Authorities sometimes incarcerated juveniles with adults. Male and female prisoners generally were separated.
Severe overcrowding was common, especially in prison sleeping quarters. The government provided approximately nine birr ($0.45) per prisoner per day for food, water, and health care, although this amount varied across the country. Many prisoners supplemented this amount with daily food deliveries from family members or by purchasing food from local vendors, although there were reports officials prevented some prisoners from receiving supplemental food from their families. Medical care was unreliable in federal prisons and almost nonexistent in regional prisons. Prisoners had only limited access to potable water, as did many in the country. Also water shortages caused unhygienic conditions, and most prisons lacked appropriate sanitary facilities. Many prisoners had serious health problems in detention but received little or no treatment. Information released by the Ministry of Health in 2012 stated nearly 62 percent of inmates in jails across the country suffered from mental health problems as a result of solitary confinement, overcrowding, and lack of adequate health-care facilities and services.
The country had six federal and 120 regional prisons. A local NGO ran model prisons in Adama and Mekele, with significantly better conditions than those found in other prisons. There also were many unofficial detention centers throughout the country, including in Dedessa, Bir Sheleko, Tolay, Hormat, Blate, Tatek, Jijiga, Holeta, and Senkele. Most were located at military camps.
Pretrial detention often occurred in police station detention facilities, where conditions varied widely. Reports regarding pretrial detention in police stations indicated poor hygiene and police abuse of detainees.
Administration: Due to the lack of transparency regarding incarceration, it was difficult to determine if recordkeeping was adequate. Authorities did not employ alternative sentencing for nonviolent offenders. Prisons did not have ombudspersons to respond to complaints. Legal aid clinics existed in some prisons for the benefit of prisoners. Authorities allowed the submission by detainees of complaints to judicial authorities without censorship. Courts sometimes declined to hear such complaints. The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and the Federal Police Commission sometimes investigated allegations of abuse, although there were reports detainees’ discussions with them were not carried out in private, which could inhibit their ability to speak freely.
The law permits prisoners to have visitors, although in some cases police did not allow pretrial detainees access to visitors (including family members and legal counsel). For example, the attorney for Arena Tigray party leader Abraha Desta detained in early July had been able to visit his client only once in a 28-day period. Family members of prisoners charged with terrorist activity alleged blocked access to the prisoners. There were also reports authorities denied those charged with terrorist activity visits with their lawyers or with representatives of the political parties to which they belonged. Prison officials continued to limit the number of individuals permitted to visit journalist Reyot Alemu.
Prisoners generally were permitted religious observance, but this varied by prison, and even by section within a prison, at the discretion of prison management. There were some allegations authorities denied detainees adequate locations in which to pray. Prisoners could voice complaints about prison conditions or treatment to the presiding judge during their trials.
Independent Monitoring: During the year the International Committee of the Red Cross visited prisons throughout the country. The government did not permit access to prisons by international human rights organizations.
Regional authorities allowed government and NGO representatives to meet regularly with prisoners without third parties present. Civil society representatives and family members were reportedly denied access to prisoners by prison officials, including access to individuals detained in undisclosed locations. The government-established EHRC, which is funded by parliament and subject to parliamentary review, monitored federal and regional detention centers and interviewed prison officials and prisoners in response to allegations of widespread human rights abuses. A local NGO continued to have access to various prison and detention facilities around the country.
Improvements: Some government and prison authorities cooperated with NGO efforts to improve prison conditions. Reports indicated some prison conditions, including the treatment of prisoners, improved upon completion of an NGO-sponsored local legal aid clinic in 2013, although specific data was not available.
d. Arbitrary Arrest or Detention
Although the constitution and law prohibit arbitrary arrest and detention, the government often ignored these provisions. There were many reports of arbitrary arrest and detention by police and security forces throughout the country.
Civilians, international NGOs, and other aid organizations operating in the Somali Region reported government security forces and local militias committed abuses such as arbitrary arrest.
Role of the Police and Security Apparatus
The Federal Police reports to the Ministry of Federal Affairs, which is subject to parliamentary oversight. The oversight was loose. Each of the country’s nine regions has a state or special police force that reports to the regional civilian authorities. Local militias operated across the country in loose coordination with regional and federal police and the military, with the degree of coordination varying by region. In many cases these militias functioned as extensions of the ruling party.
Security forces were effective, but impunity remained a serious problem. The mechanisms used to investigate abuses by federal police were not known. There continued to be reports of abuse, including killings, by the Somali Region Special Police. The government rarely publicly disclosed the results of investigations into abuses by local security forces, such as arbitrary detention and beatings of civilians.
The government continued to support human rights training for police and army personnel. In 2013-14 the EHRC conducted training sessions for 1,622 police officers and 577 prison police on basic human rights concepts as well as rights of detained individuals as provided in the National Human Rights Action Plan. The government continued to accept assistance from certain NGOs and the EHRC to improve and professionalize its human rights training and curriculum by including more material on the constitution and international human rights treaties and conventions.
Arrest Procedures and Treatment of Detainees
Although the constitution and law require that detainees be brought to court and charged within 48 hours of arrest, authorities did not always respect this requirement. With a warrant, persons suspected of serious offenses may be detained for 14 days without charge and for additional 14-day periods if an investigation continues. Under the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation (ATP), police may request to hold persons without charge for 28-day periods, up to a maximum of four months, while an investigation is conducted. The law prohibits detention in any facility other than an official detention center; however, local militias and other formal and informal law enforcement entities used dozens of unofficial local detention centers.
A functioning bail system was in place. Bail was not available for persons charged with terrorism, murder, treason, and corruption. In most cases authorities set bail between 500 and 10,000 birr ($25 and $500), which most citizens could not afford. The government provided public defenders for detainees unable to afford private legal counsel, but only when their cases went to court. There were reports that while some detainees were in pretrial detention, authorities allowed them little or no contact with legal counsel, did not provide full information on their health status, and did not allow family visits.
Arbitrary Arrest: Authorities regularly detained persons without warrants. For example, on April 30, security officials in Addis Ababa detained Zekarias Yemanebirhan, Addis Ababa chairman of the opposition political party Unity for Democracy and Justice (UDJ), and Nebiyu Hailu, a journalist for UDJ’sFinote Netsanet newspaper, for allegedly violating zoning restrictions while mobilizing supporters in advance of a UDJ protest. On May 12, authorities released both without charge.
Pretrial Detention: Some detainees reported being held for several years without charge and without trial. Information on the percentage of the detainee population in pretrial detention and the average length of time held was not available. Trial delays were most often caused by lengthy legal procedures, the large numbers of detainees, judicial inefficiency, and staffing shortages.
Amnesty: On September 11, in keeping with a long-standing tradition of issuing pardons at the Ethiopian New Year, the federal government pardoned 995 prisoners. Regional governments also pardoned persons. For example, in 2013 the SNNPR regional government pardoned 1,984 prisoners, the Oromia regional government pardoned 2,604, and the Amhara regional government pardoned 2,084.
e. Denial of Fair Public Trial
The law provides for an independent judiciary. Although the civil courts operated with a large degree of independence, the criminal courts remained weak, overburdened, and subject to political influence. The constitution recognizes both religious and traditional or customary courts.
Trial Procedures
By law accused persons have the right to a fair public trial by a court of law within a “reasonable time,” a presumption of innocence, the right to be represented by legal counsel of their choice, and the right to appeal. The law provides defendants the right not to self-incriminate. The law gives defendants the right to present witnesses and evidence in their defense, cross-examine prosecution witnesses, and access government-held evidence. The government did not always allow defendants to access evidence it held. The court system does not use jury trials. Judicial inefficiency and lack of qualified staff often resulted in serious delays in trial proceedings and made the application of the law unpredictable. The government continued to train lower-court judges and prosecutors on effective judicial administration. Defendants were often unaware of the specific charges against them until the commencement of their trials; this also caused defense attorneys to be unprepared to provide an adequate defense.
The Public Defender’s Office provided legal counsel to indigent defendants, although its scope and quality of service remained limited due to the shortage of attorneys. Numerous free legal aid clinics around the country, based primarily at universities, provided advice to clients. In certain areas of the country, the law allows volunteers, such as law students and professors, to represent clients in court on a pro bono basis.
On February 3, the Federal High Court re-opened to the public the trial of 19 Muslims identified with July 2012 protests. The trial proceedings were previously closed for alleged national security and witness safety concerns.
Many citizens residing in rural areas generally had little access to formal judicial systems and relied on traditional mechanisms for resolving conflict. By law all parties to a dispute must agree to use a traditional or religious court before such a court may hear a case, and either party may appeal to a regular court at any time. Sharia (Islamic law) courts may hear religious and family cases involving Muslims. Sharia courts received some funding from the government and adjudicated the majority of cases in the Somali and Afar regions, which are predominantly Muslim. In addition other traditional systems of justice, such as councils of elders, continued to function. Some women stated they lacked access to free and fair hearings in the traditional court system because they were excluded by custom from participation in councils of elders and because of strong gender discrimination in rural areas.
The Access to Justice and Legal Awareness (AJLA) project, at Haramaya University, began in June 2013. The AJLA provided previously unavailable legal redress and protection for the neediest populations across East/West Hararghe Zones in Oromia and the Harari Region. By the end of the year, 128,357 vulnerable persons (73,905 women and 54,452 men) had benefited from these previously nonexistent legal services.
Political Prisoners and Detainees
Estimates by human rights groups and diplomatic missions regarding the number of political prisoners varied widely. The government did not permit access to prisoners by international human rights organizations. There were NGO reports of individuals held in unofficial detention centers throughout the country, particularly in military barracks, but also in private offices and homes.
All of the journalists, opposition members, and activists previously convicted and jailed under the ATP remained in prison.
In February the Federal Court of First Instance in Addis Ababa convicted Asrat Tassay, a prominent member of the UDJ, of contempt of court after he wrote in an opinion piece, “We should not expect justice from [Ethiopian] courts.” The judge sentenced Asrat to five months’ imprisonment but immediately suspended the sentence, opting for a two-year probationary period instead.
On July 9, police detained four opposition political-party leaders in Addis Ababa and the northern city of Mekelle in separate operations. Police reportedly did not bring Habtamu Ayalew, Daniel Shibeshi, Yeshiways Assefa, and Abraha Desta before a judge within 48 hours of their detention, as required by law. The group’s defense attorney and other political party leaders alleged police denied them access to the detainees. Police had not brought formal charges against the four defendants by year’s end.
In 2012 the government asked the Federal High Court to freeze the assets of Eskinder Nega and Andualem Arage, both convicted of terrorism and treason, while investigating whether their assets were used in conjunction with commission of the crimes for which they were convicted. The Federal High Court had not issued a decision by year’s end.
Civil Judicial Procedures and Remedies
The law provides citizens the right to appeal human rights violations in civil court. No such cases were filed during the year.
f. Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, or Correspondence
The law requires authorities to obtain judicial warrants to search private property; police, however, often ignored the law, and there were no reports of courts excluding evidence obtained without warrants.
There were reports throughout the year police carried out nighttime raids of Muslims’ homes in Addis Ababa to collect evidence against persons they alleged to be terrorists. The government claimed the police had warrants.
Opposition political party leaders reported suspicions of telephone tapping and other electronic eavesdropping, and they alleged government agents attempted to lure them into illegal acts by calling and pretending to be representatives of groups–designated by the parliament as terrorist organizations–interested in making financial donations.
The government reportedly used a widespread system of paid informants to report on the activities of particular individuals. Opposition members reported ruling party operatives and militia members made intimidating and unwelcome visits to their homes and offices.
Security forces continued to detain family members of persons sought for questioning by the government.
The national and regional governments continued to put in place “villagization” plans in the Afar, Benishangul-Gumuz, Gambella, SNNPR, and Somali regions. These plans involved the relocation by regional governments of scattered rural populations from arid or semiarid lands vulnerable to recurring droughts into designated clusters. The stated purposes of villagization were to improve the provision of government services (i.e., health care, education, and clean water), protect vulnerable communities from natural disasters and attacks, and change environmentally destructive patterns of shifting cultivation. Some observers alleged the purpose was to enable the large-scale leasing of land for commercial agriculture. The government described the villagization program as strictly voluntary.
International donors reported assessments from more than 18 visits to villagization sites since 2011 did not corroborate allegations of systematic human rights violations in this program. They found problems such as delays in establishing promised infrastructure. Communities and individual families appeared to have agreed to move based on assurances from authorities of food aid, health and education services, and land, although in some instances communities moved before adequate basic services such as water pumps and shelter were in place in the new locations. International human rights organizations, however, continued to express concern regarding the villagization process. A 2013 report by the Oakland Institute claimed the military forcibly relocated communities and committed human rights violations in the Omo Valley. The report noted that during a 2012 assessment in the South Omo Valley, donor representatives heard testimony from community members of human rights abuses.
Section 2. Respect for Civil Liberties, Including:Share
a. Freedom of Speech and Press
The constitution and law provide for freedom of speech and press; however, authorities arrested, detained, charged, and prosecuted journalists and other persons whom they perceived as critical of the government. Some journalists, editors, and publishers fled the country, fearing probable detention. At year’s end at least 16 journalists remained in detention; of these, 10 were arrested and charged during the year, and all but one were denied bail and remain detained; four journalists and publishers were charged, tried, and convicted in absentia.
Freedom of Speech: Authorities arrested and harassed persons for criticizing the government. NGOs reported cases of torture of individuals critical of the government. The government attempted to impede criticism through various forms of intimidation, including detention of journalists and opposition activists and monitoring and interference in the activities of political opposition groups. The authorities pressed charges against several journalists, bloggers, and independently run publications. Some persons feared authorities would retaliate against them for discussing security force abuses.
Press Freedoms: The government continued to take action to close independent newspapers. On August 4, the Ministry of Justice issued a statement accusing independently run publications Enqu, Fact, Addis Guday, Lomi, Jano, and Afro Times of “repeated acts of incitement” intended “to cause a violent overthrow of the constitutional order.” In most cases articles cited as examples of incitement were mainly critical of government action. Some called for protests of such actions but rarely, if ever, for violent action. One week after issuing the initial statement, the government began pressing criminal charges against the publications and their staff. On October 7, the Federal Court tried and sentenced, in absentia, the managers of Addis Guday, Lomi, and Factmagazines. The managers were charged with inciting violent revolts, printing and distributing unfounded rumors, and conspiring to abolish unlawfully the constitutional system of the country. Their sentences ranged from three years and three months to three years and 11 months.
The remaining 18 independent newspapers had a combined weekly circulation in Addis Ababa of more than 144,000. Most newspapers were printed on a weekly or biweekly basis, with the exception of the state-owned Amharic and English dailies and the privately run Daily Monitor.
The government controlled the only television station that broadcast nationally, which, along with radio, was the primary source of news for much of the population. Six private FM radio stations broadcast in the capital, one private radio station broadcast in the northern Tigray Region, and at least 19 community radio stations broadcast in the regions. State-run Ethiopian Radio had the largest broadcast range in the country, followed by Fana Radio, which was affiliated with the ruling party.
Government-controlled media closely reflected the views of the government and the ruling EPRDF. The government periodically jammed foreign broadcasts. The law prohibits political and religious organizations and foreigners from owning broadcast stations.
Violence and Harassment: The government continued to arrest, harass, and prosecute journalists. This included the continuing prosecution of three persons associated with the defunct Muslim Affairs magazine under the antiterrorism proclamation. There were also allegations some journalists were tortured in Maekelawi prison.
On April 25-26, police detained six bloggers affiliated with the Zone 9 activist group and three independent journalists in Addis Ababa and Ambo, a town west of the capital. Police subsequently searched the detainees’ homes and seized personal property, including laptops, and prohibited family members and supporters from visiting them in detention. The Federal High Court charged the group under the ATP in July and denied the defendants bail. The trial continued at year’s end.
On October 27, a court sentenced Temesgen Desalegn to three years in jail for “provocation and dissemination of inaccurate information.” In 2012 the authorities initiated court proceedings against Desalegn, former editor in chief of the defunct Feteh newspaper.
Censorship or Content Restrictions: Government harassment caused journalists to avoid reporting on sensitive topics. Many private newspapers reported informal editorial control by the government through article placement requests and calls from government officials concerning articles perceived as critical of the government. Private sector and government journalists routinely practiced self-censorship.
Libel Laws/National Security: The government used the ATP to suppress criticism. Journalists feared covering five groups designated by parliament in 2011 as terrorist organizations (Ginbot 7, the ONLF, the OLF, al-Qaida, and al-Shabaab), citing ambiguity on whether reporting on these groups might be punishable under the law. Several journalists, both local and foreign correspondents, reported an increase in self-censorship.
The government used libel laws to suppress criticism.
On February 11, police temporarily detained Daniel Tefera, the former UDJ organization affairs head, for questioning in relation to allegations of defamation following Tefera’s involvement in the writing of a former parliamentarian’s biography. Police did not file formal charges.
On January 28, the Sidama Zone High Court in the southwestern city of Hawassa (Awassa) acquitted the editor in chief, managing editor, and publisher of the newspaper Ethio-Mihdar on defamation charges. Officials from Hawassa University had filed the charges against the Amharic-language weekly in response to a June 2013 article reporting allegations of corruption by university employees. According to media reports, the judge said the defendants “did the right thing by exposing faulty practices committed by public institutions.”
Internet Freedom
The state-owned Ethio Telecom was the only internet service provider in the country. The government restricted access to the internet and blocked several websites, including blogs, opposition websites, and websites of Ginbot 7, the OLF, and the ONLF. The government also temporarily blocked news sites such as al-Jazeera. Websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Yahoo! were inaccessible at times. Several news blogs and websites run by opposition diaspora groups were not accessible. These included Addis Neger, Nazret, Ethiopian Review, CyberEthiopia, Quatero Amharic Magazine, Tensae Ethiopia, and the Ethiopian Media Forum. Authorities took steps to block access to Virtual Private Network providers that let users circumvent government screening of internet browsing and e-mail. Authorities monitored telephone calls, text messages, and e-mails. There were reports such surveillance resulted in arrests. According to the International Telecommunication Union, approximately 1.9 percent of individuals used the internet in 2013.
In 2013 Citizen Lab, a Canadian research center at the University of Toronto, identified 25 countries, including Ethiopia, that host servers linked to FinFisher surveillance software. According to the report, “FinFisher has gained notoriety because it has been used in targeted attacks against human rights campaigners and opposition activists in countries with questionable human rights records.” A “FinSpy” campaign in the country allegedly “used pictures of Ginbot 7, an Ethiopian opposition group, as bait to infect users.”
Academic Freedom and Cultural Events
The government restricted academic freedom, including through decisions on student enrollment, teachers’ appointments, and curriculums. Authorities frequently restricted speech, expression, and assembly on university and high school campuses.
The ruling party, via the Ministry of Education, continued to give preference to students loyal to the party in assignments to postgraduate programs. Some university staff members commented priority for employment after graduation in all fields was given to students who joined the party.
Authorities limited teachers’ ability to deviate from official lesson plans. Numerous anecdotal reports suggested non-EPRDF members were more likely to be transferred to undesirable posts and bypassed for promotions. There were unspecified reports of teachers not affiliated with the EPRDF being summarily dismissed for failure to attend party meetings. There continued to be a lack of transparency in academic staffing decisions, with numerous complaints from individuals in the academic community alleging bias based on party membership, ethnicity, or religion.
According to multiple credible sources, teachers and high school students in grade 10 and above were required to attend training on the concepts of revolutionary democracy and EPRDF party ideology. In August the Ministry of Education announced a requirement that the 116,000 new and 250,000 existing university students attend mandatory government policy training.
A separate Ministry of Education directive prohibits private universities from offering degree programs in law and teacher education. The directive also requires public universities to align their curriculum offerings with the ministry’s policy of a 70/30 ratio between science and social science academic programs. As a result the number of students studying social sciences and the humanities at public institutions continued to decrease; private universities focused heavily on the social sciences.
Reports indicated a pattern of surveillance and arbitrary arrests of Oromo University students based on suspicion of holding dissenting opinions or participation in peaceful demonstrations. A 2014 AI report indicated students were also expelled or suspended as a result of such suspicions.
b. Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association
Freedom of Assembly
The constitution and law provide for freedom of assembly; however, the government did not always respect this right. Organizers of large public meetings or demonstrations must notify the government 48 hours in advance and obtain a permit. Authorities may not refuse to grant a permit but may require the event be held at a different time or place for reasons of public safety or freedom of movement. If authorities determine an event should be held at another time or place, the law requires organizers be notified in writing within 12 hours of the time of submission of their request.
The government denied some requests by opposition political parties to hold protests but permitted other requests for demonstrations. According to the Addis Ababa City Administration, during the year political parties made 22 requests to conduct peaceful demonstrations, of which the city administration granted 13 of the requests and rejected nine. Organizers in most cases alleged government interference, and authorities required several of the protests to move to different dates or locations from those the organizers requested. Protest organizers alleged the government’s claims of needing to move the protests based on public safety concerns were not credible. During April and May, demonstrations occurred on university campuses throughout the Oromia Region against a draft development plan for Addis Ababa that would expand the capital city into towns previously controlled by the surrounding Oromia Region. There were reports of security forces beating and killing protesters at these demonstrations.
Local government officials, almost all of whom were affiliated with the EPRDF, controlled access to municipal halls, and there were many complaints from opposition parties local officials denied or otherwise obstructed the scheduling of opposition parties’ use of halls for lawful political rallies. There were numerous credible reports owners of hotels and other large facilities cited unspecified internal rules forbidding political parties from utilizing their spaces for gatherings.
Regional governments, including the Addis Ababa regional administration, were reluctant to grant permits or provide security for large meetings.
The government arrested persons in relation to opposition demonstrations. For example, on January 30, police temporarily detained Semayawi Party members as the party announced plans to hold a demonstration on February 2 in Gondar, as well as UDJ members as they announced plans for a public rally in April.
In January according to media reports, government officials in the northern city of Adigrat temporarily detained two members of opposition political party Arena Tigray and then beat other party members as Arena Tigray announced plans to hold a party conference on January 26. Arena Tigray member Asgeda Gebreselassie was reportedly admitted to a hospital with injuries caused by government officials.
In March police temporarily detained UDJ members meeting in a private home in the southern town of Wolaita Sodo and accused them of holding an illegal meeting. Police reportedly destroyed the detainees’ cell phones by dipping them in chemicals.
On July 18, police detained 14 persons, primarily Muslim worshippers, and two Semayawi Party members following protests at the Anwar Mosque. After nearly one month, the detainees, some of whom reportedly suffered injuries during clashes with police, were released on bail.
Freedom of Association
Although the law provides for freedom of association and the right to engage in unrestricted peaceful political activity, the government limited this right.
A report of the UN special rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association stated, “The enforcement of these [the CSO law] provisions has a devastating impact on individuals’ ability to form and operate associations effectively.”
The CSO law bans anonymous donations to NGOs. All potential donors were therefore aware their names would be public knowledge. The same was true concerning all donations made to political parties.
International NGOs seeking to operate in the country had to submit an application via Ethiopian embassies abroad, which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs then submitted to the Charities and Societies Agency.
d. Freedom of Movement, Internally Displaced Persons, Protection of Refugees, and Stateless Persons
Although the law provides for freedom of internal movement, foreign travel, emigration, and repatriation, the government restricted some of these rights.
The government cooperated with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and other humanitarian organizations in providing protection and assistance to internally displaced persons (IDPs), refugees, returning refugees, asylum seekers, stateless persons, and other persons of concern; however, at times authorities or armed groups limited the ability of humanitarian organizations to operate in areas of insecurity, such as on the country’s borders.
Humanitarian organizations reported 32 incidents that impeded humanitarian work in the first half of the year, compared with 36 such incidents during the same period in 2013. The majority of these cases were in the Somali Region. The incidents included hostility toward and violence against humanitarian personnel, theft of assets, interference with the implementation of humanitarian programs, and restrictions on importation of personnel and goods into the country for humanitarian work. This data referred broadly to humanitarian work and was not limited to activities focusing on IDPs or refugees.
Access to Nogob (formerly Fik) Zone in the Somali Region improved during the year. Authorities permitted several government-led, multi-agency missions including UN and NGO representatives to visit the area. Access to other parts of the Somali Region, particularly those bordering Somalia, worsened due to security concerns stemming from reports of an increase in al-Shabaab terrorists operating in these areas. In several cases NGOs delayed travel to program sites and could not assess needs. Following credible information about a possible terrorist threat against international staff, UN agencies temporarily withdrew some of their international staff from Dollo Ado in June but began to return them in August. Attacks on vehicles carrying humanitarian personnel, assault on humanitarian staff members, and harassment, including arbitrary detention, reportedly continued.
In-country Movement: The government continued to relax but did not completely remove restrictions on the movement of persons into and within the Somali Region, continuing to argue that ONLF and al-Shabaab terrorists from neighboring Somalia posed a security threat (see section 2.d., Internally Displaced Persons). Security concerns forced a temporary halt of deliveries of food and medicine in the limited areas affected by fighting. The government continued a policy that allowed refugees to live outside of a camp. According to the Administration for Returnees and Refugee Affairs (ARRA), which managed the out-of-camp program, as of August there were2,993 individuals living outside the camps (2,806 in Addis Ababa and surrounding areas and 187 from Shire), compared with 3,412 in 2012. Prior to this policy, the government gave such permission primarily to attend higher-education institutions, undergo medical treatment, or avoid security threats at the camps.
Foreign Travel: A 2013 ban on unskilled workers travelling to the Middle East for employment continued in effect at year’s end. The ban did not affect citizens travelling for investment or business reasons. The government stated it issued the ban to prevent harassment, intimidation, and trauma suffered by those working abroad, particularly in the Middle East, as domestic employees.
On March 21, National Intelligence and Security Service officials at Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa prevented Yilekal Getnet, chairman of the political opposition Semayawi Party, from travelling abroad for an exchange program sponsored by a foreign government.
Exile: Several citizens sought political asylum in other countries or remained abroad in self-imposed exile.
Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs)
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimated there were 426,736 IDPs in the country as of June, an increase of 51,091 from June 2013. According to the IOM, an estimated 71.4 percent of all IDPs were considered “protracted” IDPs, for whom durable solutions (return to home areas, local integration, and resettlement in other parts of the country) were not possible at the time. This was due to lack of resolution of conflicts, lack of political decisions or resources to support local integration, or undesirability of resettlement to other areas of the country.
Categories and totals of IDPs experiencing protracted displacement included victims of interclan and cross-border conflict (304,707), flooding (1,477), and volcanic eruptions (1,800). Seventy-two percent of the IDPs (308,770) resided in Somali Region; 10.3 percent (44,094) were in Oromia; 9.7 percent (41,489) in Gambella; 1.1 percent (4,580) in Harar; 0.6 percent (2,501) in SNNPR; and 5.9 percent (25,302) were in Afar Region.
Significant populations of IDPs experiencing protracted displacement included an estimated 3,500 households displaced in July 2013 in East Hararghe Zone, 1,310 households displaced in February 2013 in West Hararghe Zone, and nearly 2,000 households displaced in 2008 and 2009 in the border town of Moyale. Approximately 12,000 IDPs remained in the Gambella Region after fleeing conflicts that occurred in 2009.
