Access to the beach, I mean port
and updates on migration and the immigration office
The past few weeks have gone by in a blur for me, and though I’m not sure what that says about my mental state, there is one bright side to this. The dates are getting closer for Splice Beta, the annual two-day media start-up festival taking place in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
This year I have been invited to speak about my journey starting this very newsletter you’re reading!
If you’re new, this is Sifter, a newsletter that brings you a weekly rundown of what’s been making news in Ethiopia. I cover news (in Amharic and English), reports (mostly on human rights and press freedom), events I attend, and things that I see and hear as well. I’m Maya Miskir, a freelance reporter based in Addis Abeba, and I run it.
Now, to the news.
Infrastructure: desperate for a port
Ethiopia’s need for (and lack of) port access has been making the rounds in last week’s news cycle.
In one story run by state broadcaster EBC World, entitled, ‘Access to the Sea: Ethiopia's Bottle Neck for Development’, the host says that, ‘the need for an alternative sea outlet has become a pressing concern for the reformist government.’
Among other things mentioned in this 6-minute video is that exploring the sea outlet options for Ethiopia is, as stressed twice, ‘not merely an option, but a necessity.’
The host then explains that Ethiopia's heavy reliance on Djibouti for access to the latter’s port has cost ‘billions of dollars for imports and exports passing through Djibouti’. Being landlocked is difficult for many reasons like being unable to expand Ethiopia’s navy force in particular, she adds.
The video had less than 1,500 views when I sent this out, but it did catch the eye of the Djiboutian Minister of Economy and Finance. The Minister explained with a series of bullet points why these, ‘billions of dollars’, were not really going to Djibouti (after clarifying that he was, ‘disappointed and offended’ by the whole thing).
You can see his full (personal) tweet here, but he talks about how most of the costs alluded to in the video are spent on other related things like hinterland costs (road transportation to the port primarily handled by Ethiopian authorities), before reminding people that, Ethiopia's continued double-digit economic growth, ‘has been made possible by the port and corridors of Djibouti.’
Another story by Bloomberg talked about how Ethiopia’s hopes for a port, once leaning heavily toward the port of Assab in Eritrea - following the truce between the two countries in 2018 - is no longer a strong possibility, due to the increased presence of Eritrean soldiers in Ethiopia’s Tigray region.
One of the more contentious issues of the peace deal signed between the Ethiopian government and Tigrayan forces last November is the continued presence of these Eritrean forces when part of the peace agreement was that they leave the region.
The Ethiopian government's ‘push to gain access’ to a port poses a risk for another conflict, the story concludes.
There have been different responses from neighboring country governments on this latest issue. One from the Eritrean Ministry of Information says that these discourses (‘actual and presumed’), have ‘perplexed all concerned observers’.
Though Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed even floated the idea of giving shares of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam in exchange for access to the port, a response to this by the Somali government as reported by Bloomberg, says the following:
While Somalia is “highly committed” to enhancing peace, security, trade and integration, it isn’t interested in providing access to a strategic asset such as a port, State Minister of Foreign Affairs Ali Omar said in a text message. “Somalia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity — land, sea and air — as enshrined in our constitution, is sacrosanct and not open for discussion.”
A senior advisor to the Djiboutian president is quoted to have said this in the same story:
“Djibouti will wait for Ethiopia to propose a peaceful means to access the Red Sea, while recognising that Djibouti has always been open to have good relations with neighboring countries and notably Ethiopia,” he said by phone. He noted Djibouti’s openness to already provide access to Ethiopia’s navy.
The two stories on Bloomberg here and here, and the short video from EBC World here.
If you want to look at an earlier update on what the conversation on port access looked like in August, go here.
Immigration: we’re following this one to the end
There have been multiple updates in this newsletter on the issue of passports and what is taking place at the Immigration and Citizenship Services, the institution in charge of this.
There was a point where it seemed this institution was turning over a new leaf and had digitized its payment and appointment process. But things then took a turn for the worse. Lines got longer, appointment dates stopped meaning much, and the treatment by security got extremely bad. Alongside this, illegal payments for a shorter queue and getting service became widespread.
