Ethiopian government misleads UK DFID: Expert
Press TV has conducted an interview with Ben Rawlence, former African researcher for HRW about Ethiopian farmer Mr. O who is suing Britain for funding human rights abuses in Ethiopia via its aid program.
had to flee his home from a repressive British-funded villagization program in Ethiopia.
The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.
Press TV: You live in the Rift Valley in Kenya. Could you explain as briefly as you can for our viewers what the villagization program actually is? Because from what I understand the idea <i>per se</i> isn’t a bad one is it?
Rawlence: No, well it depends on where you stand, but the idea from the Ethiopian government’s point of view is to move people into villages where it can provide them with access to health, education, water and also so that it can try to improve technically the farming processes that people are using so the land is more productive.
And this is happening in many different regions in Ethiopia, Gambella, the region where Mr. O comes from is one of them… The trouble with the program is how it’s implemented. The Ethiopian government is let’s say a tough regime it permits very little opposition, it won 99 percent in the various elections; and when it wants to do something it does it quite ruthlessly.
People who don’t want to move or sometimes who have protested like Mr. O have ended up facing tough consequences.
Press TV: You may have missed the statement from the Ethiopian embassy where basically they listed a lot of improvements to do with lifting people out of poverty; child mortality rate; access to clean water; and the final point, which I want you to hear is they say, “The allegations fabricated by a few individuals misrepresent the current objective reality on the ground. The Donor Group has investigated and disproved these allegations.”
Doesn’t this statement basically show that Mr. O’s actions were the only thing he could do to get some redress?
Rawlence: I think that’s right. I think Mr. O was left with very few options.
I think it’s helpful if you think about the example of China here. China is a country that has made big strides on poverty reduction, it’s lifted a lot of people out of poverty, but it’s done it through very repressive state measures with no regards for the rights of individual people.
And I think the approach of the Ethiopian government is very similar and I think you’d find a lot of sympathy among the Ethiopian government for the approach of China.
The question for the West then becomes, “Do you want to subsidize that kind of development? Is that what you understand by development?” And the problem for DFID (Britain’s Department for International Development) and the reason why this case has been brought is that the definition of development according to British law and according to UN declarations is about rights – is about human rights; democracy; people having the right to choose and the right to be empowered and to choose their own future.
And that is not a vision of development, that is not the definition of development that the Ethiopian government espouses nor is it the definition of development that the Chinese government or the former Soviet government would adhere to. So that’s the fundamental contradiction here.
Press TV: As you hear that point from a viewer – a legal aid farmer able to use British legal aid to fight the British government against giving aid to Ethiopia – It is something that’s been mirrored in some of the press who have very simplistic headlines around this issue; but there is an irony do you not think?
Rawlence: Of course there’s an irony, but I think actually for the people who have these simplistic views – the right wing agenda, which says no more aid to bongo bongo land, actually they should be grateful that we do have this mechanism to hold British aid to account because what they would want and I think what everybody else wants, for different reasons, is an accountability of this money.
And one of the problems is that when you spend money abroad it’s not the taxpayers of that country who are voting for you, who are taking a hard look at what you are doing.
So it’s very necessary that this happens because a lot of people in the UK do not really know where their money goes and if the money has been ring-fenced, the budget has gone up and up and up.
And there’s actually been lots of institutional and bureaucratic pressure to spend that money without really a corresponding increase in the amount of scrutiny and I think that’s a big problem for Britain.
Press TV: Could you let our viewers know something about what Human Rights Watch are doing because people tend to lump the think thanks and the aid agencies into one pocket.
It does seem that it’s the think tanks like Human Rights Watch and organizations like yours, which are actually raising the contradictions around the aid issue. Give us a little bit of information about what Human Rights Watch is doing.
Rawlence: Yes well I don’t work for them anymore, but the organization has taken a lot of fire from institutions that in most circumstances, they’re allies. So, in lots of other countries where bad things are happening, DFID and the British foreign office and other interested foreign governments are paying attention and trying to put pressure to make sure people are released from jail – that political prisoners are allowed to be freed and so on, things like that.
But in this case they find themselves on opposite sides of the fence and I think the human rights agenda here is very, very important.
I don’t think DFID are bad people. They want to see their money being used well in Ethiopia and in other countries, but they’re too ready to accept the story from the Ethiopian government that things are going well and they’re not looking very closely when it doesn’t go well.
As long as they are seeing economic growth; as long as they are seeing poverty going down, they’re happy and they want the success stories where they can spend this ring-fenced money where they have a lot of institutional pressure to spend – because otherwise they’ve got to give it back to the treasury at the end of the year. And that’s the pressure point.
Press TV: As we come back to the Mr. O case, which actually got us talking about this issue. What do you think that actual chances are of this case succeeding and if it does what are the long term implications?
Rawlence: I think it has quite a good chance of succeeding because I think the British Development Act and the human rights principles underlying British foreign policy are quite clear. And I think the link between the villagization program, which is clearly funded by British money and the abuses that are taking place I think are obvious.
So I think DFID will have a hard time defending this case. I think in the long run what it will hopefully lead to is a much stronger application of the human rights benchmarks, which already exist, but which are by and large being ignored.
And hopefully that will mean that there is a bit more of aid benefitting people in the way that we want to see it and less of the kind of corporate manipulation and the subsidizing of dictatorships.