Conflicts and natural disasters contributed to a rise in the number of IDPs. Conflict in the SNNPR’s South Omo Valley displaced 300 households. In March, following violence between Guji and Borena communities in the Oromia Region, approximately 120 persons were killed and another 30,700 persons displaced. In April conflict arose between Afar and Somali populations around Siti Zone, reportedly leading to the displacement of 900 households and the destruction of homes and other local infrastructure. In mid-September at least 600 households were displaced in Majang Zone of Gambella due to intercommunal violence between ethnic Majang and highlanders. In addition, storms caused flooding, which led to displacements in Afar, Gambella, SNNPR, and Somali Regions.
Following a change in Saudi Arabia’s foreign labor legislation, between mid-November 2013 and mid-March, Saudi Arabia unexpectedly deported 163,018 Ethiopian migrants. At the peak of the operation in November and December 2013, approximately 7,000 Ethiopians returned from Saudi Arabia per day. Humanitarian organizations worked with the government to provide medical care, water, food, and transportation for the returnees. The government collaborated with the Saudi Arabian government to ensure proper delivery and protection of the returnees’ possessions. As of mid-March, 94 percent of the returnees had received postarrival assistance. The government also assigned a significant number of personnel to coordinate the return operation and posted full-time staff at the transit sites set up with the help of the international community.
The government, through the Disaster Risk Management Food Security Sector (DRMFSS), continued to play an active role in delivering humanitarian assistance to IDPs. Federal and local DRMFSS officials collaborated with the IOM and its partners in monitoring IDP populations. In addition the Somali Regional State-level Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Bureau, in collaboration with the IOM and other international actors, set up a Durable Solutions Working Group to seek sustainable solutions for the protracted IDP caseload in the Somali Region.
Protection of Refugees
Access to Asylum: The law provides for the granting of asylum or refugee status, and the government has established a system for providing protection to refugees.
According to the UNHCR, by late December the country hosted 644,168 refugees. The majority of refugees were from South Sudan (248,580) and Somalia (244,066), with others coming from Eritrea (111,321), Sudan (35,606), and other countries (4,595), particularly Kenya.
The UNHCR, the ARRA, and humanitarian agencies continued to care for Sudanese arrivals fleeing from conflict in Sudan’s Blue Nile State. The government also extended support to South Sudanese asylum seekers from South Sudan’s Jonglei and Upper Nile states. As of December more than 193,960 individuals had sought refuge in Ethiopia due to the political conflict that erupted in South Sudan in December 2013.
Eritrean asylum seekers continued to arrive in the country. This included a large number of unaccompanied minors. Many Eritreans who arrived in the country regularly departed for secondary migration through Egypt and Sudan to go to Israel, Europe, and other final destinations.
Employment: The government did not grant refugees work permits.
Access to Basic Services: The UNHCR and the ARRA, with support from NGOs, provided refugees in camps with basic services including health, education, water, sanitation, and hygiene. For those outside of camps, there were no reports of discrimination in access to public services.
Durable Solutions: The government granted refugee status to asylum seekers from Eritrea, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan. The government welcomed refugees to settle permanently in the country but did not offer a path to citizenship or facilitate integration. It permitted Eritrean refugees to live outside refugee camps provided they sustained themselves financially. The government provided some support for Eritreans who were pursuing higher education. As of December, 6,553 refugees had departed the country for resettlement.
Section 3. Respect for Political Rights: The Right of Citizens to Change Their GovernmentShare
The constitution and law provide citizens the ability to change their government peacefully. The ruling party’s electoral advantages, however, limited this ability.
Elections and Political Participation
Recent Elections: In August 2012, following the death of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, the ruling EPRDF elected Hailemariam Desalegn to take Meles’s place as chairman of the party and subsequently nominated him for the post of prime minister. In September 2012 parliament elected Hailemariam as prime minister.
In the 2010 national parliamentary elections, the EPRDF and affiliated parties won 545 of 547 seats to remain in power for a fourth consecutive five-year term. Government restrictions severely limited independent observation of the vote. Although the relatively few international officials allowed to observe the elections concluded technical aspects of the vote were handled competently, some also noted the lack of an environment conducive to free and fair elections prior to election day. Several laws, regulations, and procedures implemented since the 2005 national elections created a clear advantage for the EPRDF throughout the electoral process. There was ample evidence unfair government tactics, including intimidation of opposition candidates and supporters, enlarged the EPRDF victory. In addition voter education was limited to information about technical voting procedures and was provided by the National Electoral Board just days before voting began.
The African Union, whose observers arrived one week before the vote, deemed the elections to be free and fair. The EU, some of whose observers arrived a few months before the vote, concluded the elections fell short of international standards for transparency and failed to provide a level playing field for opposition parties. The EU observed a “climate of apprehension and insecurity,” noting the volume and consistency of complaints of harassment and intimidation by opposition parties was “a matter of concern” and had to be taken into consideration “in the overall assessment of the electoral process.”
The EPRDF demonstrated its continued dominance in nationwide elections for local and city council positions held in 2013. EPRDF-affiliated parties won all but five of approximately 3.6 million seats; 33 opposition parties boycotted the elections.
Political Parties and Political Participation: Political parties were predominantly ethnically based. The government, controlled by the ruling EPRDF, restricted media freedom and arrested opposition members. Constituent parties of the EPRDF conferred advantages upon their members; the parties directly owned many businesses and were broadly perceived to award jobs and business contracts to loyal supporters. Several opposition political parties reported difficulty in renting homes or buildings in which to open offices, citing visits by EPRDF members to the landlords to persuade or threaten them not to rent property to these parties.
There were reports authorities terminated the employment of teachers and other government workers if they belonged to opposition political parties. According to Oromo opposition groups, the Oromia regional government continued to threaten to dismiss opposition party members, particularly teachers, from their jobs. Government officials alleged many members of legitimate Oromo opposition parties were secretly OLF members and more broadly that members of many opposition parties had ties to Ginbot 7. At the university level, members of Medrek and its constituent parties were able to teach. There were reports unemployed youths not affiliated with the ruling coalition sometimes had trouble receiving the “support letters” from their kebeles (neighborhoods or wards) necessary to get jobs.
Registered political parties must receive permission from regional governments to open and occupy local offices.
Participation of Women and Minorities: No laws or cultural or traditional practices prevented women or minorities from voting or participating in political life on the same basis as men or nonminority citizens, although women were significantly underrepresented in both elected and appointed positions. The Tigray Regional Council included the highest proportion of women nationwide, at 48.5 percent.
The government’s policy of ethnic federalism led to the creation of individual constituencies to provide for representation of all major ethnic groups in the House of People’s Representatives. There were more than 80 ethnic groups, and small groups lacked representation in the legislature. There were 24 nationality groups in six regional states (Tigray, Amhara, Beneshangul-Gumuz, the SNNPR, Gambella, and Harar) that did not have a sufficient population to qualify for constituency seats based on the 2007 census; however, in the 2010 elections, individuals from these nationality groups competed for 24 special seats in the House of People’s Representatives. Additionally these 24 nationality groups have one seat each in the House of Federation.
Women held three of the 22 federal government ministerial positions, including one of three deputy prime minister positions and 152 of 547 seats in the national parliament.
Section 4. Corruption and Lack of Transparency in GovernmentShare
The law provides criminal penalties for corruption by officials. Despite the government’s prosecution of numerous officials for corruption, some officials continued to engage in corrupt practices. Corruption, especially the solicitation of bribes, remained a problem among low-level bureaucrats. Police and judicial corruption also continued to be problems. Some government officials appeared to manipulate the privatization process, and state- and party-owned businesses received preferential access to land leases and credit.
Corruption: The Ministry of Justice has primary responsibility for combating corruption, largely through the Federal Ethics and Anticorruption Commission (FEACC).
The FEACC continued criminal proceedings against the director general of the Ethiopian Revenues and Customs Authority, his deputy, and other government officials and private business leaders for alleged corrupt practices. On January 10, Yaregal Ayesheshum, former president of the Benishangul Gumuz Regional State, was sentenced to seven years in prison and fined 20,000 birr ($1,000) for “abuse of power” and corruption.
Financial Disclosure: The law requires all government officials and employees to register their wealth and personal property officially. The president and prime minister registered their assets. By June approximately 80,000 government officials had registered their assets as required by law (the 2010 Asset Disclosure and Registration Proclamation).
The FEACC held financial disclosure records. According to law any person seeking access to these records may do so by making a request in writing, although access to information on family assets may be restricted unless the FEACC deems the disclosure necessary. The law includes financial and criminal sanctions for noncompliance.
Public Access to Information: The law provides for public access to government information, but access was largely restricted. The law includes a sufficiently narrow list of exceptions outlining the grounds for nondisclosure. Responses generally must be made within 30 days of a written request, and fees may not exceed the actual cost of responding to the request. The law includes mechanisms for punishing officials for noncompliance, as well as appeal mechanisms for review of disclosure denials. Information on the number of disclosures or denials during the year was not available.
The government publishes laws and regulations in the national gazette prior to their taking effect. The Government Communications Affairs Office managed contacts between the government, the press, and the public; the private press reported the government rarely responded to its queries.
Section 5. Governmental Attitude Regarding International and Nongovernmental Investigation of Alleged Violations of Human RightsShare
A few domestic human rights groups operated but with significant government restrictions. The government was generally distrustful and wary of domestic human rights groups and international observers. State-controlled media were critical of international human rights groups such as HRW.
The CSO law prohibits charities, societies, and associations (NGOs or CSOs) that receive more than 10 percent of their funding from foreign sources from engaging in activities that advance human and democratic rights or promote equality of nations, nationalities, peoples, genders, and religions; the rights of children and persons with disabilities; conflict resolution or reconciliation; or the efficiency of justice and law enforcement services. The law severely curtailed civil society’s ability to raise questions of good governance, human rights, corruption, and transparency, and forced many local and international NGOs working on good governance and human rights to either close or cease advocacy. In 2012 the UN high commissioner for human rights expressed concern that civil society space “has rapidly shrunk” since the CSO law’s enactment. By year’s end approximately 3,056 NGOs had registered under the CSO law. Of these, however, only four groups were actively engaged in human rights-based advocacy.
Some human rights defender organizations continued to register either as local charities, meaning they could not raise more than 10 percent of their funds from foreign donors but could act in the specified areas, or as resident charities, which allowed foreign donations above 10 percent but prohibited advocacy activities in those areas.
One of several sets of the law’s implementing regulations, commonly known as the 70/30 rule, caps administrative spending at 30 percent of an organization’s operating budget. The regulations define training of teachers, agricultural and health extension workers, and other government officials as an “administrative” cost, contending the training does not directly affect beneficiaries, thus limiting the number of training programs that can be provided by development assistance partners who prefer to employ train-the-trainer models to reach more persons. The government addressed application of this regulation on a case-by-case basis. A Civil Society Sector Working Group, cochaired by the Ministry of Federal Affairs, three civil society organizations, and representatives of the donor community, convened periodically to monitor and discuss challenges that arose as the law was implemented.
The government denied most NGOs access to federal prisons, police stations, and undisclosed places of detention. The government permitted a local NGO, one of four organizations granted an exemption enabling them to raise unlimited funds from foreign sources and to engage in human rights advocacy, to visit prisoners. Some NGOs played a positive role in improving prisoners’ chances for clemency.
Due to security concerns, authorities limited access of human rights organizations, the media, humanitarian agencies, and diplomatic missions to conflict-affected areas, although it continued to ease such restrictions. Humanitarian access in the Somali Region in particular continued to improve; however, due to security concerns, some restrictions remained. The government lacked a clear policy on NGO access to sensitive areas, leading regional government officials and military officials frequently to refer requests for access to the federal government. Officials required journalists to register before entering conflict regions. There were isolated reports of regional police or local militias blocking NGOs’ access to particular locations on particular days, citing security concerns. Some government agencies limited project activities for security reasons.
Some persons feared authorities would retaliate against them if they met with NGOs and foreign government officials who were investigating allegations of abuse.
The United Nations or Other International Bodies: Requests to visit the country from the UN special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment remained unanswered.
Government Human Rights Bodies: The EHRC investigated human rights complaints and produced annual and thematic reports. The commission operated 112 legal aid centers in collaboration with 22 universities and two civil society organizations, the Ethiopian Women Lawyers’ Association and the Ethiopian Christian Lawyers Fellowship. The commission also signed cooperative agreements with Axum, Wolayta, Debre Berhan, and Jijiga universities.
The EHRC reported to parliament that in 2013-14 it had accepted 1,037 human rights-related grievances and completed investigations into 134 cases (13 percent of the total). In addition the EHRC claimed to have provided counseling services to 463 individuals, resolved 107 cases through negotiation, and referred 306 grievances (30 percent of the total) to the relevant government offices.
The Office of the Ombudsman has authority to receive and investigate complaints with respect to administrative mismanagement by executive branch offices. From September 2011 to September 2012, the office received 2,094 complaints. Of these, the ombudsman opened investigations into 784, and the office reported it resolved the remaining cases through alternative means. The majority of complaints dealt with social security, labor, housing, and property disputes. The Office of the Ombudsman did not compile nationwide statistics.
Section 6. Discrimination, Societal Abuses, and Trafficking in PersonsShare
The constitution provides all persons equal protection without discrimination based on race, nation, nationality or other social origin, color, gender, language, religion, political or other opinion, property, birth, or status, but the government did not fully promote and protect these rights. The constitution does not address discrimination based on disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity.
Women
Rape and Domestic Violence: The law criminalizes rape and provides for penalties of five to 20 years’ imprisonment, depending on the severity of the case; the law does not expressly address spousal rape. The government did not fully enforce the law, partially due to widespread underreporting. Recent statistics on the number of abusers prosecuted, convicted, or punished were not available.
Domestic violence is illegal, but government enforcement of laws against rape and domestic violence was inconsistent.
Domestic violence, including spousal abuse, was a pervasive social problem. Depending on the severity of damage inflicted, legal penalties range from small fines to imprisonment for up to 10 to 15 years.
Although women had recourse to the police and the courts, societal norms and limited infrastructure prevented many women from seeking legal redress, particularly in rural areas. The government prosecuted offenders on a limited scale.
Domestic violence and rape cases often were delayed significantly and given low priority. In the context of gender-based violence, significant gender gaps in the justice system remained, due to poor documentation and inadequate investigation. Gender-based violence against women and girls was underreported due to cultural acceptance, shame, fear, or a victim’s ignorance of legal protections.
“Child friendly” benches hear cases involving violence against children and women. Police officers were required to receive domestic violence training from domestic NGOs and the Ministry of Women, Children, and Youth Affairs. There was a commissioner for women and children’s affairs in the EHRC.
Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C): FGM/C is illegal, but the government did not actively enforce this prohibition or punish those who practiced it. The government strategy for combatting this practice was focused on community education rather than punitive measures, which had been seen to drive the practice underground in other countries (see section 6, Children).
Other Harmful Traditional Practices: The most prevalent harmful traditional practices other than FGM/C included uvula cutting, tonsil scraping, milk tooth extraction, early marriage, and marriage by abduction.
Marriage by abduction is illegal, although it continued in some regions despite the government’s attempts to combat the practice. A 2009 Population Council study of seven regions found that 2.6 percent of married female youth reported their marriages occurred through abduction. Of that number, the study found the rate to be 12.9 percent in the SNNPR, 4.4 percent in Oromia, 3 percent in Afar, and less than 1percent in Beneshangul Gumuz. The study did not include the Gambella or Somali Regions. Forced sexual relationships accompanied most marriages by abduction, and women often experienced physical abuse during the abduction. Abductions led to conflicts among families, communities, and ethnic groups. In cases of marriage by abduction, the perpetrator did not face punishment if the victim agreed to marry the perpetrator.
Sexual Harassment: Sexual harassment was widespread. The penal code prescribes penalties of 18 to 24 months’ imprisonment, but authorities generally did not enforce harassment laws.
Reproductive Rights: Individuals and couples have the right to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing, and timing of children; to have the information and means to do so free from discrimination, coercion, and violence; and the right to attain the highest standard of reproductive health. The government fully supported reproductive rights and worked actively to ensure equitable access to reproductive health services throughout the country. Orthodox and Muslim church leadership actively promoted use of health services, including family planning if desired, to ensure healthy families. A “mini” Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) was conducted during the year to measure progress in contraceptive prevalence, total fertility rate, maternal health, and nutrition. The mini-DHS indicated a modern contraceptive prevalence of 40 percent nationwide among married women, up from 27 percent three years prior. The mini-DHS also showed delivery with a skilled birth attendant had risen from 10 to 16 percent. Modeling completed by the government with support from the Gates Foundation and UN agencies indicated the number of women dying during pregnancy and childbirth had dropped from 676 deaths per 100,000 live births to an estimated 420 deaths per 100,000 live births, indicating the country had met its UN Millennium Development Goal target of reducing maternal mortality by 70 percent since 1990. Abortion is illegal but with numerous exceptions. The incidence of illegal, unsafe abortions had declined since legislation changed, which accounted in part for the drop in maternal mortality. All maternal and child health services were provided free of charge in the public sector; however, challenges persisted in accessing quality services in more remote areas of the country due to transportation problems.
Discrimination: Discrimination against women was a problem and was most acute in rural areas, where an estimated 85 percent of the population lived. The law contains discriminatory regulations, such as the recognition of the husband as the legal head of the family and the sole guardian of children more than five years old. Courts generally did not consider domestic violence by itself a justification for granting a divorce. Irrespective of the number of years a marriage existed, the number of children raised, and joint property, the law entitled women to only three months’ financial support if a relationship ended. There was limited legal recognition of common-law marriage. A common-law husband had no obligation to provide financial assistance to his family, and consequently women and children sometimes faced abandonment. Traditional courts continued to apply customary law in economic and social relationships.
According to the constitution, all land belongs to the government. Both men and women have land-use rights, which they may pass on as an inheritance. Land law varies among regions. All federal and regional land laws empower women to access government land. Inheritance laws also enable widowed women to inherit joint property they acquired during marriage.
In urban areas women had fewer employment opportunities than men, and the jobs available did not generally provide equal pay for equal work. Women’s access to gainful employment, credit, and the opportunity to own or manage a business was further limited by their generally lower level of education and training and by traditional attitudes.
The Ministry of Education reported female participation in undergraduate and postgraduate programs rose to 172,237 women in 2012-13 from 144,286 women in 2011-12, continuing the trend of increasing female participation in higher education.
Children
Birth registration: Citizenship is derived from one’s parents. The law requires all children to be registered at birth. Children born in hospitals were registered while most children born outside of hospitals were not. The overwhelming majority of children, particularly in rural areas, were born at home.
Education: As a policy primary education was universal and tuition-free; however, there were not enough schools to accommodate the country’s youth, particularly in rural areas. The cost of school supplies was prohibitive for many families, and there was no legislation to enforce compulsory primary education. The number of students enrolled in schools expanded faster than trained teachers could be deployed. Orchestrating government, NGO, and donor resources, the government had opened 5,322 new primary schools and 715 new secondary schools since 2009.
Child Abuse: Child abuse was widespread. The African Report on Child Wellbeing 2013, published by the African Child Policy Forum, found the government had increased punishment for sexual violence against children. “Child friendly” benches heard cases involving violence against children and women. There was a commissioner for women and children’s affairs in the EHRC.
Early and Forced Marriage: The law sets the legal marriage age for girls and boys at 18; however, authorities did not enforce this law uniformly, and rural families sometimes were unaware of this provision. In several regions it was customary for older men to marry girls, although this traditional practice continued to face greater scrutiny and criticism. The government strategy to address underage marriage was focused on education and mediation rather than punishment of offenders.
According to the 2011 DHS, the median age of first marriage among women surveyed between the ages of 20 and 49 was 17.1 years. The age of first marriage appeared to be rising. In 2005 the median age of marriage for women surveyed between ages 20 and 24 was 16.5 years, and while 39 percent of women between 45 and 49 reported being married by age 15, only 8 percent of girls and young women between 15 and 19 years of age reported being or having been married.
In the Amhara and Tigray regions, girls were married as early as age seven. Child marriage was most prevalent in the Amhara Region, where the median first marriage age was 15.1 years, according to the 2011 DHS, compared with 14.7 years in 2005. Regional governments in Amhara and, to a lesser extent, Tigray offered programs to educate girls and young women on problems associated with early marriage.
Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C): FGM/C is illegal, but the government did not actively enforce this prohibition or punish those who practiced it. The majority of girls in the country had undergone some form of FGM/C, although the results of the 2009 Population Council survey suggested its prevalence had declined. Of female respondents ages 21 to 24, 66 percent reported they were subjected to FGM/C, compared with 56 percent of those ages 15 to 17. Of the seven regions surveyed, the study found the rates to be highest in Afar (90.3 percent), Oromia (77.4 percent), and the SNNPR (74.6 percent).
FGM/C was much less common in urban areas, where 15 percent of the population lived. Girls typically experienced clitoridectomies seven days after birth (consisting of an excision of the clitoris, often with partial labial excision) and infibulation (the most extreme and dangerous form of FGM/C) at the onset of puberty. The penal code criminalizes the practice of clitoridectomy, with imprisonment of at least three months or a fine of at least 500 birr ($25). Infibulation of the genitals is punishable with imprisonment of five to 10 years. No criminal charges, however, had ever been brought for FGM/C. The government’s strategy was to discourage the practice of FGM/C through education in public schools, the Health Extension Program, and broader mass media campaigns rather than prosecute offenders. International bilateral donors and private organizations were active in community education efforts to reduce the prevalence of FGM/C, following the government’s lead of sensitization rather than legal enforcement.
Other Harmful Traditional Practices: Societal abuse of young girls continued to be a problem. Other harmful practices included early marriage, marriage by abduction, and food and work prohibitions, uvula cutting, tonsil scraping, and milk tooth extraction.
Sexual Exploitation of Children: The minimum age for consensual sex is 18 years, but authorities did not enforce this law. The law provides for three to 15 years in prison for sexual intercourse with a minor. The law provides for one year in prison and a fine of 10,000 birr ($500) for trafficking in indecent material displaying sexual intercourse by minors. The law prohibits profiting from the prostitution of minors and inducing minors to engage in prostitution; however, commercial sexual exploitation of children continued, particularly in urban areas. Girls as young as age 11 reportedly were recruited to work in brothels. Customers often sought these girls because they believed them to be free of sexually transmitted diseases. Young girls were trafficked from rural to urban areas. They also were exploited as prostitutes in hotels, bars, resort towns, and rural truck stops. Reports indicated family members forced some young girls into prostitution.
Infanticide or Infanticide of Children with Disabilities: Ritual and superstition-based infanticide continued in remote tribal areas, particularly South Omo. Local governments worked to educate communities against the practice.
Displaced Children: According to a 2010 report by the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, approximately 150,000 children lived on the streets, of whom 60,000 were in the capital. The ministry’s report stated families’ inability to support children due to parental illness or insufficient household income exacerbated the problem. These children begged, sometimes as part of a gang, or worked in the informal sector.
A 2010 Population Council Young Adult Survey found that 82.3 percent of boys who lived or worked on the streets had been to or had enrolled in school, 26.4 percent had lost one parent, and 47.2 percent had lost both parents. Among these boys, 72 percent worked for pay at some point in their lives. Government and privately run orphanages were unable to handle the number of street children.
Institutionalized Children: There were an estimated 4.5 million orphans in the country in 2012, according to statistics published by the UN Children’s Fund. The vast majority lived with extended family members. Government orphanages were overcrowded, and conditions were often unsanitary. Due to severe resource constraints, hospitals and orphanages often overlooked or neglected abandoned infants. Institutionalized children did not receive adequate health care.
International Child Abductions: The country is not a party to the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. For country-specific information see the Department of State’s website at travel.state.gov/content/childabduction/english/country/ethiopia.html.
Anti-Semitism
The Jewish community numbered approximately 2,000 persons. There were no reports of anti-Semitic acts.
The constitution does not mandate equal rights for persons with disabilities. The law prohibits discrimination against persons with physical and mental disabilities in employment and mandates access to buildings. It is illegal for deaf persons to drive.
The law prohibits employment discrimination based on disability. It also makes employers responsible for providing appropriate working or training conditions and materials to persons with disabilities. The law specifically recognizes the additional burden on women with disabilities. The government took limited measures to enforce the law, for example, by assigning interpreters for hearing-impaired civil service employees (see section 7.d.).
The law mandates building accessibility and accessible toilet facilities for persons with physical disabilities, although specific regulations that define the accessibility standards were not adopted. Buildings and toilet facilities were usually not accessible. Landlords are required to give persons with disabilities preference for ground-floor apartments, and this was respected.
Women with disabilities were more disadvantaged than men with disabilities in education and employment. The 2010 Population Council Young Adult Survey found young persons with disabilities were less likely to have ever attended school than young persons without disabilities. The survey indicated girls with disabilities were less likely than boys with disabilities to be in school; 23 percent of girls with disabilities were in school, compared with 48 percent of girls without disabilities and 55 percent of boys without disabilities. Overall, 47.8 percent of young persons with disabilities surveyed reported not going to school due to their disability. Girls with disabilities also were much more likely to suffer physical and sexual abuse than girls without disabilities. Of sexually experienced girls with disabilities, 33 percent reported having experienced forced sex. According to the same survey, approximately 6 percent of boys with disabilities had been beaten in the three months prior to the survey, compared with 2 percent of boys without disabilities.
There were several schools for hearing and visually impaired persons and several training centers for children and young persons with intellectual disabilities. There was a network of prosthetic and orthopedic centers in five of the nine regional states.
The Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs worked on disability-related problems. The CSO law continued to affect negatively several domestic associations, such as the Ethiopian National Association of the Blind, the Ethiopian National Association of the Deaf, and the Ethiopian National Association of the Physically Handicapped, as it did other civil society organizations.
National/Racial/Ethnic Minorities
The country has more than 80 ethnic groups, of which the Oromo, at approximately 35 percent of the population, is the largest. The federal system drew boundaries approximately along major ethnic group lines. Most political parties remained primarily ethnically based.
Clashes between ethnic groups resulted in injury and death. For example, in late April and May, demonstrations on university campuses throughout the Oromia Region broke out following reports that a draft development plan for Addis Ababa would expand the capital city into towns previously controlled by the surrounding Oromia regional officials. On April 30, a peaceful student protest in Ambo, west of Addis Ababa, escalated into violence and resulted in the deaths of at least eight persons. HRW reported that “witnesses said security forces fired live ammunition at peaceful protesters.”
Authorities in the western region of Benishangul-Gumuz forcibly evicted as many as 8,000 ethnic Amhara residents from their homes; some of those evicted alleged police beat and harassed them because of their ethnicity. The regional president publicly stated the evictions were a mistake and called on the evictees to return. Government officials also stated that victims would be compensated for lost property and any injuries sustained. Authorities dismissed several local officials from their government positions because of their alleged involvement in the evictions and charged some of the officials with criminal offenses.
Acts of Violence, Discrimination, and Other Abuses Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
Consensual same-sex sexual activity is illegal and punishable with three to 15 years’ imprisonment under the law. No law prohibits discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals. There were some reports of violence against LGBT individuals; reporting was limited due to fear of retribution, discrimination, or stigmatization. There are no hate crime laws or other criminal justice mechanisms to aid in the investigation of abuses against LGBT persons. Persons did not identify themselves as LGBT persons due to severe societal stigma and the illegality of consensual same-sex sexual activity. Activists in the LGBT community stated they were followed and at times feared for their safety.
The AIDS Resource Center in Addis Ababa reported the majority of self-identified gay and lesbian callers, most of whom were male, requested assistance in changing their behavior to avoid discrimination. Many gay men reported anxiety, confusion, identity crises, depression, self-ostracism, religious conflict, and suicide attempts.
