Reforms, aid and foreign actors

and disrupting a candlelight vigil

Aug 26, 2024

Hi there,

I hope you had a good weekend. I’m sending this week’s edition from Nairobi, where I am staying for a week-long work trip.

A quick follow-up: I wrote an update last week that looked at the crisis in women’s rights in Ethiopia along with a story on the social media uproar over the rape and murder of a 7-year-old child. The Network of Ethiopian Women’s Association, along with other human rights defenders and activists organized a candlelight vigil and a press conference at the Elilly Hotel in Addis Abeba in response to this. This was cut short when police and plains-clothed officers stormed the hotel ordering everyone to leave as they had no ‘permit’ to do this – something that was not required for a press conference before.

To new subscribers, welcome!

My name is Maya Misikir, and I’m a freelance reporter based in Addis Abeba. I write Sifter, this newsletter where I send out the week’s top 5 stories on human rights and news in Ethiopia.

Now, to the news.

Finance: another week dealing with reforms

I’ve been following developments related to the recent 3.4 billion USD IMF loan facility for Ethiopia and the ensuing reforms which have included a change in the country’s foreign exchange system.

You can find the previous editions on this in the archive (which goes all the way to January 2023, in case you’re looking for something specific as well).

Ethiopia’s central bank governor Mamo Mihretu says that the country is ‘introducing sweeping reforms that improve the business environment in very consequential ways,’ according to a story on Semafor.

Here’s an excerpt from what he said:

Amongst other things, the government is temporarily subsidizing some essential imports — including fuel, fertilizers, medicine and edible oil — to reduce the immediate adverse impacts on the general population, especially low-income households.

Part of these ‘sweeping reforms’ have targeted taxation, with revisions on different types of taxes including excise tax, VAT tax, and introducing a green tax to curb carbon emission from cars.

In line with this, the Ethiopian government has now extended the ban on importing petrol and diesel vehicles to include international organizations and diplomatic missions as well.

Despite these lofty aspirations to ‘improve the business environment’, the tax reforms, specifically the VAT law, have created confusion across different sectors, because of its ambiguity in applicability. VAT tax will also start being levied on water and electricity services, past a certain level of consumption. I’ll be sharing more on this in the coming edition.

The full story on Semafor, here.

Aid: reaching people has gotten more difficult

The World Food Program (WFP) says that delivering aid in Ethiopia has become increasingly difficult because of the ‘ongoing conflict, rising inflation, and a widening funding gap for humanitarian efforts,’ according to a story by Addis Standard.

What time of the year is considered a ‘peak needs period’ in Ethiopia? From June to September. This has always been the case for regions like Tigray, which do not harvest enough to last throughout the year. People in the region had different coping mechanisms during these months, which included working as daily laborers.

But with conflict in Ethiopia’s Oromia and Amhara regions now, more and more places are becoming food insecure. Conflict also means that farmers miss several seasons of work, further depleting their resources and slimming their chances of getting back on their feet. This has one inevitable end: waiting on aid organizations for food.

All of these compounded reasons, including the effects of climate change, have left, ‘15.8 million individuals across Ethiopia in dire need of food assistance in 2024’ according to the WFP.

Funding shortfalls aside – only 55% of the targeted population will receive food assistance – conflicts have made it unsafe for humanitarian workers. Last week, I included an update on the humanitarian worker who was killed in Ethiopia’s Amhara region.

To top all this off, the change to a market-based foreign exchange policy has tanked the value of the Birr, and resulted in price hikes on goods like edible oil and onion, which has had an ‘immediate detrimental impact on poor households.’

The full story on Addis Standard, here.

Human rights: do we need to involve others?

Ethiopia’s Transitional Justice Policy is getting close to implementation, with the Ministry of Justice announcing that the Policy’s roadmap has now been finalized. I wrote an in-depth update that goes into detail about the Policy, its scope, and its progress since inception.

The process is moving at a fast pace (‘both the policy and implementation roadmap was crafted in less than 18 months’), and the involvement of international actors needs a ‘swift resolution’, argue authors in a paper published by the Institute for Security Studies.

As it stands, international actors are limited to ‘advisory and training functions’, despite experts advocating for roles with more meaningful participation (like co-prosecutors and co-judges). More recently, the paper adds that ‘the term ‘international experts’ was replaced with ‘experts with international experience’ signifying a ‘preference for drawing on Ethiopians who have studied or worked abroad.’

Is the government’s stance to exclude international actors a guise to ‘circumvent accountability’ or to ensure ‘national ownership of the transitional justice process’? The authors argue that involving international experts and national ownership of the policy are not mutually exclusive.

But why is the involvement of international experts good? Not because ‘knowledge flows in one direction (global to local)’ but rather, to ‘give victims a sense of impartiality, particularly in a context like Ethiopia, where trust in the domestic system is low’.

The other reason is the nature of international crimes and because Ethiopia’s Transitional Justice Policy will have far-reaching implications for the region.

The full paper, entitled, ‘Ethiopia’s transitional justice: tensions around international experts’ role need swift resolution’, here.

Infrastructure: mediation efforts continued

The past two weeks I included updates on Turkey's role as mediator between Ethiopia and Somalia. The last one included concern from the Somaliland government which cast doubt on Turkey’s involvement saying that it showed ‘a clear indication of the lack of impartiality’.

Things have gotten a little worse since then, with Somalia’s civil aviation threatening to ban all Ethiopian Airlines flights to the country, according to a story on Bloomberg.

But why ban flights? Here’s an excerpt from the story on that:

The Somali Civil Aviation Authority complained that Ethiopian Airlines had resorted to removing references to destinations in Somalia and was instead using only airport codes to circumvent the sovereignty issue.

Ethiopian Airlines is quickly falling out of favor in the region. If Somalia goes ahead with this decision, it will be the second neighboring country to ban its fights.

To get a background brief on why Ethiopia and Somalia need mediation to start with, go here to read what happened on January 1, 2024.

The full story on Bloomberg, here.

Security: disruptions in southern Ethiopia

An armed group attacked a town in the South Ethiopia Region over the last weekend, and killed 11 people says a story by Ethiopia Insider.

The attack, which happened in an area known as Konso, was aimed initially at the town’s administrative and security offices, including the town’s police station. Five police officers were killed in the shoot-out that lasted for hours.

After overwhelming the area’s security forces, members of the armed group went around house to house, killed people, and stole cars and motorbikes from government offices.

Here’s an excerpt of what the local administrator said in another story on Addis Standard:

He added that the attackers set fire to government buildings and looted the police station, the city administration office, the local hospital, and the finance office. “The extent of the attack is significant, and we are currently searching for missing individuals,” Urmale stated.

The full story, which talks about the nature of the ethnic-based attacks, and the lack of backup from federal and regional security forces, on Ethiopia Insider, in Amharic, here, and in English, on Addis Standard, here.

That’s all for this week. I’ll be back next week with more updates!

In the meantime, feel free to share this with anyone you think can benefit from keeping up with what’s going on in Ethiopia.

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