Community gathers to remember fire victim

SEATTLE -- So many lives were lost in last weekend's deadly Fremont apartment fire, Seattle opened KeyArena for a public memorial Friday.
The fire started in a mattress, killing four children and their aunt.

Members of the Ethiopian community say they know sorrow, and that's why many of them moved here, but the sorrow they're experiencing after this tragedy is more than some of them can handle.

Ethiopian, Islamic, and Seattle school communities grieved together over the fire that killed five of their community members.

It was an unbearable blow for the mother of three of those children. Helen Gebregiorgis said her 13-year-old son Joseph dreamed of playing for the Celtics.

Joseph's 6-year-old sister Nisreen Shamam was a girly girl, and their 5-year-old brother Yaseen was a hugger.


"You were more than a cousin to me, you were the brother I never had," said Yaseen's cousin.

Flames and smoke also trapped their 9-year-old cousin Nyella Smith.

"She was daddy's little girl and momma's little princess," another speaker said.

And locked in the bathroom with her nieces and nephews, were 22-year-old Eyrusalem Gebregiorgis.

"On a Saturday in mid-June our Angel gathered up her nieces and nephews like she always does and found her peace as she took the steps up to heaven," one said.

The procession left here and headed to a cemetery on Aurora Avenue where the five victims will be buried next to their grandfather. He died before the children were born, and their relatives believe now they'll finally meet.
Komo TV

Ethiopian Government does not fully comply with Trafficking Victims Protection Act

thiopian Government does not fully comply with Trafficking Victims Protection Act

The U.S. State Department released its annual Trafficking in Persons Report and Ethiopia has been designated as a Tier 2 country, which is assigned to countries whose governments do not fully comply with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s (TVPA's) minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards.

The following is country report for Ethiopia.

ETHIOPIA (Tier 2)

Ethiopia is a source country for men, women, and children subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically conditions of forced labor and forced prostitution. Girls from Ethiopia’s rural areas are forced into domestic servitude and, less frequently, commercial sexual exploitation, while boys are subjected to forced labor in traditional weaving, agriculture, herding, and street vending. Small numbers of Ethiopian girls are forced into domestic servitude outside of Ethiopia, primarily in Djibouti and Sudan, while Ethiopian boys are subjected to forced labor in Djibouti as shop assistants and errand boys. Women from all parts of Ethiopia are subjected to involuntary domestic servitude throughout the Middle East and in Sudan, and many transit Djibouti, Egypt, Libya, Somalia, or Yemen as they migrate to labor destinations. Ethiopian women in the Middle East face severe abuses, including physical and sexual assault, denial of salary, sleep deprivation, confinement, incarceration, and murder. Many are driven to despair and mental illness, some commit suicide. Some women are exploited in the sex trade after arriving at their destinations, particularly in brothels and near oil fields in Sudan. Small numbers of low-skilled Ethiopian men migrate to Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and other African nations, where they are subjected to forced labor. During the year, the Somali Regional Security and Administration Office increased recruitment for Special Police Forces and local militias; it was reported that both government-supported forces and insurgent groups in the Degeharbur and Fik zones unlawfully recruited children, though these allegations could not be conclusively verified.

The Government of Ethiopia does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so. The government made progress over the past year in addressing transnational trafficking through significantly increased law enforcement efforts. Due in part to the establishment of the Human Trafficking and Narcotics Section in the Organized Crime Investigation Unit of the Federal Police, there was an increased emphasis on investigation and prosecution of international trafficking crimes, although the continued lack of investigations and prosecutions of internal trafficking crimes remained a concern. The government maintained its efforts to provide assistance to child trafficking victims identified in the capital region.

Recommendations for Ethiopia: Improve the investigative capacity of police and enhance judicial understanding of trafficking to allow for more prosecutions of trafficking offenders, particularly perpetrators of internal child trafficking; use Articles 596, 597, and 635 of Ethiopia’s Penal Code to prosecute cases of labor and sex trafficking; strengthen criminal code penalties for sex trafficking and amend Articles 597 and 635 to include men; institute trafficking awareness training for diplomats posted overseas; appropriate funding for the deployment of labor attachés to overseas diplomatic missions; engage Middle Eastern governments on improving protections for Ethiopian workers; partner with local NGOs to increase the level of services available to trafficking victims returning from overseas; and launch a campaign to increase awareness of internal trafficking at the local and regional levels.

