WHAT PRICE DEVELOPMENT?

Human Rights Watch continues to expose the realities of the Ethiopian governments development programme; with its “villagization” program. This foreign funded development programme is currently forcibly relocating approximately 70,000 indigenous people from the western Gambella region to new villages. The deportees upon arrival have found that they lack adequate food, farmland, healthcare, and educational facilities. Human Rights Watch has stated that state security forces have repeatedly threatened, assaulted, and arbitrarily arrested villagers who resist the transfers.

The Human Rights Watch report, entitled “‘Waiting Here for Death’: Forced Displacement and ‘Villagization’ in Ethiopia's Gambella Region,” examines in detail the first year of Gambella’s villagization program. The report details the involuntary nature of the transfers, the loss of livelihoods, the deteriorating food situation, and ongoing abuses by the armed forces against the affected people.

Foreign donors to Ethiopia, include the United Kingdom, United States, World Bank, and European Union, all make assertions that they have no direct involvement in the villagization programs. Yet, the multi-donor Protection of Basic Services (PBS) program subsidizes basic services – health, education, agriculture, roads, and water – and local government salaries in all districts in the country, including areas where new villages are being constructed and where the main activity of local governments is moving people.

The Ethiopian Government’s villagization program is taking place in areas where significant land investment is either planned or actually occurring. The Ethiopian government has consistently denied that the resettlement of people in Gambella is connected to the leasing of large areas of land for commercial agriculture, but villagers have been told by government officials that this is an underlying reason for their displacement. Former local government officials have confirmed these allegations to Human Rights Watch.

The residents of Gambella, who are mainly indigenous Anuak and Nuer peoples, have never had formal title to the land they have lived on and used. The Ethiopian government often claims that the areas are “uninhabited” or “under-utilized.” That claim enables the government to conveniently bypass any constitutional provisions and laws that should protect these populations from being relocated. Oddly enough many of the areas from which people are being moved are slated for leasing by the government for commercial agricultural development.