Hi there,
We’re getting ready to celebrate New Year in Ethiopia. Wednesday will mark the first day of 2017 according to our calendar. While we’re on this topic, good to mention that we’re also on the 13 month of the year. Which has five days.
In continuation from the years before, a group of 10 civil society actors have once again, sent out a call for peace, justice, and accountability. The call for peace says that gender-based violence should be given attention in Ethiopia, where it is so widespread. Another point in the call: Ethiopia is regressing on significant legal and institutional reforms that have been made over the past three years. If you’re looking for the full statement, hit reply and let me know, and I’ll share a copy with you.
A story published in The Reporter entitled, ‘Turbulent year behind, rough year ahead,’ highlights what 2016 has been like in Ethiopia, from ‘armed conflicts, insurgencies, and political developments to escalating regional tensions and landmark economic reforms’. Take a look if, by some miracle, these events haven’t been etched into your memory like mine.
Alternatively, you can take a look at this newsletter’s archive which has all the weekly updates from the past year, and more. If you’re only looking for specific security updates on the conflict that started last year in Ethiopia’s Amhara region, you can go here, where we are on update XXVII. A new addition is a list of all updates on migration issues, which you can find here.
Finally, a notice from the Institute for Security Studies, which is looking for a ‘senior researcher with expertise on human security in the Horn of Africa region and Ethiopia’. Take a look here.
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.
Labor rights: a bust on trafficking businesses
Agency owners who were involved in human trafficking operations were arrested over the past week by Ethiopia’s National Intelligence and Security Service, according to a story by Addis Standard.
The investigation carried out by the agency says that these businesses and brokers operate ‘domestically and in foreign countries’, and illegally provide work deployments that end up with citizens being offered for sale to employers at the destination countries.
Here’s an excerpt from the story:
It further alleged that “tourist and work visas obtained through benefit connections are used for this act, and various bodies, including individuals working in embassies, participate in it.”
The full story, on Addis Standard, here.
Human rights: can you guess what TFGBV stands for?
The news cycle over the past few weeks has been evidence of the horrors that women are facing in every direction, especially at the hands of an intimate partner.
Ugandan Olympian athlete Rebecca Cheptegei ‘became the third woman athlete to die at the hands of a man in western Kenya in the past three years’. That’s just the past three years. The list goes on the farther back you go.
I wrote about how this violence plays out across the African continent in the digital sphere or as it is more formally known as, technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV).
One of the many ways this violence presents itself is through spouse-ware: “spyware or surveillance software to monitor one’s intimate partner without their consent.” What follows is that ex-partners then ‘punitively broadcast this private information in what is commonly known as “revenge porn”’.
As for legal recourse? Here’s an excerpt from the story I did for The Continent on how this played out in Morocco:
In one case, a woman came to report that an intimate partner was threatening to broadcast her intimate videos. She was advised not to confess that she has had sex outside wedlock, or that the prosecutor would be forced to arrest her first,” Mamouni said. “We could only offer her psychological support.
The full edition of The Continent, here.
Finance: following the reforms
At the end of last month, Ethiopia’s central bank governor said that the country is ‘introducing sweeping reforms that improve the business environment in very consequential ways’.
Part of this is a new VAT law in place, a government decision to increase revenue sources. This will mean including services that were previously exempt from this 15 percent tax, including water and electricity after a certain level of consumption. Last week, the Ministry of Finance put this threshold at ‘200 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of monthly electricity consumption and the initial 15 cubic meters of monthly water consumption’, according to a story by Addis Standard.
This new VAT law has not gone down well, especially with textile manufacturers and insurance companies in the country.
I spoke to an industry legal expert who told me that the law is ambiguous and uneven in its application. Whether it will be levied on insurance premium payments or payouts, is unclear.
Here’s an excerpt from a story I covered on The Africa Report on what he said:
“Who is going to buy insurance when they know that the compensation, they get will have a deduction and as a result, will not be able to reinstate them to their previous status?” said Yami.
Many more new items and services are now being added to the list of what will have VAT levied on them. Thankfully though, this won’t concern injera for the time being.
The full story on Addis Standard, here, and on The Africa Report, here.
Politics: freed after four years
Seven opposition political party members have been freed after four years of imprisonment. The members of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), were released from different prisons on bail, according to a story by VOA.
The senior leaders of the OLF were imprisoned for all these years without charges and despite multiple court orders for their release, according to another story by Addis Standard.
Here’s an excerpt from the story of what happened during their imprisonment:
Several were moved frequently between different detention centers, with family members and legal representatives often left unaware of their whereabouts. In one instance, following an April 2023 transfer, families were not informed of their location for two weeks, adding to the distress.
Last year in March, when the Federal Police Commissioner was presenting an annual performance report to the parliament, parliamentarians demanded to know why police were arresting and detaining people illegally, specifically bypassing orders from the courts. You can read a summary of the Commissioner’s unimpressive response, here.
The full story on Addis Standard, here, and on VOA, here.
Culture: the Volkswagen Beetle
Wrapping this last edition of the newsletter for the Ethiopian calendar year on a high note with a story that explores the Ethiopian obsession with the ‘Volkswagen’s quirky classic’, the Beetle, or ‘vols’ as Ethiopians like to call it.
The story talks about how these cars are a common sight in Addis Abeba, and that people here like them for a variety of reasons; they’re relatively cheap and durable, people have fond childhood memories, and according to a person interviewed in the story, the stiffness of their clutch and steering wheel makes for a good workout.
Here’s an excerpt from the story on The Guardian:
Beetles arrived in Ethiopia during the reign of Haile Selassie. When the emperor was deposed by communist soldiers in 1974, he was bundled into a Beetle on the steps of his palace and driven away to imprisonment.
Today, Beetles are still a common sight in Addis Ababa, the capital, where they can be spotted negotiating cobbled residential streets or parked in rush-hour traffic. Their enduring popularity is a quirk of Ethiopia’s distorted car market, where import duties of up to 200% mean secondhand vehicles are wildly expensive.
As a person born and raised in Addis, this struck a chord.
The full story on The Guardian, 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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Thank you, Maya and Happy New Year! Looking forward to another year with Sifter! 🥰🙏🏾