Then some measures were taken by the government. In July, when the director and both deputy directors of the institution were removed from their jobs and replaced, we wondered, they’re fired, but will the job get done?
And following my last update, it does look like people are finally getting their passports. Lines are still long and it still sometimes take multiple trips to get teh jobe done but they’re giving the passports out.
Last week, Addis Maleda reported that the former deputy director of the institution, and an unknown number of employees there, have now been arrested and charged with corruption. Shocker.
The full story in Amharic on Addis Maleda here.
Migration: a trafficker caught in Kenya
I write about migration issues here a lot. It’s particularly relevant to Ethiopia, where tens of thousands of people migrate through regular and irregular routes (the latter meaning in an undocumented or illegal and mostly dangerous way). If you’d like to understand the scale and severity of the issue you can go to this previous longer update I wrote on that.
This particular update is about one Kenyan man who was arrested last week on charges of human trafficking after he was found with 23 Ethiopian nationals in a house in Nairobi. None of the Ethiopian nationals had identification or travel documents.
Here’s an excerpt from the story on The East African:
“The suspect was arrested by officers from Jogoo police station who had allegedly received a tip on 'suspicious' people living in a house in the area. Officers from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) offices in Buruburu took over the investigation and found that the Ethiopians were on their way to Tanzania.”
The story in English in The East African here and in Amharic on Addis Maleda here.
Security: kidnappings in Oromia
In the last edition of Sifter, I talked about an incident involving two drone attacks in Ethiopia’s Oromia region. The drone attacks were a result of a confrontation between the federal government and the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), a rebel armed group operating in the region.
Last week, Addis Standard reported that an unknown number of Chinese employees had been kidnapped from a cement factory reportedly by the same armed group.
Here’s an excerpt of what a local resident said from the story:
“Members of the armed group [OLA] seized the cement factory and abducted Chinese workers early in the morning [Thursday]. Then, long and steady fighting between the rebel group and government forces continued until 2 PM [local time],” the resident added.
Earlier in January, 20 employees were taken from Dangote Cement Factory and returned after paying ransom in the same region.
In May, I wrote an update on how employees at a local sugar factory in Wellega Zone, Oromia, were killed by armed groups. Wellega Zone is one of the areas that saw intense fighting between the OLA and government forces immediately after the attempted peace talks in Tanzania failed to end in a truce.
The full story on Addis Standard here.
Human rights: on the transitional justice policy
The Ministry of Justice announced last week Monday that public consultations for a national transitional justice policy have been finalized. This means the team of 14 experts, who have been guiding these consultations across the country, will now be working on a draft policy that will then be presented to the public for review.
What’s the national transitional justice policy? It’s a policy that is expected to address rights violations, including international crimes and sexual violence that happened in Ethiopia. This could be through prosecution, reconciliation, reparations, or reforms among other avenues.
Consultations with the public on what should be included in this policy have been taking place since March. This entire process is led by the group of experts mentioned above, formally known as the Transitional Justice Working Group of Experts ( or TJWGE if you’re looking for the world’s least catchy acronym).
Some of the numbers shared by the Ministry on these consultations include: 60% of the participants were victims of human rights violations while 40% were women; 47 of the consultations took place at a regional level and 8 were national; and last but not least, the consultations involved thousands of people from different communities but those who gave ‘negative’ comments could be counted on one hand (verbatim).
However, there is a rift between the expert group working on the policy and other human rights organizations (like the UN) who think that this policy needs an international investigating body involved because the issues the policy will deal with involve foreign forces (like the Eritrean army), and include violations of international law (like crimes against humanity).
Here's an excerpt from a story on The Reporter on what the TJWGE said regarding this issue:
“The TJWGE stressed that local and national stakeholders should lead the transitional justice process. They firmly asserted: “National and local ownership applies to all aspects of transitional justice, from assessment and implementation to monitoring and evaluation- which entails that process leadership and decision making… are led and driven by national stakeholders.”
The full statement by the Ministry of Justice in Amharic here, the story in English on Addis Standard here, and The Reporter here.
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