debt repayments over everything
and a former state minister back in jail
Hi there,
Last Friday, Qibibilosh had their biweekly screening (happening every two weeks, and not to be confused with twice a week, the less common yet still correct meaning of the phrase). They showed the film ASNI: the Life of Asnaketch Worku - Courage, Passion & Glamor in Ethiopia, which was really good.
If you like stories about talented and courageous women ahead of their time, I highly suggest you watch this one. For future screening schedules, check (and follow) Qibibilosh’s page here.
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 human rights stories in Ethiopia.
Now, to the news.
Human Rights: economic growth, not social justice
I’m sharing highlights with you on a recent and timely report entitled, The Human Cost of Public Sector Cuts in Africa.
This report gives context to recent developments in the country, including the ongoing strike by healthcare professionals demanding liveable wages, the staff level agreement between the IMF and Ethiopian authorities (a preliminary step to get 260 million USD in financing), and the government’s proposed national budget for next year (a 31 percent increase from the year before).
This report by ActionAid was based on a survey in five countries: Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, and Nigeria. It includes the perspectives of 616 frontline workers and community members, more than half of whom were women (reflecting their significant presence in frontline public sector roles and its effect).
What was the report on?
The impact of cuts in government spending over the past 5 years on essential sectors, as countries prioritize debt repayments ‘at any cost and over public health, education and social protection spending’.
What does it show us?
That austerity measures (cuts in public sector wage bills and privatization), recommended by financial institutions like the IMF, have led to the ‘deterioration of public health and education services’.
What are public sector wage bills? The money the government spends on salaries, benefits, and other compensation for its employees.
Who is the largest group of people on public sector wages? Teachers and health workers.
Let’s go into the specific findings.
How has this affected education?
84% of all teachers surveyed have reported a drop in real income over the past five years. About 40 percent of people surveyed have seen a reduction in their income, and 44% plan to leave the sector.
What about the health sector?
Nearly all healthworkers surveyed (97%!) say their ‘wages are ‘insufficient to cover rent, food, and household expenses.’ 32% plan to leave the sector.
What does this mean for the communities that they are serving?
As costs for services rise, it means they avoid getting treatment unless they are in critical condition. And when they do seek those services, they sell their assets, take out loans, or reduce spending on essentials like food.
Higher costs of education (such as when textbooks are no longer free), deterioration of education services, and overcrowded classrooms, which impact the quality of education.
How does this impact women and girls differently?
When there’s less access to essential services, boys and men are favored. For instance, when school costs increase, or when families need to prioritize their limited resources, it’s girls who are ‘often the first to be withdrawn from school’.
When frontline public sector workers lose their jobs, it’s women who will lose out as they make up 70% of these jobs.
And when healthcare gets too expensive? It’s women again who bear most of the burden of unpaid care and domestic work, taking care of kids, the elderly, and the sick.
The unpaid care burden on women and girls is surging, says the survey. Women in rural and urban areas say that they have an additional 20 to 28 hours of care work each week, making them the ‘involuntary shock absorbers of austerity, disguising the full human cost of cuts from the public eye.’
This is undermining their human rights to education and health, and ultimately standing in the way of gender equality.
The full report, here.
The last report I featured was when the IMF first approved 3.4 billion USD to Ethiopia, in July last year. That report, also by ActionAid, showed ‘the detrimental effects of IMF policies on the continent over five decades’. You can read that here.
Labor rights: how did we get here?
Healthcare professionals have been on strike for weeks, demanding better working conditions. I have been including highlights in this newsletter since they first issued an ultimatum, giving the Ministry of Health ten days to respond to their request.
The response never came, and the strike has continued (since mid-May), putting patients and staff across the country ‘under immense pressure’.
The demand from healthcare workers is a years-long request that culminated in this strike.
Has it always been this bad? How did we get here?
Over the past two decades, the Ethiopian government ‘poured investment’ into the expansion of its healthcare system, says a story on The Continent.
And to support this expansion, it ‘introduced a “flooding” policy to train tens of thousands of healthcare workers’.
Did this plan work? Here’s an excerpt from the story:
“It worked: the number of trained doctors in the country increased nearly tenfold in two decades from 1,936 (in 2003) to more than 18,400 (in 2023), according to World Health Organisation data. The number of nurses and midwives increased at an even faster pace. The country’s population grew too, but at a much lower pace.”
But as the number of health care professionals grew in the country, the question then became: ‘how would all these doctors, nurses and clinicians get paid?’
Here’s another excerpt:
Ethiopia’s answer has been low wages. The national average salary for doctors in Ethiopia is just $80 a month, according to Amnesty International. By comparison, doctors in Kenya are earning around $1,600 a month, while their peers in South Africa usually bank more than double that.
The demand for better pay has now resulted in several arrests, and eight people have been charged with ‘’inciting riot and unrest” and “collaborating with anti-peace forces”.
The full story on The Continent, here.
Politics: acquittal reversed
In December 2023, Ethiopia’s then state minister of peace, Taye Dendea, received a letter relieving him of his duties.
A day after receiving this notice, he was carted off from his home by ‘dozens of uniformed and plainclothes police’ where he stayed in detention until he was acquitted of his charges nearly a year later.
You can read my update from December here.
One of three charges he faced at the time was sharing messages ‘designed to promote the interests of an enemy or occupying power’.
The state minister had been posting on his social media for weeks before his arrest, criticizing the government, including for the failure of the peace talks with the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), the rebel faction in Ethiopia’s Oromia region.
Well, the acquittals, based on the judge’s reasoning that the former state minister was expressing his opinions (a constitutional right), have been contested by the Federal Attorney General. The Supreme Court has reinstated the case, and the former state minister is back in jail.
Here’s an excerpt from Addis Standard:
According to the lawyer, Taye was “clandestinely presented” to the court at around 12:00 PM on 03 June without legal representation.
“He was presented without a lawyer,” he said. “Such high-profile cases can only proceed either with the presence of the defendant’s lawyer or with a public defender assigned by the court — but this requirement was bypassed.”
His lawyer says there were ‘multiple legal breaches’ in this process, including a nighttime house search. The state minister will remain in detention throughout the course of his trial.
The full story on Addis Standard, where there has been continuous coverage, here.
Funding: a new law in place
Parliamentarians passed a new law to establish the Ethiopian Disaster Risk Response Fund last Thursday.
The new law is aimed at finding a solution to ‘dependence on foreign aid in the event of manmade and natural disasters’.
Here’s an excerpt from a story on The Reporter:
Its drafters say it will provide sustainable financing for activities related to disaster risk reduction, emergency response and post-disaster recovery.
So, where does the Fund get its money? The story says, ‘mandatory contributions from the financial, telecoms, aviation, and public sectors, and, puzzlingly, donor agencies.’
Initially, the draft law included a provision for the government to levy an income tax as a source of funding, but this ‘controversial clause’ was removed by the time it reached parliamentarians.
The full story on The Reporter, here.
Security: border towns attacked
An armed conflict in border towns found between Ethiopia’s Oromia and Benishangul-Gumuz regions has forced more than 11,000 people to leave their homes in search of safer places.
The attacks were reportedly carried out by ‘unidentified armed groups said to have come from Oromia’, according to a recent report by Addis Standard.
Here’s an excerpt on that:
“…the displacement was triggered by armed conflict “fuelled by political and ethnic divisions,” which it said is continuing to escalate along the regional border.”
During one particular attack last Friday, these groups took over Bullen town in Benishangul-Gumuz, and reportedly robbed a branch of the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia.
The full story on the initial section of this update 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.
Was this forwarded to you by someone? Then hit the button below to subscribe and get free weekly updates.