HIV and AIDS Social Stigma
Societal stigma and discrimination against persons living with or affected by HIV/AIDS continued in the areas of education, employment, and community integration. Persons living with or affected by HIV/AIDS reported difficulty accessing services. Despite the abundance of anecdotal information, there were no statistics on the scale of the problem.
Section 7. Worker Rights
a. Freedom of Association and the Right to Collective Bargaining
The constitution and law provide workers, except for civil servants and certain categories of workers primarily in the public sector, with the right to form and join unions, conduct legal strikes, and bargain collectively, although other provisions and laws severely restrict or excessively regulate these rights. The law specifically prohibits managerial employees, teachers, health-care workers, judges, prosecutors, security service workers, domestic workers, and seasonal and part-time agricultural workers from organizing unions.
A minimum of 10 workers is required to form a union. While the law provides all unions with the right to register, the government may refuse to register trade unions that do not meet its registration requirements and unilaterally cancel the registration of a union. Workers may not join more than one trade union per employment. The law stipulates a trade union organization may not act in an overtly political manner. The law allows administrative authorities to appeal to the courts to cancel union registration for engaging in prohibited activities, such as political action. While the law prohibits antiunion discrimination by employers and provides for reinstatement for workers fired for union activity, it does not prevent an employer from creating or supporting a workers’ organization for the purpose of controlling it.
Other laws and regulations that explicitly or potentially infringe upon workers’ rights to associate freely and to organize include the CSO law, Council of Ministers Regulation No. 168/2009 on Charities and Societies to reinforce the CSO law, and Proclamation No. 652/2009 on Antiterrorism. The International Labor Organization (ILO) Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations noted the CSO law gives the government power to interfere in the right of workers to organize, including through the registration, internal administration, and dissolution of organizations, and that the Antiterrorism Proclamation could become a means of punishing the peaceful exercise of freedom of expression and the right to organize.
While the law recognizes the right of collective bargaining, this right was severely restricted. Negotiations aimed at amending or replacing a collective agreement must be completed within three months of its expiration; otherwise the provisions on wages and other benefits cease to apply. Civil servants, including public school teachers, have the right to establish and join professional associations but are not allowed to negotiate for better wages or working conditions. Furthermore, the arbitration procedures in the public sector are more restrictive than those in the private sector. The law does not provide for effective and adequate sanctions against acts of interference by other agents in their establishment, functioning, or administration of either the workers’ or employers’ organizations.
Although the constitution and law provide workers with the right to strike to protect their interests, the law contains detailed provisions prescribing excessively complex and time-consuming formalities that make legal strike actions difficult to carry out. The law requires aggrieved workers to attempt reconciliation with employers before striking and includes a lengthy dispute settlement process. These provisions apply equally to an employer’s right to lock workers out. Two-thirds of the workers concerned must support a strike for it to be authorized. If a case has not already been referred to a court or labor relations board, workers retain the right to strike without resorting to either of these options, provided they give at least 10 days’ notice to the other party and the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and make efforts at reconciliation.
The law also prohibits strikes by workers who provide essential services, including air transport and urban bus service workers, electric power suppliers, gas station personnel, hospital and pharmacy personnel, firefighters, telecommunications personnel, and urban sanitary workers. The list of essential services exceeds the ILO definition of essential services. The law prohibits retribution against strikers, but also provides for excessive civil or penal sanctions against unions and workers involved in unauthorized strike actions. Unions may be dissolved for carrying out strikes in “essential services.”
The informal labor sector, including domestic workers, is not unionized and is not protected by labor laws. Lack of adequate staffing prevented the government from effectively enforcing applicable laws for those sectors protected by law. Court procedures were subject to lengthy delays and appeals.
Freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining were not respected. Although the government permits unions, the government established and controlled the major trade unions. As it had for more than four years, the government continued to use its authority to refuse to register the National Teachers’ Association (NTA) on the grounds a national teachers’ association already existed and that the NTA’s registration application was not submitted in accordance with the CSO law. According to the Education International report to the ILO in 2011, government security agents subjected members of the NTA to surveillance and harassment, with the goal of intimidating teachers into abandoning the NTA and forcing them to give up their long-standing demand for the formation of an independent union. In March the ILO’s Committee on Freedom of Association expressed its concern with regard to serious violations of the NTA’s trade union rights, including continuous interference in its internal organization that prevented it from functioning normally, as well as interference by way of threats, dismissals, arrests, detentions, and mistreatment of NTA members. In May 2013 the ILO mission made a working visit and signed the Joint Statement with the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, according to which the government was ready and committed to register the NTA in accordance with the CSO Law. The committee continued to urge the government to register the NTA without delay and to undertake civil service reform to protect fully the right of civil servants to establish and join organizations of their own choosing. During the year the ILO experts committee reported the government was “ready and committed” to register the NTA under the Charities and Societies Proclamation.
While the government allowed citizens to exercise the right of collective bargaining freely, representatives negotiated wages only at the plant level. It was common for employers to refuse to bargain. Unions in the formal industrial sector made some efforts to enforce labor regulations.
Despite the law prohibiting antiunion discrimination, unions reported employers fired union activists. There were reports most Chinese employers generally did not allow workers to form unions and often transferred or fired union leaders, and intimidated and pressured members to leave unions. Lawsuits alleging unlawful dismissal often take years to resolve because of case backlogs in the courts. Employers found guilty of antiunion discrimination were required to reinstate workers fired for union activities and generally did so. While the law prohibits retribution against strikers, most workers were not convinced the government would enforce this protection. Labor officials reported that high unemployment and long delays in the hearing of labor cases made some workers afraid to participate in strikes or other labor actions. Antiunion activities occurred but were rarely reported.
b. Prohibition of Forced or Compulsory Labor
The law prohibits most forms of forced or compulsory labor, including by children, but it also permits courts to order forced labor as a punitive measure. The government did not effectively enforce the forced labor prohibition, and forced labor occurred. Both adults and children were forced to engage in street vending, begging, traditional weaving, or agricultural work. Children also worked in forced domestic labor. Situations of debt bondage also occurred in traditional weaving, pottery making, cattle herding, and other agricultural activities, mostly in rural areas.
c. Prohibition of Child Labor and Minimum Age for Employment
By law the minimum age for wage or salary employment is 14 years. The minimum age provisions, however, only apply to contractual labor and do not apply to self-employed children or children who perform unpaid work. Special provisions cover children between the ages of 14 and 18, including the prohibition of hazardous or night work. The law defines hazardous work as work in factories or involving machinery with moving parts or any work that could jeopardize a child’s health. Prohibited work sectors include passenger transport, work in electric generation plants, underground work, street cleaning, and many other sectors. The law expressly excludes children under age 16 attending vocational schools from legal protection with regard to the prohibition on young workers performing hazardous work. The law does not permit children between the ages of 14 and 18 to work more than seven hours per day, between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., on public holidays or rest days, or on overtime.
The government did not effectively enforce these laws. The lack of labor inspectors and controls prevented the government from enforcing the law. The resources for inspections and the implementation of penalties were extremely limited. Despite the introduction of labor inspector training at Gondar University in 2011, insufficient numbers of labor inspectors and inspections resulted in lax enforcement of occupational safety and health measures and in increased numbers of children working in prohibited work sectors, particularly construction. The National Action Plan to Eliminate the Worst Forms of Child Labor was signed at the end of 2012.
While primary education is tuition-free, it is not compulsory, and net school enrollment was low, particularly in rural areas. To underscore the importance of attending school, joint NGO and government-led community-based awareness raising activities targeted communities where children were heavily engaged in agricultural work. The government invested in modernizing agricultural practices and constructing schools to combat the problem of child labor in agricultural sectors.
Child labor remained a serious problem. In both rural and urban areas, children often began working at young ages. Child labor was particularly pervasive in subsistence agricultural production, traditional weaving, fishing, and domestic work. A growing number of children worked in construction. Children in rural areas, especially boys, engaged in activities such as cattle herding, petty trading, plowing, harvesting, and weeding, while other children, mostly girls, collected firewood and fetched water. Children worked in the production of gold. In small-scale gold mining, they dug their own mining pits and carried heavy loads of water. Children in urban areas, including orphans, worked in domestic service, often working long hours, which prevented many from attending school regularly. They also worked in manufacturing, shining shoes, making clothes, as porters, directing customers to taxis, parking, public transport, petty trading, and occasionally herding animals. Some children worked long hours in dangerous environments for little or no wages and without occupational safety protection. Child laborers often faced physical, sexual, and emotional abuse at the hands of their employers.
d. Discrimination with Respect to Employment or Occupation
The law prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, marital status, religion, political affiliation, pregnancy, socioeconomic status, and disability. The law specifically recognizes the additional burden on women with disabilities (see section 6.) Sexual orientation, gender identity, and HIV-positive status are not specifically protected. The government took limited measures to enforce the law.
Discrimination in employment and occupation occurred with respect to women, who had fewer employment opportunities than men, and the jobs available did not provide equal pay for equal work.
Discrimination against migrant workers also occurred (see section 7.e.).
e. Acceptable Conditions of Work
There is no national minimum wage. Some government institutions and public enterprises set their own minimum wages. Public sector employees, the largest group of wage earners, earned a monthly minimum wage of approximately 420 birr ($21). The official estimate for the poverty income level was 315 birr ($15.75) per month.
Only a small percentage of the population, concentrated in urban areas, was involved in wage-labor employment. Wages in the informal sector generally were below subsistence levels.
The law provides for a 48-hour maximum legal workweek with a 24-hour rest period, premium pay for overtime, and prohibition of excessive compulsory overtime. The country has 13 paid public holidays per year. The law entitles employees in public enterprises and government financial institutions to overtime pay; civil servants receive compensatory time off for overtime work. The government, industries, and unions negotiated occupational safety and health standards. Workers specifically excluded by law from unionizing, including domestic workers and seasonal and part-time agricultural workers, generally did not benefit from health and safety regulations in the workplace.
The Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs’ inspection department was responsible for enforcement of workplace standards. In 2013 the country had 291 labor inspectors, down from 380. According to the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, the decrease was the result of high turnover and limited financial resources. Due to lack of resources, the labor inspectors did not enforce standards effectively. The ministry’s severely limited administrative capacity; lack of an effective mechanism for receiving, investigating, and tracking allegations of violations; and lack of detailed, sector-specific health and safety guidelines hampered effective enforcement of these standards. In addition penalties were not sufficient to deter violations.
Compensation, benefits, and working conditions of seasonal agricultural workers were far below those of unionized permanent agricultural employees. The government did little to enforce the law. Most employees in the formal sector worked a 39-hour workweek. Many foreign, migrant, and informal sector workers worked more than 48 hours per week.
Workers have the right to remove themselves from dangerous situations without jeopardizing their employment. Despite this law most workers feared losing their jobs if they were to do so. Hazardous working conditions existed in the agricultural sector, which was the primary base of the country’s economy. There were also reports of hazardous and exploitative working conditions in the construction and fledgling industrial sectors.
(Borama News, 25 June 2015) –By mid 2007, the 50,000 Ethiopian troops that invaded Somalia in late 2006 found themselves increasingly bogged down, facing much fiercer resistance than they had bargained for as Somalis of all stripes temporarily put aside their differences to stand together against the outside invader.
As the military incursion turned increasingly sour, then US Under Secretary of State for Africa, Jendayi Frazer, who taught at the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies in the 1990s, insisted that, prior to the invasion, the United States had counseled caution and that Washington had warned Ethiopia not to use military force against Somalia. Frazer was a close collaborator with former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, for whom there also is a strong University of Denver connection. Frazer certainly tried to distance the United States from responsibility for the Ethiopian invasion in a number of interviews she gave to the media at the time.
But one of the released WikiLeaks cables, suggests a different picture, one that implicates Frazer in pressing Ethiopia’s President Meles Zenawi to invade its neighbor. The content of the cable is being widely discussed in the African media. It exposes a secret deal cut between the United States and Ethiopia to invade Somalia.
If accurate — and there is no reason to believe the contrary — the cable suggests that Ethiopia had no intention of invading Somalia in 2006 but was encouraged/pressured to do so by the United States which pushed Ethiopia behind the scenes. Already bogged down in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the time, the Bush Administration pushed Ethiopia to invade Somalia with an eye on crushing the Union of Islamic Courts, which was gaining strength in Somalia at the time.
At the time of the invasion there was little doubt that the Ethiopian military incursion was “made in Washington.” Like so many other WikiLeaks cables, this one merely puts a dot on the “i” or crosses the “t” on what was generally known, although it does give specific information about Jendayi Frazer’s deep involvement in the affair.
According to the cable, as the main U.S. State Department representative in Africa, Frazer played a key role, spearheading what amounted to a U.S.-led proxy war in conjunction with the Pentagon. At the same time that she was pushing the Ethiopians to attack, Frazer was laying the groundwork both for the attack in the U.S. media and for a cover-up, by claiming that although the United States did not support Ethiopian military action, she could understand “the Somali threat” and why Ethiopia might find it necessary to go to war.
Frazer spread rumors of a possible jihadist takeover in Somalia that would threaten Ethiopian security. Turns out that media performance was little more than a smokescreen. The U.S. military had been preparing Ethiopia for the invasion, providing military aid and training Ethiopian troops. Then on December 4, 2006, CENTCOM Commander, General John Abizaid was in Addis Ababa on what was described as “a courtesy call.” Instead, the plans for the invasion were finalized.
At the time of the Somali invasion, Zenawi found himself in trouble. He was facing growing criticism for the wave of repression he had unleashed against domestic Ethiopian critics of his rule that had included mass arrests, the massacres of hundreds of protesters and the jailing of virtually all the country’s opposition leaders. By the spring of 2006 there was a bill before the U.S. Congress to cut off aid to Zenawi unless Ethiopia’s human rights record improved. (His human rights record, by the way, has not improved since. Given how the United States and NATO view Ethiopia’s strategic role in the “war on terrorism” and the scramble for African mineral and energy resources, Western support for Zenawi has only increased in recent years).
In 2006, dependent on U.S. support to maintain power in face of a shrinking political base at home — a situation many U.S. allies in the Third World find themselves — and against his better judgement, Zenawi apparently caved to Frazer’s pressure. Nor was this the first time that Frazer had tried to instigate a U.S. proxy war in Africa. Earlier as U.S. ambassador to South Africa, she had tried to put together a “coalition of the willing” to overthrow Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe, an initiative that did not sit so well with South Africa’s post-apartheid government and went nowhere.
The 2006 war in Somalia did not go well either for the United States or Ethiopia. Recently a State Department spokesperson, Donald Yamamoto, admitted that the whole idea was “a big mistake,” obliquely admitting U.S. responsibility for the invasion. It resulted in 20,000 deaths and according to some reports, left up to 2 million Somalis homeless. The 50,000 Ethiopian invasion force, which had expected a cake walk, instead ran into a buzz saw of Somali resistance, got bogged down and soon withdrew with its tail between its legs. The political result of the invasion was predictable: the generally more moderate Union of Islamic Courts was weakened, but it was soon replaced in Somalia by far more radical and militant Islamic groups with a more openly anti-American agenda.
As the situation deteriorated, in an attempt to cover both the U.S. and her own role, Frazer then turned on Zenawi, trying to distance herself from fiasco using an old and tried diplomatic trick: outright lying. Now that the invasion had turned sour, she changed her tune, arguing in the media, that both she and the State Department had tried to hold back the Ethiopians, discouraging them from invading rather than pushing them to attack. The WikiLeaks cable tells quite a different story. In 2009, the Ethiopian forces withdrew, leaving Somalia in a bigger mess and more unstable than when their troops went in three years prior. Seems to be a pattern here?
“AFRICA DOESN’T need strongmen, it needs strong institutions.” Those were President Obama’s words when he addressed Ghana’s parliament in July 2009, during his first trip to sub-Saharan Africa as president. The historic speech, watched around the globe, was an optimistic clarion call to the leaders on the continent from the son of a Kenyan. “First, we must support strong and sustainable democratic governments,” Mr. Obama said.
The president seems to have forgotten that speech. Last week, the White House announced that, while traveling to Kenya next month, Mr. Obama also will stop in Ethiopia, the first such visit by a sitting U.S. president to the country of 94 million. It’s almost unfathomable that he would make time for an entrenched human rights abuser such as Ethiopia while cold-shouldering the nation that just witnessed a historic, peaceful, democratic change of power: Nigeria.
Administration officials justify the trip by citing the United States’ long-standing cooperation with Ethiopia on issues of regional security and the country’s accelerating economic growth. Ethiopia is a major recipient of U.S. development assistance, and the African Union has its headquarters there. But it also stands out in Africa for its increasingly harsh repression and its escalating chokehold on independent media and political dissent. Since June 2014, 34 journalists have been forced to flee the country, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Ethiopia is also one of the world’s leading jailers of journalists.
The administration already undermined Ethiopia’s struggling journalists and democracy advocates in April, when Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman said Ethiopia has “moved forward in strengthening its democracy. Every time there is an election, it gets better and better.” Shortly after her statement, the ruling party held an election in which it secured 100 percent of the parliamentary seats. That was indeed an improvement upon its 2010 performance, when it won 99.6 percent of seats. In the months ahead of the May 24 polls, opposition party members and leaders were harassed and arrested. The Ethiopian government refused to allow independent election observers, except from the African Union. Since the election, two opposition members and one candidate have been murdered. The government hasdenied any responsibility for the killings.
Meanwhile, Nigeria, the continent’s most populous nation and the one with the largest economy, overcame risks of electoral violence and Boko Haram’s terrorism to manage a peaceful transfer of power for the first time since the country’s return to democracy in 1999. With numerous African countries facing elections in the next two years, a visit to Nigeria would have signaled U.S. commitment to partnering with governments that respect freedom, the rule of law and the will of their people. Snubbing Nigeria for a trip to Ethiopia sends the opposite message, in essence validat ing Ethiopia’s sham elections and rewarding a regime that has shown no intent to reform. Six years after his idealistic speech in Ghana, Mr. Obama is sending a message to Africa that democracy isn’t all that important after all.
The country desperately needs new universities to drive development, but most of the 30 built in the last 15 years fall woefully short
The declining standard of Nigeria’s premier institution, the University of Ibadan, ten years ago is reflected in Ethiopia where the quality of new universities varies widely. Photograph: George Esiri/REUTERS
Ethiopia’s higher education infrastructure has mushroomed in the last 15 years. But the institutions suffer from half-written curriculums, unqualified – but party-loyal – lecturers, and shoddily built institutions. The rapid growth of Ethiopia’s higher education system has come at a cost, but it is moving forward all the same.
Twenty years ago the Ethiopian government launched a huge and ambitious development strategy that called for “the cultivation of citizens with an all-round education capable of playing a conscious and active role in the economic, social, and political life of the country”. One of the principal results of Ethiopia’sagricultural development-led industrialisation strategy (ADLI) has been a rapid expansion in the country’s higher education system. In 2000 there were just two universities, but since then the country has built 29 more, with plans for another 11 to be completed within two years.
The quality of these new universities varies widely; from thriving research schools, to substandard institutions built to bolster the regime’s power in hostile regions. One professor recalls a hurried evacuation from part of a recently completed university while he was working there: one of the buildings had collapsed.
But there have also been success stories. The University of Jimma, for example, has come first in the Ethiopian Ministry of Education’s rankings for the past five years, and is held up as evidence of ADLI’s efficacy since its establishment in 1999. The most recent development at Jimma, the department of materials science and engineering (MSE), opened for students in 2013, and has quickly expanded to become one of the top research schools in the sub-Saharan region. The department’s founder, Dr Ali Eftekhari, has since received a fellowship from the African Academy of Sciences on the back of the project’s success.
This success is much-needed. At 8%, African higher education enrolment issignificantly lower than the global average of 32%, and Ethiopia trails even further behind, with fewer than 6% of college-age adults at university. Research in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (Stem) is starting from a particularly low base in Africa. The World Bank reported last year that though the sub-Saharan region has “increased both the quantity and quality of its research” in recent years, much of this improvement is due to international collaboration, and a lack of native Africans is “reducing the economic impact and relevance of research”.
Dr Eftekhari echoes these concerns: “The problem for development in Ethiopiaand similar African countries is higher education itself. This is the reason that I focused on PhD programs. “For instance, Jimma’s department of civil engineering has over 3,000 undergraduate students. These civil engineers are the future builders of the country, but there is not one PhD holder among the staff; most only have a BSc.”
Eftekhari improvised and sweet-talked in order to get the department established; in its first year, the department taught 18 PhD students – all native Ethiopians – on almost zero budget, with staff donating their time and money until funding was secured from the ministry of education. Despite the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front’s (EPRDF) push for development, Ethiopia’s political landscape remains a minefield for education professionals, says Eftekhari: “People are always suspicious about the political reasons behind each new project. I decided to start with zero budget to allay those doubts. In developing countries everything has some degree of flexibility. I used this to borrow staff and resources from the rest of the university until we could secure a budget.
“Many of the staff saw the project as a career opportunity,” says Eftekhari, but altruism also played a part. The department’s research focuses primarily on solving the country’s pressing poverty and development problems. “They knew they were actually saving lives,” says Jimma’s innovation coordinator, Maria Shou.
The belief that science and engineering is key to alleviating poverty propels the work of the school. Projects range from the development of super-capacitors for the provision of cheap power, to carbon nanomaterials for Ethiopia’s expanding construction industry. “You only need a couple of weeks in Ethiopia to realise that materials science is a priority,” says Pablo Corrochano, an assistant professor at the school. “Even in the capital you’ll experience cuts in power and water; in rural areas it’s even worse. Producing quality and inexpensive bricks for building houses, designing active water filters, and supplying ‘off-the-grid’ energy systems for rural areas are all vital to the country’s development.”
However, Jimma’s success could be seen as a bit of an anomaly. Paul O’Keeffe, a researcher at La Sapienza University of Rome, who specialises in Ethiopia’s higher education system, believes that similar initiatives are needed, but that the government’s politics are an obstacle: “My research indicates that the rapid expansion of the public university system has seen a dramatic decline in the quality of education offered in recent years. Instead of putting resources into improving the existing system, or establishing a few good institutions, the EPRDF has built many new universities, largely for political reasons.
“A lot of the time the universities are merely shells. They do not function as universities as we would expect and are poorly resourced, and in some cases shoddily built. It would seem that they are built almost as a token where the EPRDF can say to hostile regions ‘look we are doing something for you, we’ve built a university’.”
Even when the universities do function, the quality of education is often low: “Once the funding, say from a western development agency, is finished for a particular course, it is no longer taught as the university authorities believe they can get funding for a new course instead; whatever is the latest fashionable course. So often this type of education for development is not sustainable.”
Reports of spies, classroom propaganda, of curriculums that have been abandoned half-written due to funding cuts, and of unqualified staff are common at these universities, which make up the bulk of Ethiopian higher education, says O’Keeffe. “The party line is peddled during class, students are required to join the party, [there are] various reports of spies in the classrooms, who monitor what is said and who says it.”
A lecturer at Addis Ababa University, who wished to remain anonymous, is concerned primarily with the lack of qualifications among staff: “What is disturbing is that those who have just graduated with BAs and MAs are the lecturers. That is the manpower that they have. If you talk with students you wouldn’t believe that these students actually graduated from these so-called universities. Their inability to articulate their thoughts is breathtaking. It is extremely frustrating and you wonder how they have spent four years at university studying a doctorate.”
In this context, the MSE school provides a beacon of hope. The school’s success demonstrates that higher education – Stem research in particular – has the potential to thrive and play a central role in helping Ethiopia to reach its goal of becoming a middle-income nation by 2025, provided political interests are put to one side. Let’s hope the EPRDF takes note.
Africa: a continent of wealth, a continent of poverty
By Tom Lebert, senior international programme officer (Resources & Conflict) at War on Want.
At New Internationalist Blog
There has been much talk of an African renaissance in recent years. Thabo Mbeki, South Africa’s second post-apartheid president, has spoken of a ‘rebirth that must encompass all Africans’. So as African politicians and mining companies convene in London this week for ‘Mining on Top’ – Africa’s annual mining summit – where are the voices of civil society? Their absence speaks volumes.
Africa is blessed with a rich bounty of natural resources. The continent holds around 30% of the world’s known mineral reserves. These include cobalt, uranium, diamonds and gold, as well as significant oil and gas reserves. Given this natural wealth it comes as no surprise that, with the tripling of global mineral and oil prices in the past decade, mining has exploded on the African continent. Over the period 2000 to 2008 resource extraction contributed more than 30% of Africa’s GDP while the annual flow of foreign direct investment into Africa increased from $9 billion to $62 billion (most of this into extractive industries). However, despite being so richly endowed, and despite the mining boom of the past decade, Africa has drawn little benefit from this mineral wealth and remains one of the poorest continents on the globe, with almost 50% of the population living on less than $1.25 per day.
So, why is it that a continent with such vast potential wealth can remain so poor? It is in large part down to ‘illicit financial flows’: the illegal movement of money or capital from one country to another. The exploitation of mineral resources has all too often led to corruption and a large proportion of the continent’s resources and revenues benefiting local and foreign elites rather than the general population. Trade mispricing (and in particular transfer pricing and trade misinvoicing) is the most common way of transferring illicit funds abroad. Through trade mispricing, companies seek to maximize profits artificially through maximizing expenses in high-tax jurisdictions and maximizing revenue and income in low-tax jurisdictions. This enables corporations to minimize tax payments illegally and transfer the funds abroad.
Such illicit flows undermine social development and stymy inclusive economic growth. Instead of investing resource revenues into improving infrastructure, health and education, political elites, often in collusion with mining companies, have siphoned off proceeds from the continent’s mineral and oil wealth – lining their own pockets to the detriment of ordinary Africans.
Zambia presents as a wealthy country – the largest producer of copper in Africa and the 7th-largest globally. Yet Zambia is one of the poorest countries in the world, with 74% of the population living on less than $1.25 a day and 43% of the population being undernourished. This is in part due to a haemorrhaging of wealth, mainly to transnational mining companies. According to the Zambian Deputy Finance Minister, in 2012 the country was losing $2 billion a year from tax avoidance – around 10% of Zambia’s GDP. The mining industry was the largest culprit and the bulk of the loss was attributed to transfer pricing – where parts of the same company trade with each other at prices that they determine on their own – and to the over-reporting of costs and under-reporting of production. The situation is compounded by overly generous tax incentives provided to companies by the Zambian government.
The Zambian example is not an isolated case. Such corporate practices in the mining sector are common right across the continent. In South Africa, illegal capital flight through trade-misinvoicing (a means to evade tax) is rife in the ores and metals sector. Over the period 1995 to 2006 trade misinvoicing alone amounted to $167 million. And when it comes to fuel-exporting countries, over the period 1970 to 2008 states were losing on average $10 billion per year because of misinvoicing – the sum accounting for nearly half of all illicit financial flows from Africa during this time. Moreover, statistical data generated through the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme, which was introduced in 2003, revealed that diamond production was nearly twice as large as estimated, indicating massive smuggling, under-reporting and tax evasion in the sector. The list goes on.
So, what is to be done? At the heart of any solution must be transparency. Countries need to be more open in their dealings with mining companies, put in place and enforce fairer tax regimes and anti-corruption rules, and pursue economic policies that promote diversified economies and reduce dependence on revenues from mineral wealth. International mining capital would also, of course, have to play by the rules or be held to account for its indiscretions. Such measures would go some way to ensuring that the continent’s wealth benefits ordinary people and puts Africa onto a path to greater prosperity.
