where are they taking the homeless of Addis?
and earthquakes at a major trade route
Hi there,
I hope you are having a good start to your week. My workload demands more attention this week, so I’m keeping this edition short. If you have any interesting reports related to human rights issues in Ethiopia, please reply to this email and share, and I can work on including them in the coming editions.
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.
Human rights: clearing the streets of (homeless) kids
I first wrote about how security personnel were rounding up homeless people, kids in particular, in May 2023, when the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission released the findings from its investigation. The detention centers they were forcing the kids, aged 4 to 18, were in horrible condition: ‘initially intended as storage for industrial goods, there were not enough beds or covers, bathroom facilities or sufficient running water…ventilation or sunlight’.
Despite the reports published, and recommendations put forward by the Commission since then, a recent assessment done in December shows that this act has continued unabated, as homeless people in Addis Abeba continue to be rounded up and put in a detention facility, in an area known as Kality.
What’s new this time is that the people detained are being given options: to stay in the detention centers or go work at a farm. The report says that there were those who chose to work at a farm instead and were taken to different farm locations.
The report doesn’t mention the name of the farms, nor the number of homeless people being detained at the Kality facility other than saying that the numbers are high.
The Commission would like to point out that forcing homeless people into detention whenever a public holiday or an international conference takes place in Addis Abeba, violates several basic human rights including their right to freedom of movement.
For those of you wondering what might have happened to the homeless people, and kids, that you encounter walking the streets of Addis, this may be one answer.
The full report from the Commission, in Amharic, here.
Earthquakes: a major trade route in the balance
Earthquakes are getting increasingly concerning in Ethiopia. Last week, I wrote about the highest recorded earthquakes yet, at 5.8 on the Richter scale. Homes and businesses, including the state-owned Kessem Sugar Factory, have been seriously damaged, and plans to evacuate tens of thousands of people are underway in Ethiopia’s Afar and Oromia regions.
The earthquakes have jeopardized the ‘backbone of Ethiopia’s international trade and economy’, the ‘Ethio-Djibouti trade route, which passes through the Fentale and Metehara area’ in the Afar region.
Experts at Addis Ababa University’s Institute of Geophysics, Space Science and Astronomy have been sounding alarm bells about this for nearly a decade, according to a story in The Reporter.
The experts say their warnings and reports, were ignored. A representative of the Ethio-Djibouti Railway, cited in the story anonymously, says they received no such information (‘one of these is not accurate’.)
Here's an excerpt from the story on what the University expert said:
In our reports from 2015, we said [the seismic activity] was an alarm bell for Ethiopia. We urged the government to take the necessary precautions and preparations for earthquakes in this area. We also recommended it to find alternative routes for the Ethio-Djibouti trade route..
Government counterparts at the Ethiopian Roads Administration say there is ‘some damage’ to this route.
The full story on The Reporter, here.
Infrastructure: officially back on good terms
This time last year, people in Mogadishu, Somalia were out in the streets protesting the port deal between the Ethiopian government and Somaliland signed on January 1, 2023.
After a year of back and forth, last week, Ethiopia and Somalia published a joint communique stating that they have ‘agreed to restore and enhance bilateral relations through full diplomatic representation in their respective capitals’.
The Ethiopian ambassador to Somalia was expelled last year in April, amid the rising tensions at the time ‘over a port deal dispute in the breakaway region of Somaliland’.
The latest joint communique comes following a diplomatic breakthrough (the Ankara Declaration) between the two countries, at the third round of talks held in Turkey.
Here’s an excerpt from the communiqué:
The leaders reaffirmed that the stability of the region requires strong cooperation between the two countries based on mutual trust, confidence and respect. They agreed to work together to further coordinate efforts to improve regional relations, fostering common understanding and shared progress.
The communiqué was released following the visit of Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud to Ethiopia last Saturday.
The full joint communique here, and the story on Ethiopia Insider, in Amharic, here.
Law: passed despite vocal opposition
In June last year, a series of draft laws were tabled to parliamentarians; laws that ‘could limit rights on the freedom to movement and encroach on the mandate of courts’.
One of these laws, the Asset Recovery Proclamation, which gives ‘the power to freeze assets (property, money, etc) to the Minister of Justice, or a person representing the Minister’ was debated again by parliamentarians in November.
At the time, one of the many concerns around the draft law was that it allowed ‘investigators to bypass privacy laws, including accessing bank accounts and emails without a court order’.
This Proclamation was passed into law last week.
This new law, which ‘retroactively applies to assets acquired up to ten years before its enactment’ was vehemently opposed by opposition party parliamentarians, according to The Reporter.
Here’s an excerpt from the story:
Since it first appeared, critics have pointed to the bill’s broad scope and retroactive application, warning that these features could facilitate politically motivated attacks on dissenters and critics of the government.
The law has been criticized on many fronts: ‘for breaching the principle of non-retroactivity as a serious legal and ethical concern’, for allowing ‘officials to take action against individuals without substantial evidence of wrongdoing’, and potentially, being a ‘tool to silence opponents of the government.’
The full story on The Reporter, here.
Reshuffle: a new head for the media regulatory body
This is an update from an announcement that came in December; the appointment of the head of the Ethiopian Media Authority as the country’s Minister of Peace. At the time there was no official information on who would be replacing him.
Last week, the Prime Minister nominated Dr. Samson Mekonnen (Vice President for Strategic Communication and Internationalization at Addis Abeba University) to lead the Authority.
This nomination comes at a time when sweeping changes are being proposed to Ethiopia’s progressive media law. Changes like shifting ‘the power to refuse, suspend, and revoke licenses from the management board of the Ethiopian Media Authority to the head of the Authority instead’, and striking out the provision that says ‘board members cannot be a member or employee of a political party’.
To understand the far-reaching consequences of these proposed changes, you can read my former post – the fight for Ethiopia’s media law – where I explain all this, based on a public discussion held in parliament in November.
The story, in Amharic, on Ethiopia Insider, 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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