Prosecution
While the Ethiopian government increased its efforts to prosecute and punish transnational trafficking offenders during the reporting period, prosecution of internal trafficking cases remained nonexistent. In addition, local law enforcement entities continued to exhibit an inability to properly distinguish human trafficking from other crimes and they lacked capacity to collect and organize human trafficking data. Article 635 of Ethiopia’s Criminal Code (Trafficking in Women and Minors) criminalizes sex trafficking and prescribes punishments not exceeding five years’ imprisonment, penalties sufficiently stringent, though not commensurate with penalties prescribed for other serious crimes, such as rape. Articles 596 (Enslavement) and 597 (Trafficking in Women and Children) outlaw slavery and labor trafficking and prescribe punishments of five to 20 years’ rigorous imprisonment, penalties which are sufficiently stringent. These articles, however, have rarely been used to prosecute trafficking offenses; instead, Articles 598 (Unlawful Sending of Ethiopians to Work Abroad) and 571 (Endangering the Life of Another) were regularly used to prosecute cases of transnational labor trafficking during the year. The Federal High Court’s 11th Criminal Bench heard all cases of transnational trafficking, as well as internal trafficking cases discovered in the Addis Ababa jurisdiction. Between March and October 2009, the bench heard 15 cases related to transnational labor trafficking, resulting in five convictions, nine acquittals, and one withdrawal due to missing witnesses. Of the five convictions, three offenders received suspended sentences of five years’ imprisonment, two co-defendants were fined, and one offender is serving a sentence of five years’ imprisonment.

In November 2009, the Federal Police established a Human Trafficking and Narcotics Section in its Organized Crime Investigation Unit, resulting in increased investigations and prosecutions of trafficking offenses at the national level, and improvements in data collection, statistical reporting, and cooperation with the Prosecutor’s office to move cases through the judicial system. In four months’ time, this unit investigated 63 cases and referred 39 to the prosecutor’s office; 31 cases remained pending before the court at the end of the reporting period, including one involving alleged internal trafficking. The court successfully concluded the other eight cases, securing eight convictions under Articles 598 and 571 and ordering punishments ranging from five to 12 years’ imprisonment, with no suspended sentences. In 2009, the Supreme Court’s Justice Professionals Training Center incorporated anti-trafficking training into its routine training programs.

Protection

Although the government lacked the resources to provide direct assistance to trafficking victims or to fund NGOs to provide victim care, police employed victim identification and referral procedures in the capital, regularly referring identified child victims to NGOs for care. During the year, Child Protection Units (CPUs) – joint police-NGO identification and referral teams operating in each of the 10 Addis Ababa police stations – rescued and referred children to the eleventh CPU in the central bus terminal, which is dedicated exclusively to identifying and obtaining care for trafficked children. In 2009, this unit identified 1,134 trafficked children, an increase of 235 victims over the previous year. It referred 116 trafficked children to NGO shelters for care and family tracing and reunified 757 children with parents or relatives in Addis Ababa and outlying regions. Local police and officials in the regional administrations assisted in the return of the children to their home areas; the Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation provided free long-distance telephone service and the assistance of its employees across the country to enable the CPU to make contact with local officials. The Addis Ababa City Administration’s Social and Civil Affairs Department reunified 26 trafficked children with their families in the regions and placed five in foster care. While police encouraged victims’ participation in investigations and prosecutions, resource constraints prevented them from covering travel costs or providing other material resources to enable such testimony. There were no reports of trafficking victims detained, jailed, or prosecuted in 2009.

Limited consular services provided to Ethiopian workers abroad continued to be a weakness in the government’s efforts. It did, however, increase the number of officers at some of its missions by as much as 300 percent in 2009, and its consulate in Beirut resumed limited victim services, including the operation of a small safe house, mediation with domestic workers’ employers, and visitation of workers held in the detention center. In July and December 2009, the Ethiopian Consulate General secured the release and repatriation of 42 and 75 victims, respectively, who were being held in Lebanon for immigration violations. The government, however, showed only nascent signs of engaging destination country governments in an effort to improve protections for Ethiopian workers and obtain protective services for victims. Trafficked women returning to Ethiopia relied heavily on the few NGOs working with adult victims and psychological services provided by the government’s Emmanuel Mental Health Hospital. In 2009, the Addis Ababa City Administration provided land for use by 10 female victims repatriated from Djibouti as a site for a self-help project. In addition, the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Women’s and Children’s Affairs provided assistance to 75 victims repatriated from Lebanon in 2009, and assisted 12 victims repatriated from Israel with starting a cleaning business. The January 2009 Charities and Societies Proclamation prohibits, among other things, foreign-funded NGOs from informing victims of their rights under Ethiopian law or advocating on their behalf; these restrictions had a negative impact on the ability of NGOs to adequately provide protective services.

