Who can hold Facebook accountable?
and Ethiopia's shaky finances
Hi,
Welcome to another edition of Sifter, a newsletter written and curated by me, Maya Misikir, a freelance reporter based in Addis Abebe, Ethiopia.
Like other editions, this one focuses on what made news in Ethiopia over the past week. Unlike other weeks though, I am sending this out from Bangkok, Thailand.
I’m sharing an excerpt below from photojournalist and war photographer James Natchwey, whose exhibition I was able to go to in the city. The photos were too triggering for me but the words from the exhibition really struck a chord.
Here it is:
“By showing what happens at a ground level, far from the halls of power, images can cut through the dehumanizing phrases invented by politicians to divert public attention away from reality.
‘Ethnic cleansing is a treacherous euphemism designed to make the conditions of genocide – attack on civilian populations, abduction, deportation, murder – sound as if they are somehow clean.
‘Boots on the ground’ is a meaningless abstraction, as if sending thousands of young people to fight wars, to lose their limbs, to kill and to die, is only a matter of numbers, cadence and sturdy footwear.
‘Collateral damage’ is an attempt to confuse the unjustified death of civilians – children, the elderly, entire families – with something no more important than defaulting on a loan.”
If you’re curious, go here to find out more about his work.
Now, to the news.
Tech: Facebook’s hand in human rights abuses
Facebook is guilty, says Amnesty International. A new report by the organization has revealed that Meta (Facebook’s parent company) has contributed to, ‘serious human rights abuses against Ethiopia’s Tigrayan community’.
The war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region lasted for two years – last week November 2, 2023, marked the one-year anniversary since the signing of the peace deal between the federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
During and even after the ‘official’ end of the war, human rights organizations and groups sounded many alarms about the human rights violations taking place in Tigray and across other regions that were later part of the war. Both warring sides are implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity.
This latest report on Facebook’s complicity, says two main things; one is that Facebook worsened the situation by ‘supercharging’ the spread of hateful content against Tigrayans. The second was that the moderators did not take action when they needed to. They were slow to respond and even refused to take down content that was reported many times.
Here’s an excerpt from the report:
“Even before the outbreak of the conflict in northern Ethiopia, civil society organizations and human rights experts repeatedly warned that Meta risked contributing to violence in the country, and pleaded with the company to take meaningful action,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.”
This is not the first time Facebook has been accused of contributing to human rights violations – the report mentions the rights abuses against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. It warns that this may not be the last.
Meta is also facing a 2-billion-dollar lawsuit in relation to its inaction over posts that led to the death of a Tigrayan university professor in Bahir Dar during the peak of the war.
The full report on Amnesty International here, the story based on the report on Addis Standard here, and an explainer on the lawsuit here.
Peace deal: a year later
Last week was the one-year anniversary of the peace deal that ended a horrible war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region. A series of news reports came out discussing the impacts of this ‘Cessation of Hostilities’, as it is formally known. It ended a two-year conflict and the stories talked about where the Tigray region, and Ethiopia, as a whole stand a year later.
In particular, what happened to all the soldiers now that the war had stopped? One report by The New Humanitarian (TNH) focused on the status of these ‘ex-fighters’. If you remember earlier back in the year, there were discussions taking place in the country’s Tigray and Amhara region about the process of reintegrating ex-fighters back into society. This process was led by the National Rehabilitation Commission.
Hundreds of thousands of ex-fighters were supposed to get support through this but the story from TNH says that this process has been delayed because of a lack of funding.
Here’s an excerpt from what a fighter from Tigray Defense Forces (TDF) said in a story by The New Humanitarian:
“Former TDF fighters say conditions in these camps are poor. Many are forced to sleep in the open, with no protection against the elements, and there is so little to eat that several fighters told The New Humanitarian they are resorting to begging for food.”