Mining routinely disrupts and destroys people’s livelihoods while damaging their health and the environment. It is local communities right across the continent that are most affected by the extractives industry. ‘Mining on Top’ should be the perfect opportunity to bring these communities into the very discussions that will affect their lives. Shamefully, they’ve not been invited. So while the mining elite discuss how best to exploit a continent, ordinary Africans continue to lose out.
The ‘Mining on Top’ Africa – London Summit takes place on 24-26 June at the Park Plaza Riverbank Hotel, 200 Westminster Bridge, SE1 7UT. On Thursday 25 June, War on Want will join London Mining Network and Gaia Foundation in protest at the failure of organizers to include civil-society representatives at the summit.
Sub-Saharan African countries are the poorest regions of Africa and the world. The World Bank’s Per Head Income trend from 2005 shows that Ethiopia’s trend is by far below Sub-Saharan Africa average trends with constantly widening gap. With Per Capita Income of below $500 throughout the trends, World Bank data shows that Ethiopia’s trend has been below the averages of world’s low income countries. So, what is the point of Ethiopia’s ‘fastest growth’ hype?
GNI per capita, Atlas method (current US$) GNI per capita (formerly GNP per capita) is the gross national income, converted to U.S. dollars using the World Bank Atlas method, divided by the midyear population. GNI is the sum of value added by all resident producers plus any product taxes (less subsidies) not included in the valuation of output plus net receipts of primary income (compensation of employees and property income) from abroad. GNI, calculated in national currency, is usually converted to U.S. dollars at official exchange rates for comparisons across economies, although an alternative rate is used when the official exchange rate is judged to diverge by an exceptionally large margin from the rate actually applied in international transactions. To smooth fluctuations in prices and exchange rates, a special Atlas method of conversion is used by the World Bank. This applies a conversion factor that averages the exchange rate for a given year and the two preceding years, adjusted for differences in rates of inflation between the country, and through 2000, the G-5 countries (France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States). From 2001, these countries include the Euro area, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. -World Bank national accounts data, andOECDNational Accounts data files
Obama’s plan to visit Ethiopia criticised as ‘gift’ for repressive government
Ndesanjo Macha for Global Voices, part of the Guardian Africa network
Wednesday 24 June 2015
Activists express anger at US president’s trip to country widely criticised for human right abuses. Global Voices report
Barack Obama during a to Wajir in Kenya, close to the Ethiopian border, before he was elected US president in 2008. Photograph: Stringer/AFP/Getty Images
Barack Obama’s decision to visit Ethiopia has shocked human rights activists, who say the visit sends the wrong message to a repressive government widely accused of clamping down on dissent.
A White House statement said Obama will visit the east African country for meetings with government officials as part of his last African trip as president. As well as meeting the leadership of the African Union, the visit will form part of US efforts to strengthen economic growth, democratic institutions and improve security in the region.
But as activists and social media users have been making clear, Ethiopia’s track record on human rights and democracy is deeply troubling.
In its 2014 report, Human Rights Watch noted that Ethiopia increasingly clamps down on the freedoms of its citizens “using repressive laws to constrain civil society and independent media, and target individuals with politically motivated prosecutions”.
Last month, Ethiopians voted in parliamentary elections which were widely denounced as unfair. Though the African Union declared that the vote was peaceful, they fell short of using the words “free and fair”.
While the US state department has expressed concerns about restrictions on civil society, media, opposition parties, and independent voices, Ethiopia remains a significant recipient of foreign aid money and security support.
On Twitter Hannah McNeish, a freelance journalist , juxtaposed last month’s suspicious elections results with the White House’s decision to honour Ethiopia with an official visit:
Elections where a ruling party wins 100 percent of the seats in parliament should always ring alarm bells. Results in Ethiopia from the May 24 general election, released yesterday, are no exception. According to Ethiopia’s National Electoral Board, the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition won 546 parliamentary seats (with the 547th seat still to be announced).
The results shouldn’t be seen as a stamp of approval for Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn’s government – rather they are the inevitable outcome of a political system in which opposition parties face extraordinary challenges and nearly all avenues for citizens to engage in political debate are closed.
The seeds for this situation were sown years ago. Since the last election in 2010, in which the EPRDF won a mere 99.6 percent of parliamentary seats, political space has been further restricted: the independent media has been decimated, civil society groups virtually eliminated, and peaceful public demonstrations quelled, sometimes by force.
The crackdown on opposition parties and their supporters was the final piece of the puzzle. In the lead-up to the elections, the authorities arrested leading members of the opposition and put them on trial on trumped-up terrorism charges. Political parties reported difficulties in registering candidates and acquiring funds to which they are legally entitled. Security force personnel arrested and harassed people organizing rallies, confiscating their equipment and unfairly denying them permits. Over the last two weeks, several opposition members and candidates have been beaten to death in suspicious circumstances.
International observers were largely absent, choosing not to monitor a vote that provided little opportunity to be independent and effective observers. The African Union was the exception, concluding that the elections were “calm, peaceful, and credible” – a standard very different from being free and fair.
The European Union and the United States, two of Ethiopia’s key allies, were largely silent on the political crackdown. Instead, they congratulated Ethiopia for a “peaceful” election, more concerned with the increasing potential for violence than with a fair electoral landscape. This is short-sighted and dangerous. Authoritarian control rarely provides long-term stability and nearly always compounds significant human rights violations.
For many Ethiopians, the elections confirmed what they already knew: the ruling coalition completely controls all aspects of their daily life and permits no alternative political views. The question is, when will Ethiopia’s allies open their eyes?
Amnesty International Asks Ethiopia to Investigate Suspicious Murders and Human Rights Violations
The suspicious murder of opposition leaders and wide-spread human rights violations against opposition party members over the past few weeks raises questions about Ethiopia’s elections, said Amnesty International as the parliamentary poll results were announced yesterday.
The organization has also expressed concerns about the failure of the Africa Union Elections Observer Mission (AUEOM) and the National Elections Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) to properly monitor and report on allegations of widespread abuses before, during and after the election.
“Amnesty International has received a number of reports concerning the deaths of political opposition figures in suspicious circumstances, as well as of a pattern of human rights violations against political opposition parties throughout the election period. These reports must be investigated and perpetrators brought to justice,” said Michelle Kagari, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for Eastern, Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes.
“It is unacceptable that these violations barely warranted a mention in reports released by official observers, including the Africa Union Elections Observer Mission and the National Elections Board of Ethiopia.”
In the run-up to the elections, more than 500 members of the Ethiopian Federal Democratic Unity Forum (EFDUF)/ Medrek – a coalition of opposition parties, including the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC) were arrested at polling stations in Oromia region. Forty-six people were beaten and injured by security officers while six people sustained gunshot injuries and two were shot and killed. Gidila Chemeda of the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC/Medrek) was shot and killed by police in Western Shewa zone, Dima Kege Woreda, Gelam Gunge Kebele of the Oromia region.
On June 15, 2015, the body of 27-year-old Samuel Aweke, a candidate with the Samayawi (Blue) party was found in one of the main streets of Dembre-Markos at around 7 p.m. Blue party officials believe his murder was politically motivated. A few days before his murder, Aweke published an article in his political party’s newspaper Negere Ethiopia criticizing the behavior of local authorities, the police and other security officials. His political party claims he received threats from security officers after the article was published. Witnesses at the scene where his body was found said his body had visible stab wounds and appeared to have been beaten with a blunt object.
A member of the Arena/Medrek political opposition party reported that its leader for Western Tigrai zone, Tadesse Abraha, 48, was accosted while on his way home on June 16, 2015 by three unknown people who attempted to strangle him. Abraha managed to escape, but collapsed and died shortly after reaching his home. According to his political party, Abraha had reported being threatened by local security officials shortly before his death.
On June 19, 2015, another member of Medrek was found dead 24 hours after he was arrested at his home by two police officers. Berhanu Erabu’s battered body was found near a river in Hadiya Zone, Soro Woreda (district) of Southern Ethiopia.
Amnesty International has documented these killings and is now calling on the Ethiopian Ministry of Justice, Federal Police Commission and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission to investigate these apparent targeted killings of opposition political party leaders and ensure those responsible are brought to justice
Background:
Amnesty International sent a letter with preliminary recommendations to the AUEOM on May 21, 2015.
Amnesty International expressed its concerns about the state of human rights in Ethiopia and the impact the human rights context was having on the ability of Ethiopians to participate in the electoral process. The organization urged the AUEOM to monitor and report on human rights violations throughout the election period in its assessment of the conduct of the elections.
The ruling political party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) has been declared the winner of the elections.
The following is a press release from the Minister for Africa of the UK government regarding the General Elections of 2015 in Ethiopia. —– Press releaseMinister for Africa expresses concern over Ethiopian electionsMinister for Africa James Duddridge calls on Ethiopian government to increase diversity in parliament and ensure the voices of all citizens are heard. Commenting on the election results, Minister for Africa James Duddridge said: “I welcome the fact that the recent Ethiopian parliamentary elections were conducted in a generally peaceful environment and that the Ethiopian people turned out in large numbers. I agree with European Union concerns about the negative impact on the electoral environment of arrests of opposition members and journalists, closure of media outlets, and obstacles faced by the opposition while campaigning … “In light of the results I urge the Ethiopian government to explore ways to increase the diversity of political parties in future parliaments, and to ensure those who voted for other parties this time still feel their voice is heard in the next five years. I hope that they will comprehensively address all the issues raised in the African Union Election Observation Mission report. The UK stands ready to offer support which might help in this regard.” —- – Source: Gov.ukhttps://www.gov.uk/government/news/minister-for-africa-expresses-concern-over-ethiopian-elections
“JUSTICE, FREEDOM AND EQUALITY FOR MAJENGER AND ALL NILOTIC PEOPLE OF ETHIOPIA”
Press Release May 22nd 2015, Gambella
Gambella Nilotes United Movement (GNUM) strongly condemns the TPLF/EPRDF killings of the Mezenger people of Southwest Ethiopia. The massacre of Mezenger people has now escalated and spread to all neighbouring villages of Sheka, Surma, Bench and Menit tribes in the Southern Nations Nationalities and People Regional State. The massacre is jointly carried out by the federal police forces, ENDF (Ethiopian National Defence Force) and the illegal settlers (highlanders) in Teppi and Metti towns Godere Zone of the Gambella region. It has started in September 2014 and so far no investigation and action taken against the perpetrators to stop the massacre. Since January 2015 the killing intensified and all villages of Majengirs and neighbouring villages destroyed and all people from these villages went into bush leaving behind their belongings without anything to support their livelihood. However, attempted to return home from the bush is killed, chanting that the monkey has come home to live with human beings.
As our sources from the ground indicates so far more than 120 Mezenger are reported dead and the killing is indiscriminate against children, women and men. It is a systematic genocide to exterminate the Mezenger people, as many of their educated ones were packed into prison without any trial in the court. To weaken the power of Mezenger people, the police forces from the local community were disarmed and they were replaced with ENDF to manoeuvre the plan successfully and take over the land from Mezenger people. In addition to this the Kwegu and Hamer people are being displaced from their land and many more killed by the Ethiopian government because of sugar plantation project of Hailemariam Desalegn. Likewise, the Hamer tribe is now engaged in full scale war with the government soldiers in resistance to land grabbing and forced displacements.
The sugar plantation project in the South Omo zone has been carried out without the consultation of local community. The people of Southern Ethiopian should not be deceived by the leadership of the current prime minister because he is from the region. As he was baptized by the deceased Prime Minister Meles for the post he should be known for his hatred against the indigenous Nilotes in the southern region for which he can manipulate the system and exterminate the tribes.
The people of Majengers and other Nilotic people of South west Ethiopian have been in constant conflicts and frustration with the Ethiopian government and illegal settlers from the north, and the loss of land has been in alarming rates as clearing of the forests by commercial investors and the illegal settlers continue to surge. Since EPRDF took over, the Mezenger people were killed in 1993, 2001 and the current one of 2014/2015. The current massacre is worst of all kind as it has devastated and destroyed the properties of people and forced people to flee their land.
GNUM will continue to fight for justice, equality and freedom of the indigenous Nilotes to ensure their full recognition and identity in their land. The TPLF/EPRDF government is a racist government that puts ethnic conflicts as means to prosper its own people to settle in the southwest regions. It is a government that cares only for its citizens from Tigrai region, and it should be resisted strongly by all means as racist and divisive.
GNUM also call upon the international community to investigate the killings of Majengers and other Nilotic people of southwest Ethiopia through their body, and force the perpetrators to be brought to justice. We call upon all the donors to withhold their funds from the TPLF government to make sure their funds are not used to perpetuate the killings against the innocent indigenous populations. Further, we also strongly ask the international community to analyse and make serious investigation toward the root cause of the increasing killings against the indigenous populations in Southwest Ethiopia and come up with strong recommendations and actions for maximum self determination as the only lasting solution to protect the life of the indigenous populations.
Therefore, GNUM would like to call upon all the indigenous Nilotes to unite themselves as one people and resist and fight the racist TPLF/EPRF government to protect their land.
In conclusion the Gambella Nilotes United Movement (GNUM) will continue it struggle for all people of Gambella and all the South-western Nilotes to ensure freedom, liberty, justice, security and prosperity are brought to people in their God given lands.
“All Nilotic People Should Stand Together and Fight As One to Overthrow TPLF/EPRDF Government from Their Land”
Oromo music has played a central role in providing alternative spaces for enunciating ‘the Oromo question’.
Ebbisa Adunya, 2013. Wikicommons/Hirphaa Gafuree.Some rights reserved.
On June 4, 2015, renowned Oromo artist Haacaaluu Hundeessaa released an intoxicating single track, Maalan Jiraa. The song condenses within itself the story of the Oromo people with impeccable acuity, waltzing between stories of pain and pride, hope and despair. Full of anguish and self-doubt, Maalan Jira is a powerful probe into the modern Oromo condition and illustrated the complex dilemma facing the Oromo nation and its struggle for political emancipation.
The Oromo are the single largest ethnic group in East Africa, comprising well over a third of Ethiopia’s 99 million people. For generations, Oromos have been relegated to the periphery of Ethiopian politics, not in spite of their numerical majority, but because of it. What makes the Oromo experience so incomprehensible is the fact that they remained one of the last oppressed majority groups of the world in a country in which identity is both theconstitutive and regulative principle of political life.
Stripped of agency, voice, and visibility, the Oromo use poetry, music, and storytelling both to articulate their experiences of marginalization and to resist forms of knowledge and modes of interpretation used to legitimize their oppression. Originating from a deep well of Oromo tradition, music has served as the single most important expressive art form used – a site of counter-memory and counter-culture. Among the downtrodden and reviled of the world, Oromos turned to music to resist official narratives and hegemonic interpretations, undoing imposed silences, and disrupting established frameworks of remembering and forgetting.
By undermining the very coherence and unity of official interpretations, Oromo music has played a central role in providing alternative spaces and enunciating ‘the Oromo question’.
The Oromo question
The Oromo question has been articulated as a question of national self-determination, understood as the right of the Oromo people to determine their political, economic, and cultural status. Within this historically specific articulation, national oppression is the origin of the question, Oromumma (Oromo national identity) its engine, and liberation its end goal.
Oromos consider themselves victims of a systemic and structural wrong, an injustice that deprived them, like the Plebeians of antiquity, of the very conditions of visibility and audibility. Though an integral part of the Ethiopian state, the stigmatization of their identity and culture makes them what French philosopher Jacques Rancière calls ‘the part of no part’. Oromos insist that to include them in ways against their will, and on terms that do not reflect and acknowledge their status as a people, is no less violent and oppressive than exclusion. They remain threatened in the very space to which they belong.
Oromo resistance music
Oromos have always used freedom songs and dances to symbolize and enact their experiences of dispossession and marginalization. In the 1990s a distinctive genre of protest music begun to function as the loudspeakers of the Oromo struggle for freedom. Oromo musical icons such as Ali Birra, Abitaw Kebede, Nuho Gobana, Umar Suleyman, Ebbisa Adunya, Kadir Said with many others played an indispensable role in creating a social space wherein the Oromo struggle for equality and self-emancipation is articulated and debated.
It is here, in this reservoir of songs, in the unruly dances and heart-breaking ballads, that one finds the story of the Oromo nation and its struggle for self-determination, not in the official archives and historiographies of the Ethiopian state.
In lyrics packed with angst and fervor, a generation of Oromo singers turned to the cryptic but transformative power of music to give voice to their aspirations. Singing against the current, they rejuvenated Oromo nationalism and conserved the Oromo experience of marginalization and humiliation. They also engaged in forms of protest that laid bare the essence of Oromo life within Ethiopia in all its traumatic complexity.
For example, Suleyman’s poignant compositions and enthralling bass voice moves people to action. His epic lyrics, recorded on cassettes, have been listened to in awe and admiration throughout Oromia. In the 1990s, Omar’s songs literally flew the flag of rebellion, articulating the limits of non-violent resistance and the inseparability of the cause of freedom and justice from violence.
It is in this most unpromising and unhistorical of places, in lyrics full of emotions and nostalgia but expressive of the devastation of the social fabric, that one finds the authentic experience of the Oromo.
The Addis Ababa master plan
Hundeessaa’s song comes at a time of great uncertainty for Oromos living around the city of Addis Ababa. Historically an Oromo city located at the heart of Oromia, the largest of the 9 states making up the Ethiopian federation, Addis Ababa (Finfinne) is the seat of the Federal government. The Ethiopian constitution recognizes the special interest of Oromia in Finfinne and directs parliament to enact laws specifying the terms and conditions that respects and regulates this multifaceted relationship between the city and Oromia.
Two decades on, however, no such law is forthcoming, and to add insult to injury, the ruling party announced what it calls the ‘Addis Ababa Integrated Master Plan’, allowing the unprecedented expansion of the city into Oromia. Emboldened by a symbolic election victory in which the ruling party won 100% of the 442 seats announced thus far, the government is set to implement the Master Plan, threatening the wellbeing and livelihood of Oromo farmers neighboring the city.
This is precisely what Hundeessaa’s new song depicts. It weeps for Finfinne, a city that for generations condemned the Oromo culture and identity to precarious subterranean existence. The song’s engrossing sonic texture is at once unsettling and captivating, unsettling because it excavates and reopens past wounds, captivating because it has the poetic quality only a work of art can achieve.
Two clear narratives emerge from the song: first, that of pride and affirmation of Oromo identity and self-worth, and second, that of mourning, discord, and humiliation born of the continued dispossession and marginalization of the Oromo on their own land.
Full of fire and pride, Hundeessaa protests this tyranny of the center, and situates ‘the Finfinne Question’ within the broader Oromo history and experience of dispossession. His song is part tribute and part mémoire, a tribute to Finfinne and a memoire to the dozens of students gunned down by security forces during Oromo students protest against the Master Plan.
This is a song that enables the Oromo to imagine beyond the given-ness of present arrangements; a song that shows that the present is not inevitable, and that things could be different and better.
About the author
Awol Allo is a Fellow in Human Rights at the London School of Economics and Political Science
This talk describes the motivation for developing mathematical models, including models that are developed to avoid ethically difficult experiments. Three different examples from the field of human health are presented.
Jeffrey J. Heys is an assistant professor of chemical engineering at Montana State University. He received his B.S. in chemical engineering in 1996 from Montana State University, and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1998 and 2001,respectively. His research area is computational transport and computational fluid dynamics in biological systems with an emphasis on fluid-structure interaction and multiphase flows.
Mr. Berhanu Rebo, Hadiya National and member of Medrek foundation committee was murdered by Fascist TPLF Ethiopia’s killing squads on 18th June 2015. His body was damped near river bank. Mr. Berhanu Rebo was a resident of Diinaa Tooroo in Sooroo district, Hadiya Zone (Southern State). Mr. Rebo was a husband and father of five.
Jiraataan Biyya Hadiyyaa, konyaa Sooroo, ganda Diinaa Tooroo fi miseena kommiitee bu’uraa partii Madrak kan ta’an lammiin saba Hadiyyaa Obbo Biraanuu Reeboo ergamtoota wayyaaneen Kamisa, Waxabajji 18 Bara 2015 qeyee isaaniitti admfamanii ajjeefamanii laga qaraqara irratti gatamuuni isaan beekame.
Leaked Bank Loan Record of Land Grabbers in Gambella
(The Gulele Post) – The following document contains names of individuals and companies who borrowed money from a branch of Development Bank of Ethiopia located in Western Ethiopia for the purpose of investment on farm land development. We have redacted some information to protect our sources. The data shows how much money has been borrowed, by whom and where the supported farm land is located. With exception of few cases, most of the land is taken from Gambella. http://www.gulelepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Bank-Loan-for-Land-Grab_Ethiopia.pdf
78 % of land grabbers in Gambella are fascist TPLF from Tigray, evidence from Gambella state. Dhiba keessa qabxii 78 saamicha lafaa Gambella irratti kan bobba’ani woyyaanota/ ilmaan Tigreeti. Ragaa motummaa Gambeellaa irraa argame kan armaa gadiitiin mirkaneessa.
Every five years the Ethiopian people are invited by the ruling party to take part in a democratic pantomime called ‘General Elections’. Sunday 24th May saw the latest production take to the national stage.
With most opposition party leaders either in prison or abroad, the populace living under a suffocating blanket of fear, and the ruling party having total control over the media, the election result was a foregone conclusion. The European Union, which had observed the 2005 and 2010 elections, refused to send a delegation this time, maintaining their presence would legitimise the farce, and give credibility to the government.
With most ballots counted, the National Election Board of Ethiopia announced the incumbent party to have ‘won’ all “442 seats declared [from a total of 547], leaving the opposition empty-handed…the remaining 105 seats are yet to be announced.” ‘Won’ is not really an accurate description of the election result; as the chairman of the Oromo Federalist Congress, Merera Gudina, put it, this “was not an election, it was an organised armed robbery”.
The days leading up to the election saw a regimented display of state arrogance and paranoia, as the government deployed huge numbers of camouflaged security personnel and tanks onto the streets of Addis Ababa and Bahir Dar. For months beforehand anyone suspected of political dissent had been arrested and imprisoned; fabricated charges drawn up with extreme sentencing for the courts, which operate as an extension of the government, to dutifully enforce.
Despite the ruling party’s claims to the contrary, this was not a democratic election and Ethiopia is not, nor has it ever been a democracy.
The country is governed by a brutal dictatorship in the form of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) that has been in power since 1991, when they violently overthrew the repressive Derg regime. The EPRDF speaks generously of democracy and freedom, but they act in violation of democratic principles, trample on universal human rights, ignore international law, and violently control the people.
Independent international bodies and financial donors, from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International to the European Union and the US State Department, are well aware of the nature and methods of the EPRDF, which is one of the most repressive regimes in Africa. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that Ethiopia is “the fourth most heavily censored country in the World”, with more journalists forced to leave the country last year than anywhere except Iran.
In the lead up to the recent election, CPJ found that, “the state systematically cracked down on the country’s remaining independent publications through the arrests of journalists and intimidation of printing and distribution companies. Filing lawsuits against editors and forcing publishers to cease production.” Various draconian laws are used to gag the media and stifle dissent, the Anti Terrorist Proclamation being the most common weapon deployed against anyone who dares speak out against the government, which rules through fear, and yet, riddled with guilt as they must surely be, seem themselves fearful.
Democracy and Development
The government proudly talks a great deal about economic development, which it believes to be more important than democracy, human rights and the rule of law, all of which are absent in the country. And yes, during the past decade the country has seen economic development, with between 4% and 9% (depending on who you believe) GDP growth per annum achieved, the CIA states “through government-led infrastructure expansion and commercial agriculture development.” It is growth, however, that depends, the Oakland Institute make clear, on “state force and the denial of human and civil rights.”
GDP figures are only one indicator of a country’s progress, and a very narrow one at that. The broader Ethiopian picture, beyond the debatable statistics, paints a less rosy image:
Around 50% of Ethiopia’s federal budget is met by various aid packages, totaling $3.5 billion annually. Making it “the world’s second-largest recipient of total external assistance, after Indonesia” (excluding war torn nations, Afghanistan and Iraq), Human Rights Watch states. The country remains 173rd (of 187 countries) in the UN Human Development Index and is one of the poorest nations in the world, with, the CIA says, over 39% of the population living below the low poverty line of $1.25 a day (the World Bank worldwide poverty line is $2 a day) – many Ethiopians question this figure and would put the number in dire need much higher.
Per capita income is among the lowest in the world and less than half the rest of sub-Sahara Africa, averaging, according to the World Bank, “$470 (£287)”. This statistic is also questionable, as Dr. Daniel Teferra (Professor of Economics, Emeritus at Ferris State University,) explains, “In 2008-2011 income per capita (after inflation), was only $131,” contrary to the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) 2013 report, which put the figure at $320.
The cost of living has risen sharply (current inflation is around 8%) and, as The Guardian reports, “growing economic inequality threatens to undermine the political stability and popular legitimacy that a developmental state acutely needs. Who benefits from economic growth is a much-contested issue in contemporary Ethiopia.” Not amongst the majority of Ethiopians it isn’t: they know very well who the winners are. As ever it is the 1%, who sit in the seats of power, and have the education and the funds to capitalize on foreign investment and development opportunities.
Some of those suffering as a result of the government’s development policies are the 1.5 million threatened with ‘relocation’ as their land is taken – or ‘grabbed’ from them. Leveled and turned into industrial-sized farms by foreign multinationals which grow crops, not for local people, but for consumers in their home countries – India or China for example.
Indigenous people cleared from their land are violently herded into camps under the government’s universally criticised “Villagization” program, which is causing the erosion of ancient lifestyles, “increased food insecurity, destruction of livelihoods, and the loss of cultural heritage”, relates the Oakland Institute. Any resistance is met with a wooden baton or the butt or bullet of a rifle; reports of beatings, torture and rape by security forces are widespread. No compensation is paid to the affected people, who are abandoned in camps with no essential services, such as water, health care and education facilities – all of which are promised by the EPRDF in their hollow development rhetoric.
An Insult to the People
Economic development is not democracy, and whilst development is clearly essential to address the dire levels of poverty in Ethiopia, it needs to be democratic, sustainable development. First and foremost Human Rights must be observed, and there must be participation, and consultation, which – despite the Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn’s duplicitous comments to Al Jazeera that, “we make our people to be part and parcel of all the [developmental] engagements,” – never happens.
The Prime Minister describes Ethiopia as a “fledgling democracy”, and says the government is “on the right track in democratizing the country”. Nonsense. Democracy is rooted in the observation of Human Rights, freedom of expression, the rule of law and social participation. None of these values are currently to be found in Ethiopia.
Not only is the EPRDF universally denying the people their fundamental human rights, in many areas they are committing acts of state terrorism (one thinks of the abuses taking place in the Ogaden region and the atrocities being committed against the Oromo people for example) that amount to crimes against humanity.
The recent election was an insult to the people of Ethiopia, who are being intimidated, abused and suppressed by a brutal, arrogant regime that talks the democratic talk, but acts in violation of all democratic ideals.
