they made it out alive
and putting 300 percent into context
Hi there,
I certainly hope your weekend was better than mine. I missed a very important flight to attend what would have been an incredible gathering of women in media due to a technicality reserved only for Ethiopian passport holders. To top off that gut-wrenching experience, I caught a horrible flu that I’m still fighting off five days later. If you’re in Addis, I know you will resonate with the last bit, because every other person I know seems to have just recovered from one.
The lessons learned from the past week: life happens.
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.
Press freedom: they managed to escape
When Ethiopian journalists Bekalu Alamerew and Belay Manaye were released from prison in June of this year, I wrote an update based on a story by Ethiopia Insider. The two journalists, who are founders of their respective media houses, were in jail for months following the state of emergency declared in Ethiopia’s Amhara region, in August last year.
Last week, both of them said they had illegally, yet safely, made it out of the country after a ten-day arduous journey, according to a follow-up story by Ethiopia Insider. The story says that they fled the country after receiving threats to their life by government security forces.
The two journalists, who didn’t want to mention which country they were in, were quoted as saying that they were given many warnings upon their release, including not to speak to the media.
In a post made on his Facebook page, Bekalu says that he had gone through all types of imaginable rights violations during their imprisonment as well as over the past few years, where he was unable to get basic government services including getting an ID or a bank account.
The full story, which talks about their time in the infamous Ethiopian prison and military camp ‘Awash Arba’, on Ethiopia Insider, in Amharic, here. Bekalu’s Facebok post, in Amharic, here.
Finance: the ever-rising cost of living
When the Ethiopian government signed an agreement with the IMF last month – a four-year credit facility worth 3.4 billion US dollars – I wrote an update based on a report that looked at how IMF loans have played out in other African countries.
The report done across ten African countries showed that the loan agreements have had serious implications on fundamental human rights like education, and health. (“The IMF’s insistence that countries prioritize debt repayments, rather than seeking a systemic solution to debt, is a major obstacle to spending on health, education and climate action”.)
One of the ways this cut to spending will be reflected is in government employee salaries; that is, no new recruitments, or no salary increases, or in the case of an increase, by margins not adequate to live on.
The Ethiopian government, after the loan agreement had been signed, had announced an increase in government employee salaries. This was a step intended to buffer the rising cost of living, as the value of the Ethiopian Birr plummeted, once the country shifted to a market-based foreign exchange system.
Civil servants in the country are now saying that this raise in salaries – ranging from 5 percent to 332 percent – is not enough and does not ‘adequately address the rising cost of living, especially in light of inflation and currency depreciation’, according to a story by Addis Standard.
This makes perfect sense considering that the 332 percent salary increase is aimed at 1.1 million civil servants who earn a salary that falls under the “extreme poverty line”.
The full story on Addis Standard, here.
Security: we don’t know her (XXVIII)
This is the 28th part update on what has been happening in Ethiopia’s Amhara region since conflict first started last year in August. For the previous updates, all compiled in one place chronologically, go here.
In part 26, I wrote an update about how a humanitarian aid worker was killed while on a work mission, along with an investigation from Human Rights Watch which said that healthcare facilities and workers are being targeted in the region.
The health worker who was killed last month, Yared Melese, is the sixth humanitarian to be killed this year in a region where ‘political conflict is turning into a more general erosion of law and order’ says a story by The New Humanitarian.
Getting humanitarian aid to those who need it in the region (‘four million people in Amhara are food insecure’) is becoming increasingly dangerous because of how volatile things are from one day to the next.
Here’s an excerpt from the story:
“Normally in a conflict, we know who we should negotiate with [to access communities] and what are the rules of the game,” said one aid worker. “But here, it could be a different person every day that we have to find.”
Aid workers have a lot to worry about: fighting between the federal troops and the region’s informal militia known as Fano, as well as “opportunistic criminality”, such as kidnappings, where humanitarian workers have become targets’ says the story.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, in a statement earlier this month, had said that kidnappings by armed groups, criminal gangs and even government security forces have increased in Ethiopia’s Amhara and Oromia regions.
The full story on The New Humanitarian, here, and the statement by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, which gives detailed examples of the documented kidnappings, in Amharic, here.
Infrastructure: tit for tat
The geopolitical tensions surrounding a port deal signed between Ethiopia and the government of Somaliland on January 1, have continued to simmer.
Last week, Egypt sent its second round of military equipment support to Somalia according to a story by BBC Africa. The story quotes the Somali Defence Minister Abdulkadir Mohamed Nur as saying this: “We know our own interests, and we will choose between our allies and our enemies. Thank you Egypt."
Here’s an excerpt from the story:
Ethiopia has for years been a staunch backer of the government in Mogadishu in its fight against al-Qaeda-linked militant group al-Shabab.
But Somalia is furious that landlocked Ethiopia signed a preliminary deal at the beginning of this year with the self-declared republic of Somaliland to lease a section of its coastline. Somalia sees Somaliland as part of its territory.
The Somaliland government, in a press release posted on X, says that this supply of heavy weapons ‘jeopardizes the security of a region already facing complex security challenges’ and that the weapons could ‘fall into the hands of extremist groups like Al-Shabab’.
On the other hand, the Somali government accuses Ethiopia of ‘violating its sovereignty’ by sending “unauthorised” arms shipments to the semi-autonomous Puntland region of Somalia.
Egypt has also called all its citizens in Somaliland ‘to leave as soon as possible’ citing security concerns, according to another story on Middle East Eye.
The government of Turkey which has mediated the first two rounds of talks between Somalia and Ethiopia, now says that there are plans to meet separately with the two countries and only, ‘later bring the sides together when their positions reach a totally common point’.
This update is sourced from a story on the BBC, here, a post by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Somaliland, here, another one on Middle East Eye, here, and Reuters, here.
Food security: relatively good news
The risk of extreme cases of food insecurity in Ethiopia’s Amhara and Tigray regions is now low according to the Famine Early Warning System Network, which has had these areas on its radar since late 2023.
The Network says that this is ‘due to the consistent delivery of humanitarian food assistance through August’ and the expected green harvest this month.
The reports say that displaced pastoralists in the country’s south and southeast, which have lost their cattle to drought ‘remain of highest concern’, despite the fact that herd sizes are recovering.
Here’s an excerpt from the report which touches on the price of food items in relation to the value of the Ethiopian Birr (ETB):
In the near-to-medium term, the severity of ETB depreciation – coupled with the impact of insecurity on agricultural production, trade flows, and market supply – is still expected to lead to moderate price increases for many other goods.
The full report, 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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