The story, which mostly focuses on fighters in Tigray also talks about how there are concerns that the TPLF is ‘not fully committed to disarming and secretly retains much of its arsenal.’ Whatever arsenal has been officially handed over as part of the peace deal is a small fraction, it adds, with the majority hidden in ‘mountain caches’.
Even talking about the peace deal a year later can get you into trouble as can be inferred from the list of anonymous sources cited in the article; ‘a development partner, who requested anonymity so they could speak freely,’ ‘a Western diplomat, who also spoke on condition of anonymity’, ‘one Western diplomat’ and ‘a security source’ among others.
Many parts of Tigray are still occupied by fighters from the Amhara region or the Eritrean army, even though, according to the peace deal, they were supposed to leave.
There are about a million people still displaced in the region due to the conflict according to a story from The Reporter, and the humanitarian responses to these needs are far from being met.
And now the Tigray Interim Administration, which is administrating the region provisionally is butting heads with the TPLF. The latter may be causing problems, ‘to avoid accountability for crimes during the conflict once transitional justice begins’, says the story.
The full story on The New Humanitarian here and The Reporter here.
Finance: looking up at rock bottom
Ethiopia’s credit rating has taken another hit.
What is a country’s credit rating? It’s an assessment of a country’s ability to pay back its debts. The higher the credit rating of a country, the less risk it has for investors because it’s expected to pay back its debts. The lower its credit rating, well, the lower its chances are for repayment of its debts.
These ratings help investors assess risks and make decisions as to where to invest and where to avoid throwing their money.
There are credit agencies that work out the creditworthiness of institutions, countries, businesses, etc. There are three particular big agencies that dominate this market; Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s, and Fitch.
Fitch has recently downgraded Ethiopia from a ‘CCC’ to a ‘CC’. What does that mean? Ethiopia has gone from a situation where there is ‘a real possibility of default,’ to one where ‘default is a strong probability’.
Here’s an excerpt from a story in Addis Fortune on this new rating:
“Fitch’s downgrade follows a troubling decline in the country’s external liquidity indicators. Ethiopia’s international reserves plummeted to a precarious one billion dollars in 2023, barely covering a month of import payments. This sharp contraction brought to light the one-billion-dollar sovereign debt due this fiscal year and a looming two-billion-dollar obligation in 2025.”
But all hope is not lost, according to the story. The rating could possibly see a change for the positive if Ethiopia can secure financing to cover upcoming payments or, ‘shore up its external finances through policy reforms’.
If you want to read the last update on the conversations Ethiopian government officials have been having with representatives from the IMF and where that conversation is now, go here.
The full story on Addis Fortune here and an article on why credit rating agencies matter for developing countries, here.
Security: we don’t know her (X)
Remember last week’s update on the security in Ethiopia’s Amhara region? The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission had said things continue to look bleak there with ongoing cases of extra judicial killings and 200 cases of rape reported in the region since July of this year. You can go here to read more on that but this is a quick update on the response of the Ethiopian government to that report.
The Ethiopian government responded by saying that this report is ‘not based on accurate information’, and that it is not balanced, adding that the state of emergency in the region was necessitated due to a threat to law and order.
The statement said that while the government is working hard to ensure the independence of institutions and one such result of these efforts is the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, the Commission should note that independence should also mean other external influences, and not just the government.
A response they usually reserve for international rights bodies.
The full statement from the Government Communication Services in Amharic here.
Sport: a win and some bans
My Google alerts notifications were inundated by stories of Ethiopian marathon runner Tamirat Tolla breaking a 12-year-old record for the New York Marathon. He broke the record by eight seconds and the runner who came in behind him trailed by nearly two more minutes.
In other news, two Ethiopian athletes have been banned from participating for violating anti-doping bans by the body in charge of overseeing this under the World Athletics. The bans are 18 months and four years individually for the two athletes. The four-year ban was given to the athlete for using erythropoietin – a common performance-enhancing drug (also used by Lance Armstrong).
The full story on The Associated Press here, and Ethiopian Monitor here.
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