‘African economies consistently underperform the Southeast Asian average across all the pillars. The most critical gaps continue to be seen in the areas of basic requirements of competitiveness: institutions, infrastructure, and education and skills.19 This is troubling because the majority of African economies are classified as factor-driven economies (see Table 1), so these areas are currently the most critical areas for the competitiveness of these countries. On a more positive note, Africa’s financial, goods, and labor markets function comparatively well (on par, or nearly on par, with Latin America). However, ease of entry and exit from low-wage, low-productivity jobs will not lead to improved competitiveness. It will be important to build upon the region’s comparatively efficient markets by investing in other competitiveness-enhancing reforms. A particular point of concern is the continent’s weak institutions. Although Africa’s performance is similar to that of Southeast Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean in this pillar, the institutions in all three regions receive scores below 4 out of 7. This suggests that more effort should be made to increase the capacity of the institutional framework, as it provides a critical foundation for the other dimensions of competitiveness. Indeed, the quality of institutions has actually been deteriorating in both OECD and African economies according to the GCI. This might explain in part why Africa’s competitiveness seems to have stagnated in comparison to OECD economies
(see Figure 11a). In Africa, a decline in security and government efficiency—two components of the public institutions subpillar—would appear to be at the core of this decline. Sound public institutions and governance are an important prerequisite for economic development.’- Africa_Competitiveness_Report_2015
Is Africa really rising? History and facts suggest it isn’t
In the year 2000, the Economist ran a cover story with the title “Hopeless Africa”. Four years later, Robert Guest, who served as the newspaper’s Africa Editor, published “The Shackled Continent”, a book that pretty much concluded that, absent any miracles, Africa’s future was bleak. The book was widely praised, not least of all by all-round Africa expert Bob Geldof who said “[it] was written with a passion for Africa and Africans”. Then in 2011, the current era of Afro-euphoria signalled its triumphant entrance with the Economist’s Africa Rising cover story. In contrast to their cover story of just a couple of years back, this one declared that there was hope for the hopeless continent (TIME did exactly the same thing in 2012).
We’ve written about the Africa Rising meme on this site, from culture to politics to music to fashion, again and again and again and again and again and again andagain and again. Now for the economics.
To be sure, African economies have begun growing again after contracting for most of the 1980s and 1990s. According to the World Bank, real GDP per capita shrank at a rate of 1% per year over the period 1980 to 2000 for sub-Saharan Africa as a whole. Since 2000, real GDP per capita has grown at the more respectable rate of 2% per year. And it appears that the incidence of poverty, at least as measured by the World Bank, also declined, although marginally, during the last decade.
Many so-called Africa watchers seem to have caught the “Africa rising” bug. There is now wide expectation, undergirded of course by the likes of the Economist, that growth will continue unabated going forward. Africa’s time is now! So declared a piece in the trendy Harvard Business Review.
The “Africa rising” narrative suggests the continent is now well on its way to self-sustaining growth. The kind of growth that the East Asian “tigers” and the countries known as the West experienced during the times they were rising. The kind of growth that has led to a massive reduction in poverty in China within a generation. Unfortunately here is where reality stands at odds with the euphoria.
Africa’s current growth revival (the continent did grow, and healthily so, from the 1960s to the 1970s) seems to be largely driven by external factors: China’s spectacular growth and along with it an increase in the price of commodities, whose exports Africa relies on to a great extent. So any slowdown in China’s growth, as is likely to happen as its economy matures, is likely to impact greatly on Africa’s performance.
To be sure, there have also been some internal drivers of growth: price distortions have been reduced in agriculture, macroeconomic stability has been restored (inflation rates are low and stable across most of the continent) and political institutions have improved (democracy and elections are now more common on the continent than before). But the prospects of these internal policies to sustain long-run growth are dismal. The Harvard economist Dani Rodrik, in a highly insightful essay titled “An African Growth Miracle?”, points out that the relationship between standard measures of good policies (macroeconomic stability, reduced price distortions, etc…) and economic growth tends to be weak. At best, good policies make economic crises less prevalent but cannot sustain and drive growth on their own. The same is also true of institutions, which following the much publicized work of Daron Acemoglu and friends, has become the be all and end all of development thinking. Rodrik points out that Latin America has experienced positive institutional changes within the last 20 years with a small payoff in growth. On the other hand, impressive growth in South Korea (until the 1990s) and China (today) has occurred alongside rampant cronyism and corruption.
According to Rodrik, self-sustaining growth begins to occur when an economy undergoes a structural transformation from relying less on agriculture to relying more on industry. That is, self-sustaining growth is underpinned by large-scale industrialization. This is the historical lesson of the East Asian tigers, of China, and of even the West. Unfortunately the facts for Africa point in the opposite direction. Yes, African labour has moved out of agriculture in large numbers, but the beneficiary has not been manufacturing but services. The service sector tends not to be as “productive” as the manufacturing sector. And productivity, which is the ability to produce ever more output from the same amount of inputs, is what drives and sustains growth. The share of manufacturing in the economies of most African countries has declined from about 15% in the 1970s to around 10% today. That is Africa has in fact deindustrialized! And even the 10% of GDP that is manufacturing is mostly made up of small informal firms that are not particularly productive and are unlikely to evolve into big formal firms. Rodrik sums up his prospects for Africa thus:
“To sum up, the African pattern of structural change is very different from the classic pattern that has produced high growth in Asia, and before that, the European industrializers. Labour is moving out of agriculture and rural areas. But formal manufacturing industries are not the main beneficiary. Urban migrants are being absorbed largely into services that are not particularly productive and into informal activities. The pace of industrialization is much too slow to [spurn self-sustaining growth].”
So what can be done? Rodrik suggests that industrialization can be helped along by improving the “business climate” in Africa. But the problem with the business climate argument, apart from being vague, is that it does not confront the fact that Africa was more industrialized in the 1970s, at a time when the business climate was likely no different from what it is today. In my opinion, the Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) that were administered beginning in the early 1980s are largely responsible for halting the pace of industrialization on the continent. With SAPs, Africans were told by their betters to stop supporting industry because doing so was “wasteful”. Subsidies to industry were reduced. Protective trade barriers were removed. Planning for industry was done away with. All this advice was dispensed in spite of the fact that today’s developed countries industrialized behind a veil of considerable state support. For instance, the historian Sven Beckert points out that Britain’s cloth manufacturing industry, which was largely responsible for the Industrial Revolution, was shielded from competition from India for most of the 18thCentury. The Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang has called this phenomenon of rich countries forcing policies on poor countries that they themselves did not implement during their time of take-off as “kicking away the ladder”.
Africa needs to industrialize for it to really rise. Unfortunately the rhetoric around “Africa rising” is giving us a false sense of comfort and distracting us from the real work that needs to happen.
Laurent Kabila, the former president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, who received ‘at least $4m a week in cash-filled suitcases from mining companies’. Photograph: Adil Bradlow/AP
Augustin Katumba Mwanke was a young banker in South Africa when persuaded to return home to help rebuild the Democratic Republic of Congo by the new government of Laurent Kabila. A year later he got a call from the president, a fellow Katangan, and was stunned to be appointed governor of an area the size of France, with control over some of the world’s most valuable mineral seams.
This marked the start of his rapid rise to power beside the president, placed at the core of a network of Congolese officials, foreign businessmen and organised criminals plundering the nation’s immense wealth. First, they transferred $5bn of state assets into the pockets of private firms with no benefit to the state, then after this was exposed, Katumba created a shadow state to steal funds, buy elections and bribe supporters. One witness says Kabila was being handed at least $4m a week in cash-filled suitcases from mining companies.
The victims, of course, are those millions condemned by the “resource curse” to conflict and poverty in a country that remains among the world’s poorest, despite the huge riches beneath their feet. As this timely book shows, similar shadow states are pillaging Africa’s immense wealth, from Angola to Zimbabwe, while corroding its societies. The result is a nation such as Nigeria, one of the world’s major oil producers, generating half as much electricity as North Korea – only enough to power one toaster for every 44 of its citizens.
After nine years reporting on Africa for the Financial Times, Tom Burgis exposes how the extractive industries have turned into a hideous looting machine, the west guilty of complicity in the raping of a continent. As he says, corruption does not end at the borders; kleptocratic regimes use avaricious allies to sell their commodities and stash illicit cash. “Its proponents include some of the world’s biggest companies, among them blue-chip multinationals in which, if you live in the west and have a pension, your money is almost certainly invested.”
Burgis shows how even the World Bank is linked to this looting, although it would have been good to see recognition of the role of aid propping up awful regimes. But the author makes an important case colourfully, convincingly and at times courageously as he confronts some of those involved in the pillaging. He examines countries cursed in similar style, whether by oil in Angola, coltan in the Congo, iron ore in Guinea, uranium in Niger or diamonds in Zimbabwe. There are lots of dodged questions and unanswered emails, but also surprising admissions, such as the Nigerian governor defending his need to “settle” payments for political survival. “If I don’t, I’ve got a big political enemy,” he says.
South Africa is home to the world’s most valuable mineral resources – yet the gap between rich and poor probably widened since the end of apartheid. This fits a pattern of inequality stemming from the resource curse, argues Burgis, pointing out how some leaders fought against racist regimes only to preside over elites that resemble in structure minority rulers they overthrew. “It’s like a virus, transmitted from the colonial regime to the post-independence rulers,” says one Nigerian critic. “And these extractors, they are the opposite of a society that is governed for the public good.”
Then there is the questionable role of China. The author is right to say there is a “distinct whiff of hypocrisy” to western criticism of the nation’s advance into Africa. Yet he grapples with the role played by the secretive Sam Pa. Burgis speculates about links to Chinese intelligence as he details Pa’s steady, lucrative cultivation of top-level contacts. His informative book ends with the words of Nigeria’s impassioned singer Nneka: “Don’t think you’re not involved.”
The Looting Machine is published by Harper Collins. Click here to buy it for £16
Discussions about the fate of Africa have long had a cyclical quality. That is especially the case when it comes to the question of how to explain the region’s persistent underdevelopment. At times, the dominant view has stressed the importance of centuries of exploitation by outsiders, from the distant past all the way to the present. Scholars such as the economist William Easterly, for example, have argued that even now, the effects of the African slave trade can be measured on the continent, with areas that experienced intensive slaving still showing greater instability, a lack of social trust, and lower growth. Others observers have focused on different external factors, such as the support that powerful countries offered corrupt African dictatorships during the Cold War and the structural-adjustment policies imposed by Western-led institutions in the 1980s—which, some argue, favored disinvestment in national education, health care, and other vital services.
At other times, a consensus has formed around arguments that pin the blame on poor African leadership in the decades since most of the continent achieved independence in the 1960s. According to this view, the outside world has been generous to Africa, providing substantial aid in recent decades, leaving no excuse for the continent’s debility. There’s little wrong with African countries that an end to the corruption and thievery of their leaders wouldn’t fix, voices from this camp say. Western media coverage of Africa has tended to provide fodder for that argument, highlighting the shortcomings and excesses of the region’s leaders while saying little about the influence of powerful international institutions and corporations. It’s easy to understand why: Africa’s supply of incompetent or colorful villains has been so plentiful over the years, and reading about them is perversely comforting for many Westerners who, like audiences everywhere, would rather not dwell on their own complicity in the world’s problems.
Reading about African villains is perversely comforting for many Westerners who, like audiences everywhere, would rather not dwell on their own complicity in the world’s problems.
One of the many strengths of Tom Burgis’ The Looting Machine is the way it avoids falling firmly into either camp in this long-running debate. Burgis, who writes about Africa for theFinancial Times, brings the tools of an investigative reporter and the sensibility of a foreign correspondent to his story, narrating scenes of graft in the swamps of Nigeria’s oil-producing coastal delta region and in the lush mining country of the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, while also sniffing out corruption in the lobbies of Hong Kong skyscrapers, where shell corporations engineer murky deals that earn huge sums of money for a host of shady international players. Although Burgis’ emphasis is ultimately on Africa’s exploitation by outsiders, he never loses sight of local culprits.
GIMME THE LOOT
Sure signs that Burgis is no knee-jerk apologist for African elites arrive early in the book, beginning with his fascinating and lengthy account of “the Futungo,” a shadowy clique of Angolan insiders who he claims control their country’s immense oil wealth, personally profiting from it and also using it to keep a repressive ruling regime in power. The country’s leader, José Eduardo dos Santos, has been president since 1979, and in 2013, Forbes magazine identified his daughter, Isabel, as Africa’s first female billionaire. “When the International Monetary Fund [IMF] examined Angola’s national accounts in 2011,” Burgis writes, it found that between 2007 and 2010, “$32 billion had gone missing, a sum greater than the gross domestic product of each of forty-three African countries and equivalent to one in every four dollars that the Angolan economy generates annually.” Meanwhile, according to Burgis, even though the country is at peace, in 2013 the Angolan government spent 18 percent of its budget on the Futungo-dominated military and police forces that prop up dos Santos’ rule—almost 40 percent more than it spends on health and education combined.
Those who tend to blame Africa’s woes on elite thievery seize on such examples with relish. But Burgis tells a much fuller story. Angola’s leaders may seem more clever and perhaps possess more agency than other African regimes—and indeed, other African states seem to be eagerly adopting the Angolan model. But the regime relies on the complicity of a number of actors in the international system—and the willful ignorance of many others—to facilitate the dispossession of the Angolan people: Western governments, which remain largely mute about governance in Angola; major banks; big oil companies; weapons dealers; and even the IMF. They provide the political cover, the capital, and the technology necessary to extract oil from the country’s rich offshore wells and have facilitated the concealment (and overseas investment) of enormous sums of money on behalf of a small cabal of Angolans and their foreign enablers. Because Angola’s primary resource, oil, is deemed so important to the global economy, and because its production is so lucrative for others, Angola is rarely pressed to account for how it uses its profits, much less over questions of democracy or human rights. Burgis shows how even the IMF, after uncovering the $32 billion theft, docilely reverted to its role as a facilitator of the regime’s dubious economic programs.
Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos leaves a meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, April 2014.
For those who insist that foreign aid to Africa compensates for the role that rich countries, big businesses, and international organizations play in plundering the continent’s resource wealth, Burgis has a ready rejoinder. “In 2010,” he writes, “fuel and mineral exports from Africa were worth $333 billion, more than seven times the value of the aid that went in the opposite direction.” And African countries generally receive only a small fraction of the value that their extractive industries produce, at least relative to the sums that states in other parts of the world earn from their resources. As Burgis reveals, that is because multilateral financial institutions, led by the World Bank and its International Finance Corporation (IFC), often put intense pressure on African countries to accept tiny royalties on the sales of their natural resources, warning them that otherwise, they will be labeled as “resource nationalists” and shunned by foreign investors. “The result,” Burgis writes, “is like an inverted auction, in which poor countries compete to sell the family silver at the lowest price.”
Meanwhile, oil, gas, and mining giants employ crafty tax-avoidance strategies, severely understating the value of their assets in African countries and assigning the bulk of their income to subsidiaries in tax havens such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, and the Marshall Islands. Some Western governments tolerate and even defend such arrangements, which increase the profits of Western companies and major multinational firms. But these tax dodges further shrink the proceeds that African states earn from their resources. According to Burgis, in Zambia, one of the world’s top copper producers, major mining companies pay lower tax rates than the country’s poor miners themselves. Partly as a result, he reports, in 2011, “only 2.4 percent of the $10 billion of revenues from exports of Zambian copper accrued to the government.” Ghana, a major gold producer, fared slightly better, with foreign mining companies paying seven percent of the revenue they earned in taxes—still a tiny amount, Burgis points out, “compared with the 45 to 65 percent that the IMF estimates to be the global average effective tax rate in mining.”
A RACE TO THE BOTTOM
African countries’ unequal relationships with powerful international financial organizations and large multinational firms help explain the “resource curse” so frequently lamented in discussions of the continent’s economies. Rather than issuing from some mysterious invisible force, the curse is to a large degree the product of greed and the disparities in leverage between rich and poor—and its effects are undeniable. Burgis quotes a 2004 internal IFC review that found that between 1960 and 2000, “poor countries that were rich in natural resources grew two to three times more slowly than those that were not.” Without exception, the IFC found, “every country that borrowed from the World Bank did worse the more it depended on extractive industries.”
A case in point is the arid, Sahelian country of Niger, which for decades has served as a major supplier of uranium to France, its former colonial master. According to Burgis, the French company Areva pays tiny royalties for Niger’s uranium—an estimated 5.5 percent of its market value. And the details of the company’s contracts with Niger’s government are not publicly disclosed. Reflecting on this situation during an interview with Burgis, China’s ambassador to Niger adopts a posture of moral outrage, proclaiming that Niger’s “direct receipts from uranium are more or less equivalent to those from the export of onions.”
Rather than issuing from some mysterious invisible force, the “resource curse” is to a large degree the product of greed and the disparities in leverage between rich and poor.
This is a telling exchange, since many Africans believed that Chinese investment and influence on the continent would offer a way to lift the resource curse. Many greeted the arrival of the Chinese as big economic players in the region, which began in the mid-1990s, with great enthusiasm—especially the leaders of states whose economies depend heavily on minerals. China’s share of the global consumption of refined metals rose from five percent in the early 1990s to 45 percent in 2010; its oil consumption increased fivefold during the same period. In 2002, Chinese trade with Africa was worth $13 billion; a mere decade later, that figure had soared to $180 billion, three times the value of U.S. trade with the continent.
The hope was that with China directly competing with Africa’s economic partners in the West, African countries would win better terms for themselves. But as Burgis makes painfully clear, what has happened more often is a race to the bottom, in which Chinese firms focus their attention on African countries that face sharp credit restrictions or economic boycotts from the West, owing to coups d’état or human rights abuses. In many such countries, including Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Guinea, the Chinese have extended easy financing to governments, crafting secretive deals that reward Chinese investors with even more lopsided terms than Western governments and firms tend to enjoy. “Access to easy Chinese loans might have looked like a chance for African governments to reassert sovereignty after decades of hectoring by the [World] Bank, the IMF, and Western donors,” Burgis writes, but, “like a credit card issued with no credit check, it also removed a source of pressure for sensible economic management.” In addition to this, critics point out that Chinese companies frequently bring in their own workers from China, providing little employment for Africans and few opportunities for Africans to master new skills and technologies.
Some of Burgis’ strongest work follows the dealmaking of a shadowy Hong Kong–based outfit called the 88 Queensway Group, which was founded by a man sometimes known as Sam Pa, whose background is reportedly in Chinese intelligence. By tracing a complex web of corporate relations, Burgis shows how Pa’s group has put together lucrative deals in one African country after another, since starting seemingly from scratch in Angola during the early phases of China’s push into Africa.
In Burgis’ telling, one mission of Pa’s 88 Queensway Group and its associated companies, including China Sonangol and the China International Fund, seems to be offering the Chinese government plausible deniability when it comes to major transactions and contracts with some of Africa’s most corrupt and violent regimes. But some African elites at the receiving end of Pa’s entreaties have been left with little doubt that dealing with Queensway would in fact put them in contact with the highest levels of the Chinese state. Mahmoud Thiam served as the minister of mines in Guinea under President Moussa Dadis Camara, a junta leader who faced international outrage after his forces opened fire on a peaceful opposition rally in September 2009, killing at least 150 and gang-raping many who tried to flee the assault. In 2009, Thiam traveled to China at Queensway’s invitation and later told Burgis about being whisked around Beijing by Pa’s associates. “If they were not a government entity, they definitely had strong backing and strong ties,” Thiam recalled. “The level of clearances they had to do things that are difficult in China, the facility they had in getting people to see us [and] the military motorcade gave us the impression that they were strongly connected.” In the case of Guinea and other places, Burgis reports that Queensway was able to provide tens of millions of dollars to African governments on short notice, with virtually no strings attached, sometimes to help bail out leaders presiding over economic crises and sometimes merely to prove the company’s bona fides.
The hope was that with China directly competing with Africa’s economic partners in the West, African countries would win better terms for themselves. But what has happened more often is a race to the bottom.
In the hands of a less astute observer, Pa could come off as something like a Bond villain. But Burgis rightly reminds readers that it hardly takes a conniving mastermind to profit off the inequities and shortcomings of African political systems. “If it weren’t him, it would be someone else,” as a U.S. congressional researcher puts it to Burgis. The researcher adds that even if Pa’s operation were shut down, “the system is still there: these investors can still form a company without saying who they are, they can still anchor their business in a country that is not concerned about investors’ behavior overseas, and, sadly, there’s no shortage of resource-rich fragile states on which these investors can prey.”
LOSS PREVENTION
By showing how “the looting machine” is operated by people and institutions both inside and outside Africa, Burgis transcends the tired binary debate about the root causes of the continent’s misery. But if the problem is as complex as he makes it out to be, with avarice flowing from so many different sources, how can ordinary Africans—and African elites intent on leading more just, prosperous, and equitable societies—improve their prospects?
For Africans, the answer lies in large part in insisting on more open and accountable government. Although the outside world has taken little notice, democracy has spread significantly around the continent in the last two decades, and although conflicts grab the headlines, evidence suggests that war and other forms of large-scale violence have declined during this same period. Stronger civil societies and regular, free, and fair elections would prevent leaders such as Angola’s dos Santos from perpetuating their rule for decades and might allow more responsive elites to put Africa’s resources in the service of more equitable development strategies.
For the outside world, the priority should be getting foreign powers, including China, to agree on more stringent measures to combat corrupt business practices. The U.S. Treasury Department is cracking down on foreign banks that enable Americans to evade taxes; Washington should expand its efforts to prevent illicit financial flows involving other countries as well, reducing the amount of revenue that African countries lose owing to tax havens.
Finally, as Burgis’ book strongly implies (although does not explicitly argue), international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF must be made much more accountable. In Africa, that would mean publicly measuring their programs’ performance in terms of their impact on economic growth. Over the years, such institutions have demanded rigorous compliance from their poorest clients while never holding their own performance or the soundness of their advice up to public scrutiny. The internal IFC review Burgis cites made the same point more than a decade ago. But its findings were largely ignored as the World Bank continued to promote extractive industries in Africa even when they contributed nothing to development. Today, with Africans seeking to cross the Mediterranean Sea by the thousands to escape misery, a simple recommendation from that review is perhaps more pertinent than ever: World Bank and IFC staff should be rewarded not simply for allocating money to projects but for demonstrably reducing poverty. After all, whatever the causes of African poverty, any efforts to address it will fail if they are blind to their own effects.
“Peace is not merely the absence of war but the presence of justice, of law, of order – in general of government.”
—Albert Einstein
When the first United Nations Peacekeeping force was proposed by the Canadian Foreign Minister Lester B. Pearson in 1956 in response to the Suez Crisis the idea was received with a mixed reaction in the international diplomatic and policy circles. Some welcomed it as a ground breaking and watershed moment for global peace and security while others viewed it as a strange and impossible idea to build consensus from all member states. Whatever the initial reaction, establishing an international peacekeeping force eventually won the support of the majority, and Lester B. Pearson who subsequently became the Prime Minister of Canada won a Noble Peace Prize for his contribution in proposing and designing and building consensus to the establishment of UN peacekeeping force.
Since its founding UN Peacekeeping has come a long way in scope, mandate, mission and size. The traditional peacekeeping force contributors, such as Canada, have significantly reduced their participation to peacekeeping and moved into combat and combat related missions, creating a gap in troop contribution. As a result, nations from the global south are filling this void. This shift, in return, has raised the question of the human rights record of regimes, their armies and policies participating in peacekeeping missions in different parts of the world.
Over the last six decades UN peacekeeping operations led by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) have played an irreplaceable role in maintaining peace and stabilization in countries facing inter-state and intra-state conflict. This general achievement record, however, is not without a history of spectacular failure resulting in a tragic consequences. The slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis in1994 by Hutu extremists and the failure of the UN to prevent the genocide remains one of the darkest chapters of the UN and international diplomacy and multilateral response to crisis.
Physics and Astronomy Department, University of California, Santa Cruz,at NASA Ames Research Center, Space Sciences Division, M.S. 245-7,
Moffett Field, Calif. 94035, U.S. 20 XII 85
The announcement of a possible first archaeoastronomical site (called Namoratunga II) in sub-Saharan Africa by Lynch and Robbins (1978) and its subsequent reappraisal by Soper (1982) have renewed interest in an East African calendrical system, the Borana calendar, first outlined in detail by Legesse (1973:180-88). I shall here reinterpret the calendar as Legesse describes it in the light of astronomical constraints. The Borana calendar is a lunar-stellar calendrical system, relying on astronomical observations of the moon in conjunction with seven particular stars (or star groups). At no time (except indirectly by way of lunar phase) does it rely upon solar observations. The Borana year is twelve lunar synodic months (each 29.5 days long), 354 days. While it will not correspond to the seasons, this may not be of primary importance for people this close to the equator. There are twenty-seven day names (no weeks), and since each month is either 29 or 30 days long, the first two (or three) day names are used twice in the same month starts on a new day name. The day names are listed in Table 1, the month names in Table 2. The first six months can be identified at the beginning of the month with a particular astronomical observation, whereas the last six months can be so identified only around the middle of the month. The first six months begin with the observation of the new-phase moon in conjunction with six positions in the sky marked by seven particular stars or star groups. Thus the phase of the moon is held constant while its position varies. The last six months are identified by a particular-phase moon seen in conjunction with the first star position. Thus, here, the lunar phase changes and the position is held constant. The seven stars or star groups in order are Triangulum (which I take to mean Beta Trianguli), Pleiades, Aldebarran, Belletrix, central Orion (around the sword), Saiph, and Sirius. They are given in Table 2 next to the months they define.
The New Year starts with the observation of the new moon in conjunction with Beta Trianguli. (The term “new moon” here will be taken to be within two days of zero phase, although the Borana allow up to three “leap” days’ leeway, the astronomical observation determining the correct day to start on. This is indicated in the day nomenclature by the assignment of like prefixes to two or three day names before the approximate time an important astronomical observation is to take place.) Since the new moon can be seen only just before sunrise or just after sunset, twilight makes the observation of Beta Trianguli (a third-magnitude star) in conjunction with a new moon impossible with the naked eye.
Assuming that such an observation, however, was possible, would the next new moon be in conjunction with the next star group. Pleiades? (Conjunction here is taken to mean “rising with” or “setting with,” having the same right ascension. Legesse says (p. 182), “Let us assume that a new moon was sighted last night and that is appeared side by side with the star Sirius, which the Borana call Basa.”) Since the sidereal period of the moon is 27.3 days long, it will arrive back at the Triangulum position more than two days before completing its synodic month. At the sidereal rate of 13.2° per day, the moon will be within 3° of Pleiades when it rises in the new phase again. However, by the time of the third month it rises, not with Aldebarran, the next star, but a little past Belletrix, the fourth star, which is supposed to start the fourth month. By the fourth month the new moon is rising past Sirius, the sixth start, and the calendar is clearly not working as described. It should be added that the right-ascension positions of the stars in the area from Beta Trianguli to Sirius change with time, at the rate of roughly 15° every thousand years. However, the stars stay in approximately the same configuration, and arguments based on their present right-ascension relationships will hold over the past several thousand years as well.
