Ethiopia accused of clearance policy

Ethiopia is forcing tens of thousands of people off their land to lease it to foreign investors, leaving former landowners destitute and, in some cases, starving.

A report released by New York-based group Human Rights Watch has said Ethiopia last year resettled about 70,000 people in its western Gambella region under its first, three-year “villagisation” programme.

The Horn of Africa state has already leased three million hectares – an area almost the size of Belgium – to foreign agri-businesses and the rights group said Addis Ababa had plans to lease another 2.1m hectares.

The United Nations has voiced concern that countries such as China and Gulf Arab states are buying tracts of land in Africa and Asia to secure their own food supplies, often at the expense of local people.

The rights group said it suspects people have been moved to free up land, with the security forces threatening, assaulting, and arresting villagers who resist relocation. The watchdog also reported rape, killing of cattle and burning of houses among rights violations.

Instead of the promised improved life with “access to basic socio-economic infrastructures,” locals found new villages that lacked food, farmland, schools and health clinics, the watchdog claimed.

Human Rights Watch said its report is based on 100 interviews in 2011 with residents in Gambella and a refugee camp in Kenya. The report also relied on visits to 16 affected villages.

It called upon the Ethiopian government to suspend its programme until all promised facilities have been provided.

Ethiopia’s minister of federal affairs, Shiferaw Teklemariam, denounced the allegations in a letter to Human Rights Watch as “downright fabrications” from a “politically motivated” organisation.

Ethiopia plans to relocate 45,000 households in Gambella by 2013. According to the Oakland Institute, a US policy think-tank, Ethiopia’s government has earmarked 42 per cent of Gambella’s land for investment.

The Gambella resettlement plan is part of a larger scheme that aims to relocate a total of 1.5 million people in four regions.

Jan Egeland, Europe director of Human Rights Watch, said resettlement takes place “in the exact same areas of Ethiopia that the government is leasing to foreign investors for large-scale commercial agricultural operations.

“This raises suspicions about the underlying motives of the programme.”

Gambella, in west-central Ethiopia, is a traditionally marginalised area of the country that suffers internal conflicts over resources such as water and land between indigenous peoples such as the pastoral Nuer and agrarian Anuak. It also is affected by its border with South Sudan, as refugees pour into Gambella when violence erupts in that newly independent nation.

Gambella also saw a large influx of Ethiopians who the former dictatorship forced to relocate after a famine in the 1980s.

A World Bank report last year on leasing agricultural land to foreign companies noted that some of Ethiopia’s leases last up to 100 years and favour rich foreigners over poor Ethiopians, with large investors receiving land and water free of charge along with tax benefits, while local peasants have to pay land taxes and other fees.