Prevention

Ethiopia’s efforts to prevent international trafficking increased, while measures to heighten awareness of internal trafficking remained negligible. In November 2009, the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (MOLSA) convened the Inter-Ministerial Task Force on Trafficking for the first time in more than two years. As a result, MOLSA and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs hosted a “National Conference on Human Trafficking and Illegal Migration” in March 2010, which undertook the drafting of a national action plan. The government continued to ban its citizens from traveling to Lebanon, Syria, and Qatar for labor purposes. In July 2009, the government signed a bilateral labor agreement with the Government of Kuwait, which included provisions for increased anti-trafficking law enforcement cooperation; the agreement will become binding once it is passed by the House of People’s Representatives, signed by the President, and published in the Gazette. Between July and December 2009, MOLSA’s two full-time counselors provided 5,355 migrating workers with three-hour pre-departure orientation sessions on the risks of labor migration and the conditions in receiving countries; data was not available for the first half of the year. MOLSA also partnered with IOM to establish a database to track employment agencies authorized to send workers abroad, as well as worker complaints. Private Employment Agency Proclamation 104/1998, which governs the work of labor recruitment agencies and protects migrant workers from fraudulent recruitment or excessive debt situations, which could contribute to forced labor, prescribes punishments of five to 10 years’ imprisonment. In August 2009, the government passed an amendment to this proclamation, Employment Exchange Services Proclamation No. 632/2009, outlawing extraneous commission fees, requiring agencies or their local affiliates to maintain a shelter for abused workers in each destination country, increasing agencies’ cash and bond deposits as collateral in the event the worker’s contract is broken, and mandating the establishment of labor attaché positions in diplomatic missions abroad. To date, Parliament has not appropriated funds for MOLSA to establish these positions. During the year, the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region (SNNPR) regional government provided free radio time to a local NGO to air anti-trafficking outreach programming. The country’s primary school textbooks include instruction on child labor and trafficking. The government did not undertake efforts to reduce demand for commercial sex acts or forced labor during the reporting period. Before deploying soldiers on international peacekeeping missions, the government trained them on human rights issues, including human trafficking.

Ethiopia is not a party to the 2000 UN TIP Protocol.

Ethiopia aims to turn itself into a regional energy giant

Ethiopia's government has set itself an ambitious target: in just a few years it aims to take an undeveloped country, with one of the world's lowest levels of per capita access to electricity, and turn it into a regional powerhouse, exporting energy to its neighbours.

To achieve this the prime minister, Meles Zenawi, is advocating a spending spree to develop Ethiopia. Various foreign non-governmental organisations have questioned the reliability of official impact studies, but with a de facto one-party state, controlled by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, there is little risk of serious opposition.

Ethiopia is pinning its hopes on the Gibe 3 dam in the Omo valley, 350km south of Addis Ababa. Predictably this is also the focus of the NGOs's concern. Work started in 2006 and by 2012 there should be a dam 240 metres high, the largest in Africa. It will feed a 1,800 MW hydroelectric power station producing twice as much electricity as Ethiopia used in 2009.

In January a coalition of NGOs, including International Rivers and Survival International, started a petition calling for work to be stopped.

"The dam, if not stopped, will cause food insecurity, chronic hunger, poor health, food aid dependence, conflicts among the local communities for the control of the already scarce natural resources and a general unravelling of the economy and social safety net throughout the region," the petitioners say. They say that Gibe 3 and its 150km reservoir will lower the level in Lake Turkana by about 10 metres. The lake, which straddles the border with Kenya, draws four-fifths of its water from the Omo river. The changes would threaten several hundred thousand people in both countries, say the NGOs.

Over the past few years not a month has gone by without the opening of a new road, university, school or health centre. In the past two years alone three dams have come into service. "Most of these schemes are funded by international loans or aid, but Ethiopia is one of the few African countries where work is completed and corruption does not swallow all the money," a western diplomat said.

Both the World Bank and the African Development Bank expressed initial doubts about the Gibe 3 scheme, so the government turned to the Chinese. On 19 May the CEO of the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation, Mihret Debebe, and the president of the Dongfang Electric Corporation, Luo Zhigang, signed an agreement worth $459m for Gibe 3. The total cost of the dam is estimated to be $1.8bn (compared with $25bn gross domestic product in 2009). According to Debebe, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China has committed itself to cover 85% of total outlay. The design office at Sinohydro is already working on plans for Gibe 4, also on the Omo.
Christophe Châtelot
Guardian Weekly, Tuesday 15 June 2010 14.00 BST
Article history

The Gibe 3 dam on the Omo river will be Africa's largest, providing power to a nation with one of the world's lowest per capita levels of access to electricity. NGOs warn of environmental disaster

"Ethiopia has enormous hydro-electric potential," says Debay Tadesse, a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in the capital. The government aims to achieve a ninefold increase in capacity in just a few years, rocketing from 1,000 to 9,000 MW.