What happens if we take the term “conjunction,” or “side by side,” as Legesse has it, to mean not “rising with” but “rising single-file,” that is, at the same horizon position (in other words, having the same declination)? Examining the idea that it is not the proximity of the moon to the star that is important but its horizon rising (or setting) position with respect to that star’s horizon rising (or setting) position, we immediately find that the first necessary observation, the new moon rising at the horizon position of Beta Trianguli, is not currently possible. Beta Trianguli rises (at the equator) about 35° north of the east point (0° declination), while the moon (on the northernmost average) rises at 23.5° north of east, never rising farther north than 28.5° from the East Point. The earth’s rotation axis is known to precess over the centuries, and while this does not change the lunar orbital positions significantly, it does change the apparent position of the stars. We can calculate the positions of the seven Borana stars at a time when Beta Trianguli was well within the moon’s declination limits to see if the calendar would have worked then. In 300 BC, Beta Trianguli was rising at a declination of +23° north of east. The right-ascension positions at the time still do not allow a “rising with” interpretation of the calendrical system. We can begin by defining the start of the Borana year as the new moon rising at the rising position of 300 BC Beta Trianguli. (The date of 300 BC was strongly suggested by the preliminary dating of Namoratunga II, but it was chosen because +23°, Beta Trianguli’s declination at the time, is the northern average of the moon’s monthly motion. I will take the moon’s motion, for the example here, from theNautical Almanacs for 1983 and 1984.) The next new moon rises at 14° north of east, which corresponds precisely to the 300 BC horizon rising position of Pleiades, the next Borana star. The next four new moons (starting the next four Borana months) rise at +9 degrees, +1 degree, –11 degrees, and –17 degrees declination. These positions correspond to the 300 BC horizon rising positions of the Borana stars Aldebarran. Belletrix, central Orion—Saiph (taken together), and Sirius, respectively (Table 3).
The seventh month should be identifiable 14 or 15 days from its automatic start (about 29 days after the start of the sixth month) by a full moon rising at the Beta Trianguli position, and this is indeed the case. Each subsequent moon rises at this horizon position 27.3 days later (sidereal month) in a phase (synodic month) about two days less waxes (since it is on its way to the full phase again) each time. (Legesse has a waning moon, but this must mean waning with respect to each subsequent monthly observation, not with respect to the Phase State for that month.) On the thirteenth or first month, the moon is seen rising in the new phase again (“new” meaning within a couple of days of zero phase), and another year begins. Tracing the moon’s motion as it arrives at these positions in the sky (which are, however, no longer directly marked by the seven stars), we can derive the calendar (see Table 4). This outline is still general with respect to what is sometimes called the lunar excursion (regression of the line of nodes of the lunar orbit). The three “leap” days the Borana calendar allows for the starting of some of the months just before an important astronomical observation could account for this declination excursion of the moon (± ca. 5° from 23.5° declination on an 18.6-year basis), but this would certainly require confirmation in the field.
The Borana calendrical system as described by Legesse is, therefore, a valid timekeeping system, subject to the astronomical constraints outlined here, and the pillars found in northwestern Kenya by Lynch and Robbins and preliminary dates at 300 BC could, as they suggest, represent a site used to derive that calendar. The calendar does not work in right-ascension sense, but it does work if taken as based on declination. It might have been invented around 300 BC, when the declinations of the seven stars corresponded to lunar motion as the calendar indicates, and the star names would therefore apply to the horizon positions as well. Because the horizon rising positions constitute the important observations (over half of which must be made at twilight), some sort of horizon-marking device would seem to be necessary. Since the calendar is still in use, and the horizon-making pillars can no longer be set up by aligning them with the horizon rising positions of these stars, it would seem that the Borana may be using ancient (or replicas of ancient) horizon markers and this possibility should be investigated. I look forward with great interest to a test of these hypotheses.
Table 1
Borana Day names (Legesse 1973)
Bita Kara
Gardaduma
Bita Lama
Sonsa
Sorsa
Rurruma
Algajima
Lumasa
Arb
Gidada
Walla
Ruda
Basa Dura
Areri Dura
Basa Ballo
Areri Ballo
Carra
Adula Dura
Maganatti Jarra
Adula Ballo
Maganatti Britti
Garba Dura
Salban Dura
Garba Balla
Salban Balla
Garda Dullacha
Salban Dullacha
Table 2
Borana Months and Stars/Lunar Phases That Define Them
(Legesse 1973)
Month
Star/Lunar Phase
Bittottessa
Triangulum
Camsa
Pleiades
Bufa
Aldebarran
Wacabajjii
Belletrix
Obora Gudda
Central Orion-Saiph
Obora Dikka
Sirius
Birra
full moon
Cikawa
gibbous moon
Sadasaa
quarter moon
Abrasa
large crescent
Ammaji
medium crescent
Gurrandala
small crescent
Table 3
Declinations (Degrees) of Borana Stars, 300 BC and Present
Star
Declination
300 BC
Present
Beta Trianguli
+23
+35
Pleiades
+14
+23
Aldebarran
+9
+16
Belletrix
+1
+6
Central Orion
–10
–6
Saiph
–13
–10
Sirius
–17
–17
Table 4
Astronomical Borana-Cushitic Calendar (1983-84)
Borana-Cushitic Day/Month
Gregorian Date
Description
Bita Kara/
Bittottessa
August 7, 1983
New moon rises at Triangulum horizon position
Algajima/
Camsa
September 6, 1983
New moon rises at Pleiades horizon position
Walla/
Bufa
October 5, 1983
New moon rises at Aldebarran horizon position
Basa Dura/
Wacabajjii
November 2, 1983
New moon rises at Belletrix horizon position
Maganatti Jarra/
Obora Gudda
December 2, 1983
New moon rises at central Orion-Saiph horizon position
Salban Dura/
Obora Dikka
December 30, 1983
New moon rises at Sirius horizon position
Gardaduma/
Birra
January 29, 1984
Full moon sets at Triangulum on February 15
Rurruma/Cikawa
February 28, 1984
Gibbous moon sets at Triangulum on March 14
Gidada/
Sadasaa
March 28, 1984
Quarter moon sets at Triangulum on April 10
Areri Dura/
Abrasa
April 26, 1984
Large crescent sets at Triangulum on May 7
Adula Dura/
Ammaji
May 25, 1984
Medium crescent sets at Triangulum on June 3
Garba Dura/
Gurrandala
June 23, 1984
Small crescent sets at Triangulum on June 30
Bita Kara/
Bittottessa
July 28, 1984
“New” moon rises at Triangulum position again, new year starts
References Cited
Legesse, A. 1973. Gada: Three approaches to the study of African Society. New York: Free Press.
Lynch, B. M., and L. H. Robbins. 1978. Namoratunga: The first archaeoastronomical evidence in sub-Saharan Africa. Science 200:766-68.
Soper, R. 1982. Archaeo-astronomical Cushites: Some comments. Azania 17:145-62
ASTRONOMY IN EAST AFRICA
The Borana-Cushitic Calendar and Namoratunga
Laurance Reeve Doyle
Space Sciences Division, N.A.S.A.
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California
“While Western thought has always prided itself on scientific objectivity, it has often been found unprepared for such surprises as an intellectually advanced yet seemingly illiterate society. In the face of apparent primitiveness, the possibility of significant intellectual development may not be fully investigated.
This was certainly the case when, in the early 1970’s, Dr. A. Legesse first found that the Borana people of southern Ethiopia were indeed using a sophisticated calendrical system based on the conjunction of seven stars with certain lunar phases. Previous calendrical investigations into the area up to this time had superficially stated that the Borana “attach magical significance to the stars and constellations,” incorrectly concluding that their calendar was based, as ours is, on solar motion.
What Dr. Legesse found was an amazing cyclical calendar similar to those of the Mayans, Chinese, and Hindu, but unique in that it seemed to ignore the sun completely (except indirectly by way of the phases of the moon). The workings were described to him by the Borana ayyantu (timekeepers) as follows.
There are twelve months to a year, each month being identifiable with a unique (once a year) astronomical observation. The length of each month is either 29 or 30 days – that is, the time it takes the moon to go through all its phases. (This time is actually 291/2 days and is called a synodic month, but the Borana only keep track of whole days). Instead of weeks, there are 27 day names. Since each month is 29 or 30 days long we will run out of day names about two or three days early in the same month. The day names can therefore be recycled and for day 28 we use the first day name again, the second day name for day 29, and start the next month using the third day name. Thus each month will start on a different day name. Whether the particular month is to be 29 or 30 days long would depend on the astronomical observations, which are quite ingeniously defined.
The seven stars (or star groups) used to derive the calendar are, from northernmost to southernmost, 1) Beta Triangulum – a fairly faint navigation star in the constellation of the Triangle, 2) Pleiades – a beautiful, blue star cluster in the constellation of Taurus the Bull, and sometimes referred to as the seven sisters, 3) Aldebarran – a bright, red star that represents the eye of Taurus, 4) Belletrix – a fairly bright star that represents the right shoulder of the constellation Orion the Hunter, 5)Central Orion – the region around Orion’s sword where the Great Orion Nebula may be found, 6) Saiph – the star representing the right knee of Orion, and finally 7) Sirius – the brightest star in the night sky and the head of the constellation Canis Majoris, the Great Dog.
The New Year begins with the most important astronomical observation of the year – a new moon in conjunction with Beta Triangulum. (this day is called Bitotesa, and the next month is called Bitokara). The next month starts when the new moon is found in conjunction with the Pleiades. The third month starts with the new moon being observed in conjunction with the star Aldebarran, the next with Belletrix, then the area in between Central Orion and Saiph, and finally with the star Sirius. So the first six months of the calendar are started by the astronomical observations of the new phase moon found in conjunction with six specific locations in the sky marked by seven stars of star groups.
The method is now switched and the final six months are identified by six different phases of the moon (from full to crescent) being found in conjunction with only one position in the sky – the one marked by Beta Triangulum. Thus the whole Borana year is identified astronomically and when the new phase moon is again finally seen in conjunction with Beta Triangulum the New Year will start again. Since there are 12 such synodic months of 29 ½ days each, the Borana year is only 354 days long.
Now, in the latter part of the 1970’s another interesting development was to take place regarding the astronomy of this region. In 1977 Drs. B.M. Lynch and L.H. Robbins, who were working in the Lake Turkana area of northwestern Kenya, came upon what they believed was the first archaeoastronomical site ever found in sub-Saharan Africa. At Namoratunga, it consisted of 19 stone pillars, apparently man-made, that seemed to align toward the rising positions of the seven Borana calendar stars as they had appeared quite some time ago. (their suggested date from the various archaeological considerations, which still requires corroboration, was about 300 BC). Due to precession (the slow, wobbling of the pointing direction of the rotation axis of the Earth), the stars will seem to move from their positions over the centuries, although the moon’s position would not vary on this time scale. (Such an example is the alignment of certain features of the Egyptian pyramids with the star Thuban in the constellation Draco the Dragon, which was the north polar star about 5000 year ago; today it is Polaris and in several thousand years it will be Vega). If the date that Drs. Lynch and Robbins suggested was correct, the site would then correspond to the time of the extensive kingdom of Cush, referred to as Ethiopia in the Bible but actually centered about present day Sudan. One would then conclude that the Borana calendrical system was old indeed, having been developed by the Cushitic peoples in this area about 1800 years before the development of our present day Western Gregorian calendrical system.
In 1982, a number of significant questions arose concerning the site, the calendar, and archaeoastronomy of East Africa in general. The pillars were remeasured by an anthropologist in Kenya (Mr. Robert Soper) and found to be magnetic in nature. The original measurements had to be modified but, again, alignments with the seven Borana stars were found. However, this brought up the question of whether pillar alignments are significant at all, since the Borana ayyantu certainly can recognize the phases of the moon and when it is in conjunction with the appropriate seven stars. It was time to approach the question astronomically, and ask the moon and the stars how the calendar worked.
First, we could take the New Year’s observations, a new moon in conjunction with the faint star Beta Triangulum. What is meant by the term “conjunction” which is astronomically defined as the closest approach between two celestial objects? A new moon means that the moon is very close to the sun, being at best only a very small crescent, and therefore can only be seen just before sunrise or just after sunset. Interestingly enough, it turns out that during this twilight time the sky is too bright to be able to see the star Beta Triangulum so that seeing the new moon next to Beta Triangulum, the most important observation of the Borana calendar, was impossible!
In addition, assuming that the new moon and Beta Triangulum could be somehow seen rising together, the next month’s new moon rises significantly behind Pleiades, the newt conjunction star group. The third new moon rises with Belletrix, having skipped the third star, Aldebarran, completely. This is certainly not how the Borana described their calendar. If we were to continue to try to work the calendar in this way, by the start of the sixth month the new moon would be rising almost four hours after Sirius.
How could the calendar work then? Suppose (as we did), that one takes the term “conjunction” to mean “rising at the same horizon position” instead of “rising horizontally next to at the same time.” Thus one could mark the horizon rising position of Beta Triangulum, with pillars for instance, and once a year a new moon will rise at that position on the horizon. Let us suppose that this astronomical event marks the start of the New Year. We must add that we are taking the horizon rising position of these seven stars as they were in or around 300 BC, since present day Beta Triangulum has precessed too far to the north over the centuries and the moon will never rise there. However, the position of 300 BC Beta Triangulum, as well as the other Borana stars, was quite within the realm of the moon’s orbit.
Now where will the next new moon rise? It turns out to rise at precisely the rising position of Pleiades! The next new moon, marking the start of the third month, rises at the Aldebarran horizon position, the next at Belletrix, the next in between Central Orion and Saiph, and finally the sixth new moon rises at the horizon position that Sirius rose at during the night. During the next six months one can tell what month it is only in the middle of the month, since one has to wait to see what phase the moon is in when it appears at the Beta Triangulum horizon position. During the seventh month, as described, a full moon will be observed at the Beta Triangulum position. The next month a gibbous waxing moon, then a quarter moon, and successively smaller crescents will be seen there until, at the time when the 13th or first month should start the new year again (exactly 354 days later), a new moon is again seen rising at the Beta Triangulum position on the horizon.
It is interesting that one can draw some significant anthropological results from the astronomical derivation of this calendrical system. It would appear that the calendar would have had to have been invented (to use the stars correctly) sometime within a few hundred years of 300 BC, a time when the Cushitic peoples were dominant in this part of the world. Hence we would call it the Borana-Cushitic calendar. In addition, although the seven Borana-Cushitic stars no longer rise in the correct horizon positions to be correctly marked by pillars for observing the monthly rising position of the new moon, the present day Borana people nevertheless use this system of timekeeping. The implication is that the Borana require ancient horizon markers in their present derivation of the calendar.
Concerning the site at Namoratunga, and considering that the use of pillars is apparently necessary to the derivation of the calendar, such horizon markers as are found there may, indeed, have been an ancient observatory. Petroglyphs on the pillars at Namoratunga may also hold the possibility of being ancient and, if Cushitic, may represent the alignment stars or moon. Cushitic script has never been deciphered and any hints as to the meaning of tits symbols could be significant clues with very exciting prospects indeed!
Thus, archaeoastronomy in East Africa is still quite new and many discoveries await. From coming to understand, even in a small way, the calendrical reckoning and observational abilities of the ancient and modern astronomer-timekeepers of this region, Western thought should certainly not again underestimate the ingenuity and intellect present there. As for this Western thinker, this study continues to be a welcome lesson in perspective and humility, taught to him by his astronomical colleagues of long ago.”
This is a summary of a talk delivered at Caltech for Ned Munger’s African Studies class.
“The Oromo ethnic group in Ethiopia must be one of the most athletically blessed on earth. The list of long distance running champions it has produced includes Haile Gebrselassie, Abebe Bikila, and Sileshi Sihene, as well as Dibaba sisters and Derartu Tulu.” Says Olympic and World Records 2012, Keir Radnedge (Author), pp- 62-82. This is an Official London 2012 Olympic Games Publication. Wami Biratu, Mammo Dagaga, Tolasa Qotu, Fatuma Roba, Tikki Galana, Lesisa Desisa, Tsegaye Kebede, Meseret Defar, Maryam Yusuf, Gelete Burka, Tariku Bekele, Atsede Bayisa, Mohammed Aman, Gete (Gexee) Wami, Lamma Kumsa, Abebe Mekonnen, Fita (Fixa Bayyisa), Ayelech Worku, Worku Bikila, Kuture Dulacha, Elfnesh Alemu, Abebe Tola, Maru Dhaba, Mariam Hashim, Ibrahim Said, Berhane Adere, Magarsa Tullu, Abarraa Ayyano, Mohammed Kadir, Shibbiruu Raggasaa, Nugussie Roba, Markos Geneti Guta, Tigist Fufa are Oromians of world stars.
Younger sister of Tirunesh Dibaba, 24-year-old Oromo athlete Genzebe Dibaba – also hailing from Bekoji, Oromia – won the Diamond League 5K Meet in Oslo, Norway, on June 11, 2015. Among others, she was also cheered by her Oromo supporters in Norway. Oromo athletes Sinbiree and Galate Burqa completed 2nd and 4th respectively.
WORLD LEADS FOR OROMO ATHLETES YOMIF QAJELCHA (KEJELCHA) AND AMAN IN ROME – IAAF DIAMOND LEAGUE. THURSDAY, 4TH JUNE 2015.
Yomif Qajelcha (Kejelcha), author of the best world performance of the season on 5000m in Eugene last on Friday, 29 May 2015 (13’10 “54), improved his own mark in Rome, on the occasion of the fourth stage of the Diamond League, Thursday, 4th June 2015. The young Oromo athlete (17) won in 12’58 “39, before the Kenyan Paul Kipngetich Tanui (12’58” 69). The world 800m champion Mohammed Aman won over two laps of the track in a world-leading 1:43.56.
Sifan Hassan was second in in 1500m women’s race.
Oromia Athletic nation World News
Oromo athlete Sutume Asefa Kebede produced a stunning performance in the BIG 25 Berlin on Sunday May 10, 2015.
Despite 60mph gusts of wind, Oromian newcomer Sutume Asefa Kebede smashed Ejegayehu Dibaba’s national 25km record at the BIG 25 Berlin on Sunday 10 may 2015.
The 21-year-old front-ran to the finish-line in the historic Berlin Olympic Stadium, smashing Ejegayehu Dibaba’s national record with a time of 1:21:55. Despite the windy conditions, Sutume was 19 seconds faster than Ejegayehu Dibaba in Chicago in 2011.
Sutum’s time is a world-lead, and the fifth fastest ever run at this distance. The Oromian was more than four minutes faster than second placed Kenyan Winny Jepkorir who clocked 1:25:59. Elizeba Cherono of Kenya was third with 1:26:59.
Sutume set two lifetime bests en route to victory: 31:05 at 10km, and 68:23 through the halfway mark.
“I am very happy to have broken the national record. I did not expect this to happen today,” said Sutume, who now intends to run the 5000 m on track. “In the autumn I will run road races again.”
At the #Shanghai#IAAF Diamond League meeting on Sunday, 17th May 2015 #Oromo athlete #Almaz#Ayana amazed the world in her shinning victory in 5000m race.
Just going faster and faster, Ayana smashed her rivals to win by about 150 metres in 14:14.32.
It was a personal best, a meeting record, an Asian all-comers’ record and an IAAF Diamond League record. Only world record-holder Tirunesh Dibaba (14:11.15) and Meseret Defar (14:12.88), both Oromo athletes, have ever gone faster and Ayana might have topped those times too had she had more competition over the last half of the race.
The 23-year-old Ayana took the bronze medal at the 2013 IAAF World Championships and last year won the IAAF Continental Cup in Marrakech. She has form.
Two years ago, Ayana clung resolutely to Dibaba’s heels as her more illustrious countrywoman ran 14:23.68 at the Paris IAAF Diamond League meeting. Ayana’s reward then was second place in 14:25.84, which remained her personal best coming into Shanghai.
On a cool Sunday night which inevitably suffered a little in contrast to Friday’s IAAF Diamond League opener in Doha, Ayana led after five laps and ran solo from just before the 3000m mark.
At that stage, Kenya’s Viola Kibiwot was still vaguely in contact, but in reality, her only hope of catching Ayana would have been to hail a taxi. Even then it would have been doubtful as the field was spread out all around the track.
It was never hard to spot Ayana, however; you just looked for the woman who was obviously running fast.
With Global Sports physiotherapist Joost Vollaard helping with translation, Ayana said she was not aware of how close she was to the world record.
“I was trying for 14:20, I didn’t think of the world record,” she explained. “I was surprised; it was much faster than I had in mind.”
Based in Finfinnee, Ayana is training just outside the city. She is coached by her husband, 1500m runner Soresa Fida.
#Oromo athlete #Mamitu#Daska created marathon magic at #TCS World 10k in #Bengaluru, India, 17 May 2015 on a fine Sunday.
The story of the day was the spirit of competition, as the entirety of the race was contested in the best possible manner.
Mamitu Daska produced a world-class performance, winning the run but missing the overall course record by 9 seconds. Mamitu ended the race on a high,steering ahead of the competition by a clear 13 seconds, she ended the run with an overall time of 00:31:57. Although Mamitu had pulled far into the lead, the battle for second and third was a thrilling encounter with both Wude Ayalew and Gladys Chesir exchanging positions at the 7km mark. Wude raced ahead by two seconds finishing second at 00:32:10.
Speaking about her medal-winning performance, Mamitu said “I am really happy to end the run on a winning note. Though I was comfortable for the first four kilometres, it got a bit tougher. However I took initiative to push myself after that and crossed the finish line before my competition.”
In the international category of World 10K for Elite Men proceedings as Mosinet Geremew stole the show. The race to claim top honours was tightly contested with the top three finishers separated by 2 seconds each, Geremew emerged victorious, clocking in a time of 00:28:16. His fellow countryman Fikadu Seboka finished second with a timing of 00:28:18, followed by Edwin Kiptoo from Kenya who finished his run in 00:28:20.
Oromians won both the men’s and the women’s races at Riga Marathon Course, the IAAF Bronze Label Road Race on Sunday (17 May 2015).#Oromo athlete Haile #Tolossa Smashes #Riga#Marathon Course Record in men’s race on Sunday 17th May 2015.
In a race where three men ran well inside the previous course record, Haile Tolossa triumphed with a PB of 2:12:29 to record the fastest marathon ever on Latvian soil. Beyene #Effa held on for second place in 2:12:52, also a PB. Duncan Koech of Kenya 3rd in 2:12:53.
Compatriot Oromo athlete #Meseret#Eshetu#Damedominated the women’s race, winning by more than five minutes in 2:37:04 to narrowly miss the course record by 13 seconds.
Oromo athlete Workenesh Tola and Kenya’s Ruth Wanjiru had been running side by side for the majority of the race. Having long passed the fading Chepkemoi, it was only in the final two kilometres thatOromia’s Tola began to pull away, eventually taking second place in 2:42:07.Leading resultsMen
1 Haile Tolossa 2:12:29
2 Beyene Effa 2:12:52
3 Duncan Koech 2:12:53Women
1 Meseret Eshetu Dame 2:37:04
2 Workenesh Tola 2:42:07
3 Ruth Wanjiru 2:42:29
World indoor champion #Oromo athlete #Genzebe#Dibaba was named sportswoman of the year at the Laureus World Sports Awards in Shanghai on Wednesday ( 15th April 2015).
DIBABA NAMED SPORTSWOMAN OF THE YEAR AT LAUREUS WORLD SPORTS AWARDS
World indoor champion Genzebe Dibaba was named sportswoman of the year at the Laureus World Sports Awards in Shanghai on Wednesday (15).
The middle-distance runner became the first sportsperson from Ethiopia to win an award in any category at the prestigious event, which began in 2000.
Dibaba was rewarded for her 2014 season in which she set world indoor records for 1500m and 3000m as well as a world indoor best for two miles.
Outdoors, she went on to record world-leading times over 5000m and 2000m before ending her season with 3000m victory at the IAAF Continental Cup in Marrakech.
On a night in which Renaud Lavillenie, Valerie Adams and Jo Pavey were nominated for other awards, Dibaba was the only winner from the sport of athletics.
Adams was nominated in the same category as Dibaba, while Lavillenie was nominated for the sportsman of the year award, which was given to tennis star Novak Djokovic. Pavey was one of the contenders for the comeback of the year award, which eventually went to rugby player Schalk Burger.
But other legendary athletes played a part in the ceremony. USA’s 400m world record-holder Michael Johnson presented Chinese tennis player Li Na with the exceptional achievement award, while recently retired sprint hurdler Liu Xiang joined Chinese opera singer Liao Changyong on stage for a surprise performance. http://www.iaaf.org/news/news/laureus-awards-2015-genzebe-dibaba
OROMO ATHLETE GENZEBE DIBABA RUNS SECOND-FASTEST 5KM IN HISTORY AT CARLSBAD 5000.
29 MAR 2015REPORTCARLSBAD, UNITED STATES
Two-time world indoor champion Genzebe Dibaba narrowly missed out on breaking the world best at the Carlsbad 5000, but her winning time of 14:48 was the second-fastest ever recorded for 5km on the roads.
The 24-year-old owns the fastest times in history across four distances indoors, and had been hoping to add another mark to her growing collection. Just like three of her indoor record-breaking performances, she was targeting a time that had been set by Meseret Defar. The two-time Olympic champion ran 14:46 in Carlsbad in 2006.http://www.iaaf.org/news/report/carlsbad-5000-2015-genzebe-dibaba-lalang
Injifannoo gammachisaa!!! #Oromo athlete Abera #Kuma from Oromia, pulled away from his rivals in the last seven kilometres of the 35th edition of de NN #Rotterdam#Marathon, an IAAF Gold Label Road Race, to win in 2.06.46 on Sunday (12).
Kenya’s Mark Kiptoo finished second in 2:07:20 and his compatriot Bernard Koech, who did a lot of work in the second part of the race, was third in 2.08.02.
“I was waiting for the more experienced runners to make a move,” reflected Kuma after the third marathon of his career. “I did come here for a personal best but, when the pace slowed down, I decided to try to win the race.”
Oromo athlete Abdi Nageeye was the fastest in the race for the Dutch national title. He finished ninth overall in 2.12.32.
Sisay #Lemma won the 32nd #Vienna City Marathon in 2:07:31 in windy and relatively warm weather conditions at the IAAF Gold Label Road Race on Sunday (12). Kenya’s Duncan Koech was second with 2:12:14 while #Siraj Gena took third in 2:12:48.
On same day Oromo athletes #Meseret Mengistu Biru and her compatriot Amane Gobena win the Paris Womens Marathon. Seboka #Tola was 3rd in men’s marathon. #Oromo athletes Meseret #Mengistu Biru and her compatriot Amane #Gobena win the #Paris Womens#Marathon. Seboka #Tola was 3rd in mens marathon.
Injifannoo atileetota Oromoo.
Oromo athletes E. Shumi and B. #Dibaba were crowned champions of#Tokyo#Marathon, Sunday 22nd February 2015. #Oromia. #Africa
Endeshaw #Negesse Shumi clocked a time 2:05:59 to win the men’s race and to beat Olympic and World Champion Stephen Kiprotich of Uganda, who clocked a personal best and national record time of 2:06:30. Kenya’s Dickinson Chumba finished 3rd in 2:06:32.
The women’s Tokyo Marathon winner Birhane Dibaba clocked 2:23:15. Kenya’s Helah Kiprop clocked a personal best time of 2:24:03 to take second while Olympic Champion Tiki #Gelana (#Oromia) was third with a time of 2:24:26.
Congratulations to Oromia’s marathoners Angasaa and Qanani in Indore just like those in Tokyo!
INDORE: Runners from Oromia dominated the inaugural edition of Indore Marathon organised by the Association of Indore Marathoners in the city on Sunday 22nd February 2015.
While all three winners in men’s 21-km open category were Oromians (Oromos), it was their compatriots who were among two of the top three finishers in the women’s open category of the same event.
In the 21-km half marathon men’s open category,Oromia’s Angasa Ware clinched the first place clocking a time of one hour, five minutes and just over 42 seconds, while compatriot Abera Demelash was a close second. Their country mate, management graduate Belay Shimelis stood third.
