Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles ZenawiBy Jerome Mwanda
Courtesy of IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
NAIROBI (IDN) – Human Rights Watch has accused the Ethiopian government of using development assistance to suppress political dissent, and urged foreign donors to ensure that their aid is used in an accountable and transparent manner and does not support political repression.
To support the charge, the 105-page report titled 'Development without Freedom: How Aid Underwrites Repression in Ethiopia', Human Rights Watch (HRW) documents the ways in which the Ethiopian government uses donor-supported resources and aid as a tool to consolidate the power of the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).
"The Ethiopian government is routinely using access to aid as a weapon to control people and crush dissent," said Rona Peligal, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "If you don't play the ruling party's game, you get shut out. Yet foreign donors are rewarding this behavior with ever-larger sums of development aid."
Ethiopia is one of the world's largest recipients of development aid, which amounted to more than US$3 billion in 2008 alone. The World Bank and donor nations provide direct support to district governments in Ethiopia for basic services such as health, education, agriculture, and water, and support a "food-for-work" programme for some of the country's poorest people. The European Union, USA, Britain, and Germany are the largest bilateral donors.
According to the HRW report, local officials routinely deny government support to opposition supporters and civil society activists, including rural residents in desperate need of food aid. Foreign aid-funded "capacity-building" programmes to improve skills that would aid the country's development are used by the government to indoctrinate school children in party ideology, intimidate teachers, and purge the civil service of people with independent political views.
Political repression was particularly pronounced during the period leading up to parliamentary elections in May 2010, in which the ruling party won 99.6 percent of the seats.
Despite government restrictions that make independent research difficult, Human Rights Watch says it interviewed more than 200 people in 53 villages across three regions of the country during a six-month investigation in 2009. The problems found by HRW were widespread: residents reported discrimination in many locations.
Farmers described being denied access to agricultural assistance, micro-loans, seeds, and fertilizers because they did not support the ruling party. As one farmer in Amhara region told Human Rights Watch, "(Village) leaders have publicly declared that they will single out opposition members, and those identified as such will be denied 'privileges'. By that they mean that access to fertilizers, 'safety net' and even emergency aid will be denied."
Rural villagers reported that many families of opposition members were barred from participation in the food-for-work or "safety net" programme, which supports 7 million of Ethiopia's most vulnerable citizens. Scores of opposition members who were denied services by local officials throughout the country reported the same response from ruling party and government officials when they complained: "Ask your own party for help."
Human Rights Watch also documented how high school students, teachers, and civil servants were forced to attend indoctrination sessions on ruling party ideology as part of the capacity-building program funded by foreign governments. Attendees at training sessions reported that they were intimidated and threatened if they did not join the ruling party. Superiors told teachers that ruling party membership was a condition for promotion and training opportunities. Education, especially schools and teacher training, is also heavily supported by donor funds.
"By dominating government at all levels, the ruling party controls all the aid programs," Peligal said. "Without effective, independent monitoring, international aid will continue to be abused to consolidate a repressive single-party state."
In 2005, the World Bank and other donors suspended direct budget support to the Ethiopian government following a post-election crackdown on demonstrators that left 200 people dead, 30,000 detained, and dozens of opposition leaders in jail. At the time, donors expressed fears of "political capture" of donor funds by the ruling party.
Yet aid was soon resumed under a new programme, 'Protection of Basic Services', that channeled money directly to district governments. These district governments, like the federal administration, are under ruling party control, yet are harder to monitor and more directly involved in day-to-day repression of the population.
During this period, HRW states, the Ethiopian government has steadily closed political space, harassed independent journalists and civil society activists into silence or exile, and violated the rights to freedom of association and expression. It refers to a new law on civil society activity, passed in 2009, which bars nongovernmental organizations from working on issues related to human rights, good governance, and conflict resolution if they receive more than 10 percent of their funding from foreign sources.
As Ethiopia's human rights situation has worsened, donors have ramped up assistance, says HRW. Between 2004 and 2008, international development aid to Ethiopia doubled. According to Ethiopian government data, the country is making strong progress on reducing poverty, and donors are pleased to support Ethiopia's progress toward the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Yet the price of that progress has been high.
The report says: "When Human Rights Watch presented its findings to donor officials, many privately acknowledged the worsening human rights situation and the ruling party's growing authoritarian rule. Donor officials from a dozen Western government agencies told Human Rights Watch that they were aware of allegations that donor-supported programs were being used for political repression, but they had no way of knowing the extent of such abuse. In Ethiopia, most monitoring of donor programs is a joint effort alongside Ethiopian government officials."
Yet few donors have been willing to raise their concerns publicly over the possible misuse of their taxpayers' funds. In a desk study and an official response to Human Rights Watch, the donor consortium Development Assistance Group stated that their monitoring mechanisms showed that their programmes were working well and that aid was not being "distorted".
But no donors have carried out credible, independent investigations into the problem, asserts Human Rights Watch.