Just 2% of Ethiopia's rural population (80% of its 80 million inhabitants) have access to electricity. "It is inconceivable to develop the country without electrical energy. How else can we power the schools, hospitals, businesses and irrigation systems?" Tadesse asks.

Over and above the problem of connecting homes in Ethiopia to the power grid - which raises the question of a transmission and distribution network - the prime objective is to export energy and earn foreign currency. This should soon be the case thanks to the dam on Lake Tana - at the source of the Blue Nile - built by an Italian firm, Salini, and officially opened last month. A contract to export electricity to Sudan is slated to bring in $150,000 a day. Other contracts have been signed with Kenya and Djibouti.

This story was first published in Le Monde.

"Nile is above all a Gift of Ethiopia"

By Richard Pankhurst

The recent signing of a new Nile Basin pact to replace colonial agreements has once again triggered a debate about how the resource can be equitably shared. Professor Pankhurst, who has been familiar with the issue for a number of decades, analyses a book that attempts to locate a safe course through these treacherous, uncharted waters.

“If Egypt is a Gift of the Nile,” as the Egyptians say, “the Nile is above all a Gift of Ethiopia”. So said Gascon, a noted expert on the river.

The above wise words are quoted by Haïlou Wolde-Giorghis, a graduate of the Institut d’Etudes Politiques of Paris, sometime Legal Adviser to the Organisation of African Unity, and former Ethiopian Ambassador to France, in an important new work on the River Nile.

No less worthy of quotation is Emperor Haile Selassie’s Coronation Anniversary Speech of 2 November 1957 – which the present writers heard him deliver to the Ethiopian Parliament so many years ago. On that occasion H.I.M. declared:
“It is of a paramount importance to Ethiopia and a problem of the first order that the waters of the Nile be made to serve the life and needs both of our beloved people now living and those who will follow us in centuries to come. However generously Ethiopia may be prepared to share this God-given wealth…with friendly Nations neighbouring upon her for the wealth and welfare of their people, it is Ethiopia’s primary and sacred duty to develop the great watershed which she possesses in the interest of her own rapidly expanding population and economy”.

And, more generally:
“Rivers are a gift of Nature, and should be considered the common heritage of humanity, and the right to benefit from their resources should be shared”, so said Federico Mayor, Director of UNESCO, in 1997.
Haïlou’s book, Les défis juridiques des eaux du Nil, i.e. The Legal Challenges of the Nile Waters (Bruylant; Editions Yvon Blais, 2009) is a careful and well-reasoned work, which has also been published in Amharic – and will, we hope, duly appear in English. It is a book, Dear Reader, that tells you virtually everything you want to know about the river - and indeed for some readers, perhaps more.