In the women’s open category of the same event, Oromian Keneni Kome timed one hour, 18 minutes and 58 seconds to win the race, while Kenyan Linal Chirchir stood second and Oromia’s Adanech Jefare secured the third position.
Dibaba broke her fourth indoor world record in just over a year
World indoor champion Oromo athlete Genzebe Dibaba clocked 14:18.86 to beat previous record by more than five seconds at XL Galan meeting in Stockholm, Sweden on 19th February 2015.
Netherland’s European 1500m champion Oromo athlete Sifan Hassan clocked a world-leading indoor personal best of 4:00.46 to win the women’s race. German based Homiyu Tesfaye ran world-leading 1,500 time of 3:34:13.
Oromo athlete Genzebe Dibaba is now the holder of four world indoor records or world bests after clocking 14:18.86 to break the 5000m mark at the XL Galan meeting in Stockholm, Sweden, on Thursday.
With that time the two-time world indoor gold medallist beat the previous world indoor 5000m record set by her compatriot Meseret Defar – also run in Stockholm in 2009 – by more than five seconds. Her 3000m split time of 8:37 is the quickest that distance has been run so far this year.
Dibaba adds this most recent world record to the world indoor records she ran over 1500m and 3000m and the world indoor best she clocked over 2 miles all within 15 days last year. The 3000m record was run at XL Galan, with Defar the previous holder of that record, too.
On Thursday Dibaba finished more than a minute clear of her closest rival, Birtukan Fente, who ran 15:22.56. Oromo athletes filled the top three spots as Birtukan Adamu was third with 15:34.15.
LAVILLENIE, ADAMS, OROMO ATHLETE GENZEBE DIBABA AND PAVEY AMONG 2015 LAUREUS WORLD SPORTSMAN AND SORTSWOMAN NOMINEES.
Read more as follows:
‘IAAF World Athletes of the Year Renaud Lavillenie and Valerie Adams are among the nominees for the 2015 Laureus World Sportsman and Sportswoman of the Year awards.
Lavillenie, in addition to memorably breaking Sergey Bubka’s long-standing pole vault world record last February, was only beaten once during a momentous year.
Outside of athletics, the other male nominees are (in alphabetical order) Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic, British racing driver Lewis Hamilton, British golfer Rory McIlroy Spanish motorcyclist Marc Marquez and Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo.
Adams is joined on the list of female nominees by Ethiopian distance runner Genzebe Dibaba; as well skiers Marit Bjorgen and Tina Maze, from Norway and Slovenia respectively, and tennis players Li Na and Serena Williams, from China and the USA.
British distance runner Jo Pavey, who won the European 10,000m title in Zurich last summer at the age of 40 and just 10 months after giving birth, is nominated in the Comeback of the Year category.
The 16th Laureus World Sports Awards will recognise sporting achievement during the calendar year of 2014 and is the premier honours event on the international sporting calendar.
The winners are voted for by the Laureus World Sports Academy, which is made up of 48 of the greatest sportsmen and sportswomen of all time, and they will be unveiled at a globally televised Awards Ceremony staged in the Grand Theatre, Shanghai, on Wednesday 15 April.
“This is going to be yet another classic year. Each year we think the list of Nominees cannot get better, but then it does. The Sportsman of the Year and Team of the Year categories look amazing. You could make a case for every nominee to be the winner,” said Laureus World Sports Academy chairman and former 400m hurdles world record-holder Edwin Moses.’ http://www.iaaf.org/…/news/lavillenie-adams-dibaba-pavey-la…
February 2, 2015 (IAAF) — The world 5000m bronze medallist and Continental Cup winner Oromo athlete Almaz Ayana chats about some of the best things in her world.
Best friend in athletics
My best friend in athletics is Soresa Fida (a 3:34 1500m runner) who is also my husband and always my first source of advice.
Best achievement in athletics
My best achievement is the 5000m victory at the 2014 Continental Cup in Marrakech The other one would be winning a bronze medal in the 5000m at the Moscow World Championships, which was a real breakthrough performance.
Best piece of advice
Every one of us, wherever we live or whoever we are, must work for peacefulness in our world. We are given this world to live in for free and leave it only by the grace of almighty God.
Biggest regret
Up until this point in my life, I have no regrets.
Biggest weakness
I have a weakness in terms of the finish of my races. This is something I am working hard to improve.
Biggest disappointment
I am always highly disappointed when I cannot make a good result in top competitions, like at the 2014 IAAF Diamond League in Brussels (Almaz placed down in ninth in the 3000m). I always want to show my best and I’m unhappy if other circumstances such as illness or injury hold me back.
Best athlete I ever saw
Tirunesh Dibaba is my idol. She has shown great discipline and character throughout her career.
Biggest rival
I have many great rivals but, in the race, time is my biggest rival.
Biggest achievement outside of athletics
I was living in a very small rented room for long time, but recently I bought my own residential house where I am living with my beloved husband.
Best stadium/venue
Competing at the Moscow Olympic Stadium at the 2013 World Championships was the most exciting event in my life. It was an impressive stadium with a great atmosphere and crowd.
Almaz Ayana on her way to winning the 5000m at the IAAF Continental Cup, Marrakech 2014 (Getty Images)[/caption]Almaz Ayana in the 5000m at the 2013 IAAF World Championships (Getty Images)[/caption]
Almaz Ayana in the 5000m at the 2014 IAAF Continental Cup (Getty Images)
Almaz Ayana on her way to winning the 5000m at the IAAF Continental Cup, Marrakech 2014
Source: IAAF.org and http://ayyaantuu.com/sport/personal-bests-almaz-ayana/
HASSAN THE STAR ON A NIGHT OF SIX WORLD LEADS IN KARLSRUHE
February 3, 2015 (IAAF) — The Netherlands’ European 1500m champion Sifan Hassan provided the outstanding performance at the first IAAF Indoor Permit meeting of 2015 when she sped to a national record and world-leading 1500m time of 4:02.57 at the Indoor Meeting Karlsruhe on Saturday (31).
Hassan moved away from Ethiopia’s 20-year-old world indoor silver medallist Axumawit Embaye off the final bend, although the latter was second in an indoor personal best of 4:02.92.
There were five other world-leading marks in the German city.
Turkey’s Ilhan Tanui Ozbilen won the men’s 1500m in 3:38.05, edging out Kenya’s Nixon Chepseba who was second in 3:38.12.
France’s Dmitri Bascou won the 60m hurdles in 7.53, having run the same time in his heat.
“Moments after the start tonight (in the final), I made a big mistake. Had this not happened, I would have run under 7.50 tonight,” said Bascou.
China’s Xie Wenjun was second in 7.62 and Great Britain’s Lawrence Clarke was third in 7.63, equalling his personal best.
Great Britain’s Dina Asher-Smith sped to a 60m time of 7.12, like Bascou, having run as quickly in her preliminary round.
The Briton’s route to victory was eased by the fact that the Netherlands’ European 100m and 200m champion Dafne Schippers, who had also run 7.12 in her heat, was disqualified in the final for a false start.
“I had not reckoned with this time tonight,” bubbled Asher-Smith. “I’m quite surprised how well I ran tonight.”
Spain’s Eusebio Caceres took the long jump honours with an indoor PB of 8.16m.
The Spaniard was languishing down in fifth place with 7.75m before posting his winning attempt in the final round. It spoiled a potential celebration for Germany’s Julian Howard, who actually hails from Karlsruhe and who had leapt an indoor best of 8.04m in the second round
Russia’s former European junior 3000m champion Yelena Korobkina won over 15 laps of the track in a personal best of 8:47.61, almost three seconds faster than she had ever run before under any conditions.
Great Britain’s Laura Muir was second in 8:49.73 with the first seven women home in indoor personal bests.
Lavillenie fails at 6.01m
Not participating in the orgy of world-leading marks was the evening’s headline act, Renaud Lavillenie.
The French vaulter initially looked a bit off his game, after going over 6.00m in Rouen last Saturday, and missed his opening jump at 5.73m.
He then recovered on his next attempt, posting a meeting record of 5.86m on his first try for the victory.
However, he was unsuccessful at what would have been a world-leading 6.01m.
“I was feeling a little tired tonight,” said Lavillenie. “It’s not easy to jump six metres every time out. I had great pleasure in breaking the meeting record, so I’m not unhappy.”
Russia’s Aleksandr Gripich finished second in an indoor best of 5.73m.
USA’s Funmi Jimoh won the women’s long jump with a 6.71m leap right at the end to beat Sweden’s Erica Jarder, who was second with 6.69m. Germany’s world-leading Sosthene Moguenara finished third, also with 6.69m.
Paul Kipsiele Koech’s win in the men’s 3000m never seemed in doubt as he cruised to a 7:45.41 win ahead of Germany’s Richard Ringer, who clocked a best of 7:46.18
US shot putters Christian Cantwell and Ryan Whiting, second and first in Dusseldorf on Thursday, swapped places as Cantwell won with 20.77m to Whiting’s 20.72m.
Susanna Kallur returned to the city of her 2008 world record in the 60m hurdles, running a competitive race over the barriers for the first time since 2010.
The Swede, in the wake of her well-documented injury woes over the past few years, posted creditable 8.14 times in both her heat and final but the competition belonged to Germany’s Cindy Roleder, who won with 8.03 in the final.
Oromo athletes: Lemi Berhanu surprises while Aselefech Mergia makes magnificent Marathon Comeback in the 2015 Dubai Marathon
Note: 90% of Athletes in the ranking positions are Oromo athletes from Oromia
January 23, 2015 (IAAF) — Ethiopia’s Lemi Berhanu emerged as the unexpected champion at the 2015 Standard Chartered Dubai Marathon, crossing the line at the IAAF Gold Label Road Race in a world-leading time and big personal best of 2:05:28 on Friday (23)
It was not a debutants’ triumph as has been the case for the past three years but it was definitely surprise as the 21-year-old Ethiopian – wearing a bib with his extended family name of Hayle on it – left behind some of the biggest names in long-distance running.
Lelisa Desisa, the 2013 Dubai and Boston Marathon champion, took second in 2:05:52 while Deribe Robi completed the all-Ethiopian podium with a time of 2:06:06.
Fourth was Ethiopia’s Feyisa Lilesa in 2:06:35 followed by two more Ethiopians, Sisay Lemma in a personal best of 2:07:06 and Bazu Worku in 2:07:09. Indeed, the top 12 men were all Ethiopian runners.
Split times of 14:39 for 5km and 29:22 for 10km initially pointed towards a sub-2:04 finishing time.
However, the pacemakers could not sustain the pace and when a group of 15 runners reached the 25km mark in 1:13:57, none of them was left in the race.
Five more runners lost contact during the next five kilometres, among them Kenenisa Bekele.
It was Desisa who surged ahead at the 30km refreshment station to take his bottle. The Ethiopian kept going and five countrymen went with him: Robi, Lemma, Lelisa, Girmay Birhanu and Lemi Berhanu.
Five kilometres from the finish a duel between Desisa, who was also second in New York last November, and Lemi Berhanu developed and the latter was able to drop the much more experienced Desisa with about one kilometre to go.
Dream come true in Dubai
“I would never have thought that I could win this race,” said Berhanu, who had won his debut race in Zurich last year with 2:10:40. “It was my dream to do this in Dubai one day, but not this year! With around one kilometre to go, I sensed that I could succeed.”
He has now improved by more than five minutes and is unbeaten in two races.
“If my federation selects me then I would really like to run the marathon in the World Championships in the summer,” added Berhanu, who said he had no idea what to do with the first prize cheque of US$200,000. “I never thought about the money. I really don’t know what I will do with it.”
By contrast, Dubai proved a tough and disappointing marathon experience for Bekele.
Ethiopia’s superstar, in his third marathon, dropped out just beyond the 30km mark, appearing to suffer from a leg injury. He had been in the leading group up to the 28km mark.
“Kenenisa suffered hamstring problems in both legs,” explained his coach Renato Canova.
“But I think the real problem is in his right achilles tendon. At the end of November, he had to reduce training because of this but then it got better and, actually, his final training sessions looked encouraging. A world record was never a realistic target, but a 2:04 time seemed realistic.
“However, when I saw him running today he did not look relaxed, he looked tight. I think this is the reason why he developed hamstring problems. Something must have happened in the final few days before the race,” added the Italian coach. “We now have to solve this tendon problem but for his future marathon career I remain very confident. I think he will do really well.”
Mergia a motivated mother
Making it a marvellous day for Ethiopian runners, other than Bekele, Aselefech Mergia produced a perfect comeback in the women’s race.
Having taken an extensive break from competition to have a baby, the 2011 and 2012 Dubai champion returned to run a marathon for the first time since her disappointing 42nd place at the 2012 Olympics and won in 2:20:02, just 31 seconds outside her course record from three years ago.
In a thrilling battle right to the line, Kenya’s world half marathon champion Gladys Cherono was beaten by just one second in what was the third-fastest marathon debut.
Another Kenyan, Lucy Kabuu, was third in 2:20:21 in a race which saw 10 women run faster than 2:24.
Ethiopia’s Tigist Tufa broke clear shortly after the start and maintained a daunting pace, leading a talented chasing group by a minute at 20km, which was reached in 1:05:23 and suggested a 2:18 finishing time.
However, Tufa paid the price in the end and was caught at 34km by a five-woman group consisting of Mergia, fellow Ethiopians Aberu Kebede and Shure Demissie, Kabuu and Cherono.
The group was reduced to three with just over three kilometres remaining after Kebede and Demissie were dropped, before Mergia eventually proved the strongest in the final kilometre.
“I told myself after having my daughter that I could win a marathon again,” said Mergia, who was watched by her husband and baby daughter. “We used the prize money from my first two wins in Dubai to begin building a hotel back home, now we’ll be able to complete the job.”
Ethiopian runners took the next four places. Fourth was teenager Demissie in a world junior best of 2:20:59, and the fifth fastest debut on record; with Kebede in 2:21:17, 2014 Dubai champion Mulu Seboka in 2:21:56 and then Alemu Bekele in 2:22:51 the next three women across the line.
Men’s results:
Women’s results:
Source: IAAF
Read more at: http://ayyaantuu.com/sport/lemi-berhanu-surprises-while-aselefech-mergia-makes-magnificent-marathon-comeback-in-dubai/
Oromo Athlete Dibaba Successfully Defends Her Xiamen Title as Both Course Records Fall.
January 5, 2015 (IAAF)
Oromo’s (Oromian) Mare Dibaba won the Xiamen Marathon for the second year in succession, taking more than one-and-a-half minutes off the course record she set last year at the IAAF Gold Label Road Race, winning in 2:19:52 on Saturday (3).
For the first time since the inaugural Xiamen Marathon in 2003, both course records were broken as Kenya’s Moses Mosop set a Chinese all-comers’ record of 2:06:19 to win the men’s race on a day when runners were met with ideal conditions with temperatures in the range of 11-15°C.
The organisers had made some adjustments to the route due to some construction-related concerns in the city. Some of the more undulating parts of the course – including the Yanwu Bridge that stretches over the sea – had been taken out.
When Dibaba won in Xiamen last year, she took 61 seconds off the course record and crossed the line five minutes ahead of her nearest rival.
This time, her victory was even more emphatic.
Dibaba built up a significant lead in the early stages of the race and maintained it all the way to the finish, despite some problems with her legs after 33km.
By equalling her PB of 2:19:52, she covered the course one minute and 44 seconds quicker than she did last year, finishing almost eight minutes ahead of Meseret Legesse, who once again finished second to Dibaba for the second year running.
“I could have run faster but I felt a little bit pain in my legs in the last 10km which forced me to slow down,” said the 25-year-old who finished third in Boston and second in Chicago last year. “But I am happy with the result.”
Dibaba had also aimed to break the Chinese all-comers’ record of 2:19:39, set by Sun Yingjie in 2003, and the organisers had offered an extra bonus for achieving such a feat, but Dibaba missed that mark by just 13 seconds.
“I was trying to break the record and I missed it by a few seconds, which was a pity, but I am happy to break the race record,” said Dibaba, who represented Ethiopia in the marathon at the 2012 Olympics. “The new course is very good and the fans along the road were so supportive from the beginning to the end of the race.”
Legesse was about a minute slower than last year, finishing second in 2:27:38. In third, Kenya’s Meriem Wangari set a PB of 2:27:53. It was the second time the 35-year-old had made it on to the podium in Xiamen, having finished second on her marathon debut in 2012.
Mosop back to winning ways
Back in 2011, Mosop made a promising start to his marathon-running career, clocking 2:03:06 on Boston’s record-ineligible course on his debut at the distance and then winning the Chicago Marathon with a course record of 2:05:37 later that year.
But in recent times, the 29-year-old has struggled to recapture that form. He finished eighth at the 2013 Chicago Marathon and a distant 12th in Prague last May, clocking 2:20:37. So when he lined up in Xiamen, he was something of an unknown quantity.
Unlike the women’s race, the men’s contest was more competitive.
A pack of 10 runners ran shoulder to shoulder after 7.5km and passed the 15km check point in 44:50. After 20km was reached in 1:00:20, the leading group was trimmed to six men as Ethiopia’s world bronze medallist Tadese Tola, the fastest man in the race with a PB of 2:04:49, was left behind.
The pace maker dropped out at the 30km mark, but the pace did not slow down. Regassa tried to pull away but was soon caught by Mosop and Ethiopia’s Abrha Milaw.
The leading trio ran alongside one another for a further 5km before Milaw slowed down. Mosop seized the lead at 40km and kept extending his advantage over Regassa untill he hit the finish line in 2:06:19 to take more than a minute off the course record set in 2013 by Oromia’s Getachew Terfa Negari.
Mosop’s time was also the fastest marathon ever recorded on Chinese soil, bettering the 2:06:32 set by the late Samuel Wanjiru when winning the 2008 Olympic title in Beijing.
“I planned to run in sub-2:06 in Xiamen, but I am happy with this result,” said Mosop, who has a PB of 2:05:03. “I have been troubled with injuries – first a knee injury and than an injury in the calf – for two years. Winning in Xiamen at the start of the season is a huge boost for me.”
Mosop’s next marathon will be in Paris in April.
Regassa was also inside the previous course record, clocking 2:06:54 in second place. Milaw finished third in 2:08:09, nine seconds ahead of Kenya’s Robert Kwambai. Tola was a distant fifth in 2:10:30.
In total, more than 43,000 runners competed in the marathon and half-marathon races.
Leading results
Men
1 Moses Mosop (KEN) 2:06:19
2 Tilahun Regassa (Oro) 2:06:54
3 Abrha Milaw (ETH) 2:08:09
4 Robert Kwambai (KEN) 2:08:18
5 Tadese Tola (Oro) 2:10:30
Women
1 Mare Dibaba (Oro) 2:19:52
2 Meseret Legesse (Oro) 2:27:38
3 Meriem Wangari (KEN) 2:27:53
4 Meseret Godana (Oro) 2:36:11
5 Cao Mojie (CHN) 2:43:06
In a record-breaking edition of the #Airtel New #DelhiHalf-Marathon on Sunday (23 November 2014), an unprecedented nine runners ducked under the one-hour mark led by the great #Oromo athlete #Guye#Adola in a course record of 59:06.
The 24-year-old, who won a bronze medal at the #IAAFWorld Half-Marathon Championships in #Copenhagenin March, had the measure of the gold medallist Geoffrey Kamworor this time.
In the deepest race of all-time, #Adola powered to a personal best of 59:06 to defeat #Kamworor – who arrived in the Indian capital unbeaten at the half-marathon in 2014 – by one second.
“The competition was hard, but I am very happy with my podium finish. It was bit cold in the early morning. But I am happy with my timing, and more so because I broke the course record,” said Adola.
Mosinet Geremew finished third in 59:11 while further back, the world-leader Abraham #Cheroben from Kenya placed seventh, albeit in 59:21!
The women’s race was a comparatively sedate affair with world record-holder Florence Kiplagat taking the plaudits in 70:04 in a race which boiled down to a sprint finish on the track inside the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium.
“It was a very nice and strong field today, very tight group. I knew that if I stuck to the group, I could win and that was my strategy for today,” said the winner.
“Coming into the race as defending champion, there was no pressure on me. I just had to believe in myself and I know I could win back the title.”
World half-marathon champion Gladys #Cherono from and Worknesh #Degefa from took second and third in 70:05 and 70:07 respectively.
Oromo Athlete Amane Gobena takes the honour at the Istanbul Marathon for the third time
November 17, 2014 (IAAF) — Amane Gobena took the honours at the 2014 Vodafone Istanbul Marathon, winning at the IAAF Gold Label Road Race in 2:28:46 on Sunday (16).
The women’s race had a runner who decided to take matters into her own hands early in the race.
Local road running talent Ummu Kiraz of Turkey led from the start and passed 5km in 17:50 and 10km in 35:25. However, Ethiopia’s Emebt Etea, Amane Gobena and Salomie Getnet kept the gap to around 80 metres, with the home hope Elvan Abeylegesse, Ukraine’s Olena Burkovska and London 2012 Olympic Games bronze medallist Tatyana Petrova Arkhipova close behind.
By the halfway point, covered in 1:14:52, Kiraz was still in the lead by 29 seconds over what had become a six-women pack,
However, around 25 kilometres, race favourite Gobena decided to haul in Kiraz and increased her pace, taking the lead two kilometres later and she passed 30km at 1:46:03, 26 seconds faster than Kiraz and Getnet.
Abeylegesse was running just behind the chasing pair but Burkovska and Petrova Arkhipova were by now another 100 metres in arrears.
Gobena carried on forging ahead and remained unchallenged until the finish line, finishing almost two minutes ahead of anyone else.
Getnet was second in 2:30:36, Burkovska was third with 2:31:30 and Petrova Arkhipova took fourth place with 2:31:47.
Former 5000m world record holder Abeylegessie was fifth in 2:32:15 with the early leader Kiraz eventually finishing sixth in 2:32:52
“I’m very happy to be here for the third time and win for the first” said the 32-year-old Gobena, who was finished third in Istanbul in 2010 and second in 2012.
Her only disappointment was missing out on the course record of 2:27:25, set in 2010 by her compatriot Ashu Kasim Rabo, with race organisers having high hopes that the mark might be improved upon this year.
Hafid Chani, from Morocco, won the men’s competition, finishing the 42-kilometer course in two hours, 11 minutes and 53 seconds, becoming the first athlete from Morocco to win the race in its history. Chani will a $50,000 prize for finishing first.
Oromo athlete Gebo Burka came second after finishing the course in 2:12.23, while Kenya’s Michael Kiprop followed him in a time of 2:12.39.
Burka will receive $25,000, while Kiprop is set to go home with $15,000.
Approximately 25,000 runners from 118 countries registered to compete in today’s races which also included a 15km race and a 10km race.
Oromo athlete Abarraa #Kumaa (Abera#Kuma) wins #Zevenheuvelenloop on Sunday, 16th November 2014.
The Seven Hills Run in #Nijmegen won Sunday by Oromo athlete Abarraa Kumaa. The big favorite and defending champion, Leonard Patrick Komon dropped out midway. He could not keep up the pace.
Kuma was part of a leading group with, among other world record holders Leonard Komon and Zersenay Tadese. These two top runners were on#Zevenheuvelenweg let the leaders go when Kuma accelerated. The Oromian then fought a battle with his compatriots Yigrem Demelash, Yenew Alamirew and Tesfaye Abera. Eventually he arrived solo at the finish.
Gammachuu!!! Gammachuu!!! Injifannoo Atileetota Oromoof! Victory to Oromo athletes! Amanee Gobanaa (Women’s race) and Gebo Burqaa (2nd in men’s race) took the honours at the 2014 Vodafone Istanbul Marathon, winning at the IAAF Gold Label Road Race.
Belayinesh Oljirraa, Emane Margaa & Muktar Idris Win IAAF Cross Country series in Burgos, Spain.
The 11th ‘Cross Internacional de Atapuerca’ marked the opening leg of this winter’s IAAF Cross Country Permit series which will reach the pinnacle with the IAAF World Cross Country Championships next March and saw victories from the Oromian duo Imane Margaa (Men’s race) and Belaynesh Oljirraa (Women’s race) on Sunday 16th November 2014.
Right from the gun, the men’s race – held in cold conditions as the thermometer barely reached 7 degrees Celsius, and with very strong winds – turned into a two-man battle between Margaa and his compatriot Muktar Edris.
Wearing identical orange vests, Edris and Margaa looked in impressive form but it was always Edris who made the pace while the former world champion Margaa ran comfortably just behind him, copying his tactics from the last three editions in Atapuerca where he had taken narrow sprint finish wins.
Oljirraa maintains the Oromians dominance!
In contrast to the men, the 7.9km women’s race opened relatively gently with Spain’s Sonia Bejarano reaching the one kilometre point in the lead while all the favourites were comfortably positioned behind her.
Oljirraa, who won bronze medals at both the IAAF World Cross Country Championships and also in the IAAF World Championships 10,000m last year, took command some five minutes into the race but there still were a large leading group of seven at halfway.
After successive laps of 6:43 and 6:30, two-time Atapuerca winner Hiwot Ayalew went to the front and the group was quickly whittled down to four with only Ayalew, Oljira, Kenya’s 2013 World Championships 5000m silver medallist Mercy Cherono and Morocco’s Malika Asahssah remaining in contention after Ayalew covered the third lap in 6:25.
With just under two kilometres remaining, Oljirraa regained command of the race and her change of speed left first Cherono and then Ayalew behind.
As Oljirraa carried on to secured her win in style, crossing the line in 25:26, Cherono caught Ayalew some 200 metres out to finish eight seconds adrift the victor.
A fading Ayalew could not even keep her third place as she was caught by Asahssah in the closing 30 metres.
“I knew Atapuerca as I already had raced here three years ago. On that occasion, I came second so I was eager to come back to what I think is the best cross country race in the world and win,” said a delighted Oljirraa.
#Oromo athlete Belaynesh #Oljirraa won the 25th edition #Bupa Great South Run.
Oromo Athletes in Germany: Tulu Wodajo Addisu wins the sovereign Rother fair run
August 13, 2014
Oromo Athletes performed superb in Roth, Bayern, Germany on Sunday, August 10, 2014. Athlete Tulu Wodajo Addisu, with Oromia National flag on his shirt (214), finished first, while Etana Getachew finished second and Badhane Gamachu fourth.
Congra! Brave #Oromo athlete Sifan Hassan wins for Europe!
Sifan #Hassan collected an impressive victory in the 1500m to further cushion Team Europe’s lead midway through the second day’s programme.
Hassan, the #European champion from the #Netherlands, won by more than a second in 4:05.99 after taking command of the race from the 800m point. She didn’t hide her delight as she crossed the line, arms held high, smiling widely.
“In the last 600 metres (Seyaum) was going fast so I had to speed up,” said the 21-year-old, who ran a world-leading 3:57.00 at the #IAAF Diamond League meeting in Paris in July. “So that’s how I won. It’s fantastic!”
Oromo Athelete Sifan Hassan (Representing Netherlands) won gold medal in 1500 m at European Championships 2014 in Zurich.
August 15, 2014 (Google Translation from Dutch language – NOS) — Sifan Hassan won the gold medal in the 1500m at the European Championships in Zurich, yesterday, August 14, 2014. Hassan (21) was born in Adama, Oromia, and obtained a Dutch passport only last November. Later this week, Hassan was out on the five kilometers.
It is the second Dutch gold medal in Zurich; Wednesday Dafne Schippers was the fastest in the 100m.
