Washington — The U.S. and U.K. foreign assistance offices are being accused of ignoring, mischaracterising or downplaying testimony offered by ethnic communities in Ethiopia who accuse the Addis Ababa government of forcefully evicting them from their lands and violating their human rights in the name of mass development projects.Despite multiple fact-finding missions to affected communities by USAID and DFID, the U.S. and U.K. foreign aid arms, both governments have repeatedly found the accusations of abuse to be unsubstantiated.
Yet according to recordings of some of the mission meetings, published Wednesday by the Oakland Institute, a U.S. watchdog group, officials from both agencies appear to have received repeated testimony of abuse allegations at the hands of the Ethiopian government.
"Transcripts of these recordings, made public with this report, leave no room for doubt that the donor agencies were given highly credible first-hand accounts of serious human rights violations during their field investigation and they have chosen to steadfastly ignore these accounts," Will Hurd, the author of one of the new reports and a local NGO worker and translator who made the recordings, writes.
"According to a high-up official in USAID, the USAID member of the field visit party reported that the accounts of human rights abuses heard in the Omo were all 'third-hand.' It is clear from the transcripts, however, that many were first-hand."
The recordings were made during a January 2012 mission to the Lower Omo Valley, in southwestern Ethiopia.
"These transcripts show that these delegations heard quite a lot," Anuradha Mittal, the executive director at the Oakland Institute, told IPS.
"These donor governments now need to take responsibility for their inaction, to look critically at these questionable development policies."
While no formal report has ever been publicly released by either USAID or DFID following the January 2012 mission or a follow-up in November, IPS was able to see a leaked copy of a four-page joint briefing that followed the January discussions (no report was leaked following the November mission).
That report notes the mission members were offered allegations of "rape of women and ... a young boy", "use of force and intimidation with the presence of the 'military'", and "Government threats including 'sell your cattle or we will inject and kill them'", among others.
The report concludes: "As a consequence of these events the Mursi and Bodi [local ethnic communities] in particular stated that they were living in fear, resorting to other food sources or going hungry.
The phrase 'waiting to die' was used. Although these allegations are extremely serious they could not be substantiated by this visit."
This last phrase was bolded and underlined, and further follow-up was recommended.
According to the Oakland Institute, USAID and DFID subsequently reported this conclusion to the Development Assistance Group, comprised of 26 of the world's largest aid and development agencies, including the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
In March, the World Bank's Inspection Panel cited evidence that the institution may be supporting Ethiopian "villagisation" programmes and requested an investigation into the matter, though Addis Ababa officials have since refused to cooperate.
Additional information on the villagisation process can be found here. Neither USAID nor DFID responded to request for comment for this story.
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