***
The book opens with a preliminary geographical, climatological and hydrological account of the Nile and of its three principal tributaries: the Blue Nile, the White Nile, and the Tekeze. This is followed by a historical survey of international law in relation to rivers.
The second part goes into geopolitics, and analyses the various international – in fact mainly colonial – treaties concerning the Nile. These date back to the Anglo-Ethiopian treaty that Menilek signed way back in 1902.
The third, perhaps most fascinating, section considers the validity of the existing Nile agreements, and inquires how far they accord with principles of equity, justice, and efficiency.
***
Haïlou appeals most effectively for a just and fair allocation of Nile waters, including hydro-electric power – what we might term Nile Power.
One of his basic contentions is that the allocation of Nile waters is an international issue which, as such, can only be settled internationally. This is the more evident when one recalls that the Nile and its tributaries feed and/or are fed by no fewer than 10 countries: from south to north, Burundi, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, and Egypt. So large a number of states cannot be expected to solve Nile questions unilaterally or bilaterally, but only through international agreement.
It is likewise apparent from Haïlou’s analysis that Nile treaties cannot be regarded as immutable agreements carved, so to speak, in stone, and valid for eternity, but, to change metaphor, rather as temporary agreements, traced in the fast-moving sand, and designed to meet a given situation in a changing world. To impose a permanent quota of water, and dams, for eternity would deny the less developed countries the right and possibility of development and thus relegate vast populations to a life of poverty and recurrent famine.
If we compare, for example, the upstream and downstream countries we see that the all-important shift from rain-fed to irrigated agriculture began for historically downstream countries (at the time of the Pharaohs?), and has since then inexorably moved largely upstream.
This shift from rain-fed to irrigated agriculture was later reinforced by the extension of “modern” development to formerly more isolated upstream countries - among them Ethiopia.
The need for a shift to irrigated agriculture has in recent years been rendered imperative by the impact of global warming – in which large stretches of the African continent, for no fault of their own, have been subjected to chronic drought and misery.
***
The extent to which Nile treaties have become obsolete – and hence unjust – can be seen in the
two most important recent Nile treaties, namely those of 7 May 1929 between Britain and Egypt and 8 November 1959 between Egypt and Sudan. Both agreements were drafted at least over half a century ago, since which time little short of a major economic and demographic transformation has occurred throughout the Nile basin.
This transformation is not reflected in the treaties, by which Ethiopia, for example, contributes 86 percent of the Nile water, but uses only one percent in its dams, whereas Egypt, which supplies nothing, utilises no less than 75 percent of the Nile water.
***
Another important issue raised by our author is that a river basin such as that of the Nile is a geographical unity; not only because the inhabitants have to share a limited supply of water, but also because action taken in one part of the basin can very significantly affect water availability in another part.
Take for example the question of dams: since water is a scarce resource throughout the Nile Basin - and can be expected to become increasingly so in the future – one is entitled to consider the question of wastage through evaporation, and to ask which are the best, most economic, locations for dams. Clearly, we may argue, they should be located where best to provide efficient irrigation and/or hydro-electric power rather than prestige for transient political leaders or regimes.
If water is to be allocated justly, in terms of equity, it can be so allocated only on the basis of need and efficiency.
***
The need for co-operation among the Nile States can be grasped, as the author shows, if one compares the Nile basin with that, for example, of the Tennessee Valley, which is (fortunately) under one single authority. Such cooperation benefits all concerned - all of whom would suffer if the basin were politically fragmented - as is the case of the Nile today.
***
Turning to the difficulties of inter-statal co-operation Haïlou Wolde-Giorghis, recognises that every state, almost inevitably, has its own local preoccupations, perceptions and priorities, and often displays little willingness to cooperate with others.
A major obstacle to cooperation, which Haïlou identifies, arises from the tendency of states to operate unilaterally when they find themselves in a position of hegemony: in such case they see no advantage in dealing in terms of equality with less powerful neighbours.
Yet the basic, underlying fact is that unilateral action by the various states would mean not only a loss of wealth for all concerned, but also the danger of the complete disintegration of the community of Nile-bordering nations.
***
How, our author asks, can a number of different states with divergent interests be brought together to co-operate voluntarily for the common good?
That is the Big Question the book attempts to address.
Even when states with divergent interests arrive at voluntary cooperation where their interests converge, it may be necessary, he believes, to introduce an element of joint supervision, and possible sanctions. ***
Haïlou goes into this issue in some detail. He lists many of the tasks required of a Nile Supervisory Body. They initially include standardisation of data, evaluation of resources, comprehensive river basin-wide plans, equitable water distribution systems, pollution standards, research and transfer of technology, environment protection, and procedures for conflict resolution. Once established the organisation’s paramount duty would be to prevent unilateral action by any state prejudicial to other states.
Haïlou subscribes to the maxim that the ideal may be the enemy of the good, and that there is “a need to adapt to prevalent conditions, and respond flexibly to changing circumstances”.

He also subscribes to the view that the Nile States should share a common collective right to insist that none of them utilise water resources without consulting and cooperating with the others.
More controversially perhaps, he advocates that state frontiers touching upon the Nile Basin should be ignored and that the basin should be considered as an economic and geographical unity belonging to the community of Nile States as a whole.

On the basis of this concept of trans-frontier basins, he considers that they should be examined, analysed and managed cooperatively.
There is a consensus in Africa as a whole, he believes, that a common approach to the Nile and its waters is needed, and hopefully will lead to the development and management of these waters for the benefit of its peoples as a whole – peoples who have for too long suffered the scourge of poverty.

Given the capacity and experience acquired by the international community in many parts of the world it should suffice, he argues, to find the political will and determination to proceed with the fair distribution of the water resources of this great international river so that the new technologies and management practices of the present century can be harnessed to apportion water resources equitably - and thus to eliminate tensions in relations between the states of the same river basin.