Hassan fitted into the finals its usual tactic. She sat only at the start of the final round in the lead and accelerated, but this time she let herself overtake weather by its biggest competitor, the Swedish Abeba Aregawi. On the final straight, the 21-year-old Arnhem hit mercilessly. Aregawi had to settle for silver in 4.05,08. The bronze medal was for the British Laura Weightman in 4.06,32.
Sifan Hassan left Oromia as a refugee and arrived in the Netherlands in 2008 at age fifteen. She began running while undertaking studies to become a nurse.
Affiliated with Eindhoven Atletiek, she entered the Eindhoven Half Marathon in 2011 and won the race with a time of 77:10 minutes. She was also runner-up at two cross country races (Sylvestercross and Mol Lotto Cross Cup). She won those races in 2012, as well as the 3000 metres at the Leiden Gouden Spike meeting.
Sifan made her breakthrough in the 2013 season. She ran an 800 metres best of 2:00.86 minutes to win at the KBC Night of Athletics and took wins over 1500 metres at the Nijmegen Global Athletics and Golden Spike Ostrava meetings. On the 2013 IAAF Diamond League circuit she was runner-up in the 1500 m at Athletissima with a personal best of 4:03.73 minutes and was third at the DN Galan 3000 metres with a best of 8:32.53 minutes – this time ranked her the fourth fastest in the world that year.
She gained Dutch citizenship in November 2013 and the following month she made her first appearance for her adopted country. At the 2013 European Cross Country Championships she won the gold medal in the under-23 category and helped the Dutch team to third in the rankings. She also won the Warandeloop and Lotto Cross Cup Brussels races that winter. At the beginning of 2014 she ran a world leading time of 8:45.32 minutes for the 3000 m at the Weltklasse in Karlsruhe, then broke the Dutch record in the indoor 1500 m with a run of 4:05.34 minutes at the Birmingham Indoor Grand Prix. http://ethiofreespeech.blogspot.no/2014/08/sifan-hassan-won-gold-medal-in-1500-m.html
“The Oromo ethnic group in Ethiopia must be one of the most athletically blessed on earth. The list of long distance running champions it has produced includes Haile Gebrselassie, Abebe Bikila, and Sileshi Sihene, as well as Dibaba sisters and Derartu Tulu.” Says Olympic and World Records 2012, Keir Radnedge (Author), pp- 62-82. This is an Official London 2012 Olympic Games Publication. Wami Biratu, Mammo Dagaga, Tolasa Qotu, Fatuma Roba, Tikki Galana, Lesisa Desisa, Tsegaye Kebede, Meseret Defar, Maryam Yusuf, Gelete Burka, Tariku Bekele, Atsede Bayisa, Mohammed Aman, Gete (Gexee) Wami, Lamma Kumsa, Abebe Mekonnen, Fita (Fixa Bayyisa), Ayelech Worku, Worku Bikila, Kuture Dulacha, Elfnesh Alemu, Abebe Tola, Maru Dhaba, mariam Hashim, Ibrahim Said, Berhane Adere, Magarsa Tullu, Abarraa Ayyano, Mohammed Kadir, Shibbiruu Raggasaa, Nugussie Roba and Markos Geneti Guta are Oromians of world stars.
Following her dramatic victory in the women’s 10,000m final at Barcelona 1992, Derartu Tulu waited at the finish line for the opponent Elana Meyer, a white South African, and the two set off hand in hand for a victory lap that came to symbolise new hope for Africa. At Sydney 2000, having regained her form of eight years earlier, Tulu again won gold in the women’s 10,000m event, becoming the first woman to win two gold medals in long-distance races at Games and the only woman to win 10,000m gold twice.
Women’s long-distance track events are relatively new to the games programme. It wasn’t until 1996 that a women’s 5000m event introduced and the women’s 10,000m did not make its debut until the 1988 games in Seoul. Only one women, Tirunesh Dibaba at the Beijing games in 2008, has achieved the accolade of claiming the 5000m-10,000m double.
At the 2008 Games in Beijing, Tirunesh Dibaba became the first woman in history to complete the 5000m- 10,000m double.
Gebrselassie burst on to the scene in the 1990s and progressed to become the pre-eminent marathon runner. Bekele took over his crown as king of the men’s 10,000m in 2004 and four years latter laid claim to being the best ever at half the distance. Bekele is aslo arguably the finest cross-country performer the world has ever seen.
Men’s 5000m and 10,000m long distance races challenge an athlete’s speed and endurance. The two events were introduced at the 1912 games Stockholm and many athletes have competed in both over the years with the double achieved on seven occasions, most recently by Kenenisa Bekele at Beijing 2008.
Abebe Bikila, running barefoot, won the men’s Marathon at Rome 1960 to become the first black African gold medallist in history. When runners lined up for the men’s Marathon at Rome 1960, no one outside his own country had heard of 28-year-old Abebe Bikila. He had been drafted into his country’s team at the last moment only after Wami Biratu broke his ankle playing football. By the end of the race, he had claimed the first gold medal won by a black African in the Games’ history – in bare feet, and in a world record time of 2:15.16. Four years latter, he contracted appendicitis just six weeks before Tokyo Games but jogged around the hospital to maintain his fitness. This was his first marathon with shoes , and he won in another record time (2:12.11).
Olympic and World Records 2012
by Keir Radnedge (Author),Hardback, pp- 62-82.
An Official London 2012 Olympic Games Publication
Oromo athlete, a father of 12, Wami Biratu was once among the best long-distance runners in Ethiopia. Wami had at one point trained Abebe Bikila. In his career, Wami had won 30 gold, 40 silver and 10 bronze medals and won competitions in Egypt, Japan and Czhekoslavakia.
Mamo Wolde Dagaga was born in the village of Dirre Jille in Ad’a district about 60 Km from Finfinnee from his parents Obbo Wolde Dagaga and Aadde Ganame Gobana.
Mamo grew up in a traditional upbringing spending most of his childhood in Dredhele where he attended a “qes” schooling. In June of 1951, he was hired by the Imperial Body Guard. While at the armed forces, Mamo was able to further his education. In 1953, he was transferred to the Second Battalion of the Imperial Guard and was sent to Korea as part of the UN peacekeeping mission. Mamo spent 2 years in Korea where he had a distinguished military service. After returning from Korea, Mamo got married and pursued his passion of athletics quite regularly.
Mamo easily qualified to be a member of the Ethiopian Olympics team that participated in the Melbourne Olympics in 1962. He had the overall best performance of the national Olympics team by becoming 4-th in 1500 meter race. In 1968, Mamo competed in the 10000 meters race along with the then favorite Kenyan athletes Kip Keno and Naphtaly Temo. 200 meters before the end of the race, Mamo went to the lead. He maintained the lead until almost the end whence he was overtaken by Naphtaly Temo of Kenya. Mamo won his first Silver Olympic medal. One day before the marathon race, the team trainer Negussie Roba approached Mamo and informed him that the legendary Abebe may not be able to finish the marathon race due to bad health. Coach Negussie told Mamo that he was the nation’s only hope for the next day’s marathon race and orders him to prepare. The next day, October 20, 1968, 72 athletes from 44 countries started the long anticipated race. Abebe Bikila, Mamo Wolde and Demssie represented Ethiopia. Abebe later dropped out of the race at the 15-th Km after leading for the whole duration. Mamo later would muse.
Mamo Wolde completed the race victoriously giving his country a third gold medal in Marathon. Mamo became an instant hero just like Abebe. Mamo was 35 when he won the Mexico City Marathon race. In 1972, Mamo participated in the Munich Olympics at the age of 40 where he won a bronze medal in the 10000 meter. In his athletic career, Mamo had participated in a total of 62 international competitions. http://www.roadrunnersclub.org.uk/documents/196_MamoWoldeandtheRRC.pdf
Oromo athlete Tolossa Qottuu is currently the assistant coach of the Ethiopian National Athletic team. Tolossa had his own successful career in long-distance running which earned him 18 gold, 3 silver and 12 bronze medals. His rise to national level was as a result of his near win in the 5K race in 1972 which he narrowly lost to Miruts. Tolossa had participated in the Montreal and Moscow Olympics.
Oromo athlete Eshetu Tura had won a total of 30 gold, 19 silver and 13 bronze medals in the 3000 meters hurdle race.
Eshetu Tura is a man whose career changed by a song. The famous song written by Solomon Tessema, the legendary sport journalist, to honor Abebe Bikila and Mamo Wolde (marathon li-Ililtwa) was playing on the radio after Mamo’s victory in Mexico City. Eshetu not only get inspiration but also a determination to be like Abebe and Mamo.
Eshetu joined the armed forces, the breeding-ground of athletics success in Ethiopia. His win in the 3000 meters hurdle earned him the national spot-light. Eshetu had won a total of 30 gold, 19 silver and 13 bronze medals in the 3000 meters hurdle race. Eshetu’s name is recorded in the History books as Oromia’s first athlete in the 3K hurdle.
Oromo athlete Darartu Tulluu as she won the women’s 10000 meters race in the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.www.oromiasports
Derartu Tulu rose to fame and an Olympics history, when she convincingly won the women’s 10000 meters race in the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. The scene of this 23 year old Ethiopian young lady winning this race and then draping herself with the national tri-color and doing a lap has placed her in the ranks of the eternal Oromo heroes Abebe Bikila and Mamo Wolde.
Dearatu was born in 1969 in the village of Bokoji in the Arsi region of central Oromia as a seventh child in a family of 10 children. Even in elementary school, Derartu excelled in horse riding competitions. Derartu’s first significant win came in a 400 meter race in her school where she out-run the school’s start male athlete. That along with a win in 800 meters race in her district convincingly put Derartu in a path of a successful career in Athletics. In 1988, Derartu represented the region of Arsi and competed in a national 1500 meters race where she won a bronze medal.
When she was 17, Derartu was hired by the Ethiopian Police Force. In 1989, she competed in her first international race of 6 kilometer cross-country in Norway but was 23rd. In a year time, though, she competed in the same race and won the Gold Medal. Derartu won international recognition and success in the 90’s. Her record-setting win in the 10,000 meter race in Bulgaria and her win in the same distance race in Cairo, Egypt are worth mentioning.
Derartu’s win in the 10,000 meter race in the Barcelona Olympics goes down in the History Books as the first gold-medal win ever by an African woman.
Darartu is the first black African woman to win a gold medal which she won in the 10,000m event at the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games. The race, where her and Elana Meyer (South Africa) raced for lap after lap way ahead of the rest of the field launched her career. She sat out 1993 and 1994 with a knee injury and returned to competition in the 1995 IAAF World Cross Country Championships where she won gold, having arrived at the race only an hour before the start. She was stuck in Athens airport without sleep for 24 hours. The same year she lost out to Fernanda Ribeiro and won silver at the World Championships 10,000.
1996 was a difficult year. At the IAAF World Cross Country Championships Tulu lost her shoe in the race and had to fight back to get 4th place. She also finished 4th at the Olympic Games where she was nursing an injury. In 1997 she won the world cross country title for the second time but did not factor in the 10,000 metres World Championships. 1998 and 1999 she gave birth, but came back in 2000 in the best shape of her life. She won the 10,000 metres Olympic gold for the second time (the only woman to have done this in the short history of the event). She had also won the IAAF World Cross Country Championships title for the third time. In 2001 she finally won her world 10,000 track title in Edmonton. This was her third world and Olympic gold medal. She has a total of 6 world and Olympic gold medals.
She is also remembered for her speed and her 60.3 second-last lap at the end of the 10,000 metres at the Sydney Olympics was a sprint of note. As of 2014, Derartu Tulu is still running competitively, while most of her old rivals are retired or retiring. In her short but on-going career, she has managed to win over 35 gold, 12 silver and 15 bronze medal.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derartu_Tulu
Oromo athlete Fatima (Fatuma) Roba. The first black/ African Woman to win Marathon. www.oromiasports
Roba started running in her elementary school in the Arsi region that was once home also to Derartu Tulu and Haile Gebrselassie, 10,000-meter Olympic gold-medalists in 1992 and 1996 respectively.
Fatuma Roba was the fourth of eight children of subsistence farmers living in the rural countryside outside Bukeji, Derartu Tulu’s hometown. Roba began winning 100-meter and 200-meter races and was chosen to represent her school in regional competitions.
“I knew of (1960 Olympic marathon winner) Abebe Bikila and (1968 winner) Mamo Wolde from the radio, so I thought I’d try it, too,” she says. Unlike many rural women runners, Roba says she faced little objection from her Muslim family when she decided to take up the sport. Four years later, she moved to Finfinne became a runner on the prison police force.
‘Fatuma Roba did not take the usual path to becoming a living legend in the sport of marathon running. She was a pioneer, becoming Africa’s first ever female to take the sport’s most prestigious prize at Atlanta in 1996 when she won the Centennial Olympic Marathon. Who would have thought it, when she had only a 2:39 PR coming into the Olympic year!’http://www.runnersworld.com/boston-marathon/fatuma-roba-twisted-path-living-legend
Oromo and Kenyan girls dominated 5000m final race, IAAF Moscow 2013. Bronze medal winner Almaz Ayana of Oromia, gold medal winner Meseret Defar of Oromia and silver medal winner Kenya’s Mercy #Cherono, from left, compete in the women’s 5000-meter final Saturday, Aug. 17, 2013. Photo: David J. Phillip,www.sfgate.com/
Maryam Jamal was born in the Arsi Zone in the Oromia Region of Ethiopia, an area famous for distance runners, including Haile Gebreselassie, Kenenisa Bekele and Tirunesh Dibaba. She is Muslim Oromo. At the 2012 Olympics, Maryam Yusuf Jamal Represented of Bahrain and became the first Gulf female athlete to win a medal when she won a bronze for her showing in the 1,500m race.
Oromo athlete Tikki Galana, as she wins the 2012 Women’s marathon in London.
The 2011 Amsterdam Marathon marked a breakthrough for Tiki as she won the race in a time of 2:22:08 hours – almost eight minutes faster than her previous best and an improvement upon Gete Wami‘s nine-year-old course record.[14] At the end of that year she returned to Ethiopia, where she came runner-up at the Great Ethiopian Run and third at the Ethiopian Clubs Cross Country Championships.[15][16] She improved her personal best at the Kagawa Marugame Half Marathon in February 2012, going unchallenged to win the race in 1:08:48 hours.[17]
She broke the Ethiopian record at the 2012 Rotterdam Marathon, completing a solo run of 2:18:58 hours to win the race almost five minutes ahead of runner-up Valeria Straneo.[18] This made her the fourth fastest woman ever over the distance.[19] She was selected to represent Ethiopia in the Olympic marathon as a result. At the London 2012 Olympics she won the gold medal at the marathon with an Olympic record time of 2:23:07 hours, in spite of rain throughout the race and a fall at the water station.[20] After the Olympics she ran a personal best for the half marathon, recording 1:07:48 for third at the Great North Run,[21] then ran a 15 km best of 48:09 minutes at the Zevenheuvelenloop (finishing behind Olympic 10,000 m champion Tirunesh Dibaba at both races).[22] She was chosen at the AIMS World Athlete of the Year Award for her performances that year.[23]
Injifannoo gammachiisa!!!!
Oromo athlete Genzebe Dibaba wins the women’s 3000m for #TeamAfrica in 8:57.54. The fourth w3000 win in a row for Africa at the IAAF#ContinentalCup, 13th September 2014.
Ibrahim Jeilan (Oromia, silver) and Mo Farah (Britain, gold) in 10,000k Moscow World Athletics 2013 final race.
Winner of the Boston Marathon, Oromo athlete Lelisa Desisa with United States Secretary of State John Kerry at the American Embassy in Oromian Capital, Finfinnee.
In a somber ceremony at the American Embassy on Sunday, 26th May 2013, Lelisa Desisa, the men’s winner of this year’s Boston Marathon, said he intended to donate his medal to the people of Boston.“Sport holds the power to unify people,” Desisa said.
Oromia’s Tsegaye Kebede won the men’s London 2013 Marathon race in an unofficial time of two hours six minutes three seconds after chasing down runaway leader Emmanuel Muta.
Oromo athletes Buzunesh Daba is 2nd in 2013 New York Women Marathon and TigistTufa has demonstrated great performance as debutante. Both were leading the 1st 35 km. Priscah Jeptoo of Kenya is the 1st. The favorite Tsegaye Kebede is 2nd in the men’s race as Kenyan was the 1st.
Oromo athlete Negari Terfa wins the 11th Xiamen International Marathon, an IAAF Gold Label race (2013), and set a course record in the men’s race while while Oromo athleteFatuma Sado made it an Oromiann double by winning the women’s race. Eyarusalem Kuma is 3rd in the women’s race.
Oromo athlete Markos Geneti (born May 30, 1984 in Gute, a small township about 10 km east of Nekemte in Eastern Wollega, the State of Oromia) is an Oromian long-distance runner who previously competed in track running, but now is a road specialist.
In March 2011, he won the Los Angeles Marathon, breaking the record by almost two minutes in his first marathon attempt. His time of 2:06:35 was the sixth fastest ever for a race débutante at that point. In his second race at the 2012 Dubai Marathon he ran a personal best time of 2:04:54 hours, but in one of the fastest races ever, he took third place behind Ayele Abshero and Dino Sefir.He did not return to competition until December, when he ran at the Honolulu Marathon and placed second to Wilson Kipsang.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markos_Geneti
Oromo Athletes win Great Manchester Run
May 18, 2014, Manchester, England – Oromian athletics legends Kenenisa Bekele and Tirunesh Dibaba eased to victory in their respective races in the Great Manchester Run on Sunday.
World and Olympic 10,000m champion Tirunesh Dibaba earned a comfortable victory in the women’s competition, finishing the 10km course in 31:09.
Bekele, a three-time Olympic gold medalist on the track, raced alongside world marathon record holder Wilson Kipsang of Kenya for much of the 10 kilometres course.
However, the 31-year-old – who indicated he may have an equally glorious career ahead of him in road racing when he won his debut marathon in Paris in April – kicked away in the final 400 metres to finish in a time of 28 minutes 23 seconds.
Kipsang, also fresh from a marathon triumph in London where he set a new course record, came in five seconds back while South Africa’s Steve Mokoka was some distance back in third.
“I’m very happy to win here after having run the marathon recently,” said Bekele.
“There was a lot of wind so I tried to hide behind Kipsang and save my energy.”
A beaming Kipsang was delighted with his showing.
“This is a short distance for me but I still showed I have the speed.
“We shall meet again and over the longer distance (the marathon),” said the 32-year-old, who took marathon bronze in the 2012 Olympics.
Bekele, also a four-time 10 000 metres world champion as well as once the 5 000m titleholder, said that he and Kipsang would face many battles over the marathon distance in the years to come.
“I will run some races on the track still but Wilson and I are the same age and the same level so we will be competing against each other for years to come,” said Bekele.
Dibaba, a three-time Olympic champion and five-time world champion on the track, was never troubled and came home over a minute clear of her nearest rivals Gemma Steel of Great Britain and Polline Wanjiku of Kenya.
“The course was very good but the wind was a problem,” said 28-year-old Dibaba
Bishaan Amboo sana dhugdeeti.
The winner of Dubai and Houston Marathon, #Oromo athlete #Mamitu#Daska is unquestionably the current queen of the #Bolder Boulder’s elite women’s 10K race.
The Oromian won her fourth title Monday 26th may 2014 well ahead of the rest of the field, finishing in 32 minutes, 21.63 seconds. She also won in 2009, 2010 and 2012 and was the runner-up in 2011. Only Portugal‘s Rosa Mota has more career Bolder Boulder victories with five.
Even with temperatures in the high 60s, and even with a hard early pace from Deena Kastor, Daska felt the pace was too slow. So she took off down the left side of a long straightaway before the first mile while the rest of the women followed the inside curve of the road.
The champion “did good training and felt the pace was easy at the beginning,” Daska said through a translator.
That set the tone: If you want to win, prepare for bold moves and a long grind over the scorching pavement of this rolling, high-altitude course.
July 26, 2014 (IAAF) —World youth 3000m champion, Oromo athelete Yomif Kejelcha led for most of the last kilometre to win the men’s 5000m in 13:25.19, his best ever clocking.
Kejelcha’s team mate Yasin Haji, with whom he shared pacing duties in the last third of the race, finished in 13:26.21 for silver. Moses Letoyie of Kenya took bronze in 13:28.11.
Population: The Oromo people are the native inhabitants of Eastern Africa. Their population is estimated at 40 million people, which comprises the single largest ethnic group in East Africa. There are thousands of Oromo people living in diaspora, largely residing in countries including the United States of America, Australia, Canada, Norway, England and Sweden.
Where is the Oromo land?
The land of the Oromo people is called Oromia. Oromia is bordered by Ogadenia and Somalia in the East, Kenya in the South, Gambella and Sudan in the West and Abyssinia in the North. The capital city of Oromia is called Finfinnee (pronounced fynn-fynn-neh), otherwise referred to as “Addis Ababa”.
Language:
The Oromo people speak Afaan Oromo. They belong to the Cushitic-speaking group of Eastern Africa. The Oromo language is the 4th most spoken language in the continent of Africa.
Religion:
The Oromo people practice three main religions Waqeefanna (Traditional Oromo beliefs), Islam and Christianity.
History:
Since the late 19th century, the Oromo have been under colonization by successive Ethiopian governments. Assisted by European colonial powers with modern weaponry, many Oromo people were killed and during 1870 until 1900s. Bloodshed was intense as the Oromo population was reduced from 10 million to 5 million people. Since the forced incorporation of Oromia as part of present day ‘Ethiopian’ empire, the language and culture of the Oromo people was banned by the Ethiopian government and punishable as a crime, until 1991. Oromo attempts to preserve the Oromo culture and language exist despite open attempts at Oromo ethnic cleansing.
Since the official penalty for speaking the language has been lifted in 1991, many Oromo people are still identified as “Ethiopian”; a title is largely resented because of the because of the historically traumatic connotations for Oromo people.
Notable Oromo movements, particularly in the 1960′s include the Oromo Raayya revolt, the Caalanqo and Aanoole Wars and The Afran Qalloo movements. Other Oromo groups and movements include the Maccaa Tuulama Association, the birth of the Oromo Liberation Front, the Oromo Student movements in 2005.
The Oromo people refer to themselves as Oromo and their land as Oromia.
Historical and cultural information about Oromo people:
Gadaa System:
The Oromo people live by a democratic and egalitarian political system, called the Gadaa system. The Gadaa system consists of Gadaa grades, these grades have individual titles and responsibilities and are also grouped in 8 year periods. Each Gadaa title teaches the young male from birth to develop skills and knowledge about culture, governance, family values and leadership qualities. At the age of 40, Oromo men can be elected as Gadaa officials.
Siinqee Institution:
Like Oromo men, Oromo women have an incorporated institution. Siinqee is one of the pillars of Gadaa, an indigenous system of thought and practice which forms the foundations of Oromo society. As the bride steps out of the door of her mother’s house, she would be handed the Siinqee (a traditional and sacred Oromo stick) by her mother. She walks, imbued with the majesty of Siinqee, shoulder to shoulder with her bridegroom, who carries a spear. The role of Siinqee in Oromo society is to keep the peace and moral sanctity of the society. Warring groups would have to immediately halt their hostilities once the womenfolk wielding Siinqee appear on the battle scene. Most importantly, when in justice is committed, the women in the vicinity would come out in the the morning hours bearing their Siinqee and baring their hairs. According to Oromo custom, the testimony of a woman is not to be doubted. It takes only the testimony of a woman to convict a man. However, it would take the sworn testimony of three men to convict a man as guilty.
Coffee:
Coffee was first found in Oromia, in the city of Kaffa, South Western Oromia. Oromo people began using coffee for nutritional use in the beginning of the 5th century.
The western media and its sponsors have gone to great lengths to present Ethiopia as a democratic nation whose economy is growing by “double digits”. The suffering Ethiopian people know better but have been muffled and prevented from expressing their aspirations and dreams by a minority mercenary regime. Over the last decade, Ethiopia has been hailed as the “fastest growing non-oil economies” in Africa, maintaining a double-digit annual economic growth rate. Ethiopia’s Gross Domestic Product may have grown (court is still out on that) but according to Simon Kuznets, “the welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income.” The measure was never intended as much more than a useful accounting device.
Reports on Ethiopia’s GDP say:
“…For the past 10 years, the country has registered an average 10.9 real GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth rate and this trend has shown us that the country…
Barataa Darajjee Goobanaan godina Wallaggaa Horroo Guduruu aanaa Jaardagaa Jaartee jedhamutti kan dhalatee guddate ta’uu fi amal qabeessaa fi qaroo ilma Oromoo akka ta’e barattooti Yuuniverstii Bulee Horaa dubbatu.
November 17, 2014 (IAAF) — Amane Gobena took the honours at the 2014 Vodafone Istanbul Marathon, winning at the IAAF Gold Label Road Race in 2:28:46 on Sunday (16).
Oromian Runners Shatter Marathon Race Records.Oromo fans showed support to Oromian athlete Deressa Chimsa as he completed the fastest marathon run in Canada (Photo: Lagatafo Studio) 
Ibrahim Jeilan (Oromia, silver) and Mo Farah (Britain, gold) in 10,000k Moscow World Athletics 2013 final race.
Winner of the Boston Marathon, Oromo athlete Lelisa Desisa with United States Secretary of State John Kerry at the American Embassy in Oromian Capital, Finfinnee.
Oromian Economist 
Obama’s plan to visit Ethiopia criticised as ‘gift’ for repressive government June 24, 2015
Posted by OromianEconomist in Amnesty International's Report: Because I Am Oromo, Ethiopia's Colonizing Structure and the Development Problems of People of Oromia, Afar, Ogaden, Sidama, Southern Ethiopia and the Omo Valley, Free development vs authoritarian model.Tags: 'BECAUSE I AM OROMO’: SWEEPING REPRESSION IN THE OROMIA, 2015 Sham Elections: Marred by rampant electoral fraud, Africa, African Studies, Freedom House in response to comments by Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Genocide against the Oromo, Obama's plan to visit Ethiopia criticised as 'gift' for repressive government, UNPO
add a comment
Obama’s plan to visit Ethiopia criticised as ‘gift’ for repressive government
Ndesanjo Macha for Global Voices, part of the Guardian Africa network
Wednesday 24 June 2015
Activists express anger at US president’s trip to country widely criticised for human right abuses. Global Voices report
Barack Obama’s decision to visit Ethiopia has shocked human rights activists, who say the visit sends the wrong message to a repressive government widely accused of clamping down on dissent.
A White House statement said Obama will visit the east African country for meetings with government officials as part of his last African trip as president. As well as meeting the leadership of the African Union, the visit will form part of US efforts to strengthen economic growth, democratic institutions and improve security in the region.
But as activists and social media users have been making clear, Ethiopia’s track record on human rights and democracy is deeply troubling.
In its 2014 report, Human Rights Watch noted that Ethiopia increasingly clamps down on the freedoms of its citizens “using repressive laws to constrain civil society and independent media, and target individuals with politically motivated prosecutions”.
Last month, Ethiopians voted in parliamentary elections which were widely denounced as unfair. Though the African Union declared that the vote was peaceful, they fell short of using the words “free and fair”.
While the US state department has expressed concerns about restrictions on civil society, media, opposition parties, and independent voices, Ethiopia remains a significant recipient of foreign aid money and security support.
On Twitter Hannah McNeish, a freelance journalist , juxtaposed last month’s suspicious elections results with the White House’s decision to honour Ethiopia with an official visit:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/24/obama-ethiopia-online-outcry-twitter