Ethiopian government misleads UK DFID: Expert
Press TV has conducted an interview with Ben Rawlence, former African researcher for HRW about Ethiopian farmer Mr. O who is suing Britain for funding human rights abuses in Ethiopia via its aid program.
had to flee his home from a repressive British-funded villagization program in Ethiopia.
The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.
Press TV: You live in the Rift Valley in Kenya. Could you explain as briefly as you can for our viewers what the villagization program actually is? Because from what I understand the idea <i>per se</i> isn’t a bad one is it?
Rawlence: No, well it depends on where you stand, but the idea from the Ethiopian government’s point of view is to move people into villages where it can provide them with access to health, education, water and also so that it can try to improve technically the farming processes that people are using so the land is more productive.
And this is happening in many different regions in Ethiopia, Gambella, the region where Mr. O comes from is one of them… The trouble with the program is how it’s implemented. The Ethiopian government is let’s say a tough regime it permits very little opposition, it won 99 percent in the various elections; and when it wants to do something it does it quite ruthlessly.
People who don’t want to move or sometimes who have protested like Mr. O have ended up facing tough consequences.
Press TV: You may have missed the statement from the Ethiopian embassy where basically they listed a lot of improvements to do with lifting people out of poverty; child mortality rate; access to clean water; and the final point, which I want you to hear is they say, “The allegations fabricated by a few individuals misrepresent the current objective reality on the ground. The Donor Group has investigated and disproved these allegations.”
Doesn’t this statement basically show that Mr. O’s actions were the only thing he could do to get some redress?
Rawlence: I think that’s right. I think Mr. O was left with very few options.
I think it’s helpful if you think about the example of China here. China is a country that has made big strides on poverty reduction, it’s lifted a lot of people out of poverty, but it’s done it through very repressive state measures with no regards for the rights of individual people.
And I think the approach of the Ethiopian government is very similar and I think you’d find a lot of sympathy among the Ethiopian government for the approach of China.
The question for the West then becomes, “Do you want to subsidize that kind of development? Is that what you understand by development?” And the problem for DFID (Britain’s Department for International Development) and the reason why this case has been brought is that the definition of development according to British law and according to UN declarations is about rights – is about human rights; democracy; people having the right to choose and the right to be empowered and to choose their own future.
And that is not a vision of development, that is not the definition of development that the Ethiopian government espouses nor is it the definition of development that the Chinese government or the former Soviet government would adhere to. So that’s the fundamental contradiction here.
Press TV: As you hear that point from a viewer – a legal aid farmer able to use British legal aid to fight the British government against giving aid to Ethiopia – It is something that’s been mirrored in some of the press who have very simplistic headlines around this issue; but there is an irony do you not think?
Rawlence: Of course there’s an irony, but I think actually for the people who have these simplistic views – the right wing agenda, which says no more aid to bongo bongo land, actually they should be grateful that we do have this mechanism to hold British aid to account because what they would want and I think what everybody else wants, for different reasons, is an accountability of this money.
And one of the problems is that when you spend money abroad it’s not the taxpayers of that country who are voting for you, who are taking a hard look at what you are doing.
So it’s very necessary that this happens because a lot of people in the UK do not really know where their money goes and if the money has been ring-fenced, the budget has gone up and up and up.
And there’s actually been lots of institutional and bureaucratic pressure to spend that money without really a corresponding increase in the amount of scrutiny and I think that’s a big problem for Britain.
Press TV: Could you let our viewers know something about what Human Rights Watch are doing because people tend to lump the think thanks and the aid agencies into one pocket.
It does seem that it’s the think tanks like Human Rights Watch and organizations like yours, which are actually raising the contradictions around the aid issue. Give us a little bit of information about what Human Rights Watch is doing.
Rawlence: Yes well I don’t work for them anymore, but the organization has taken a lot of fire from institutions that in most circumstances, they’re allies. So, in lots of other countries where bad things are happening, DFID and the British foreign office and other interested foreign governments are paying attention and trying to put pressure to make sure people are released from jail – that political prisoners are allowed to be freed and so on, things like that.
But in this case they find themselves on opposite sides of the fence and I think the human rights agenda here is very, very important.
I don’t think DFID are bad people. They want to see their money being used well in Ethiopia and in other countries, but they’re too ready to accept the story from the Ethiopian government that things are going well and they’re not looking very closely when it doesn’t go well.
As long as they are seeing economic growth; as long as they are seeing poverty going down, they’re happy and they want the success stories where they can spend this ring-fenced money where they have a lot of institutional pressure to spend – because otherwise they’ve got to give it back to the treasury at the end of the year. And that’s the pressure point.
Press TV: As we come back to the Mr. O case, which actually got us talking about this issue. What do you think that actual chances are of this case succeeding and if it does what are the long term implications?
Rawlence: I think it has quite a good chance of succeeding because I think the British Development Act and the human rights principles underlying British foreign policy are quite clear. And I think the link between the villagization program, which is clearly funded by British money and the abuses that are taking place I think are obvious.
So I think DFID will have a hard time defending this case. I think in the long run what it will hopefully lead to is a much stronger application of the human rights benchmarks, which already exist, but which are by and large being ignored.
And hopefully that will mean that there is a bit more of aid benefitting people in the way that we want to see it and less of the kind of corporate manipulation and the subsidizing of dictatorships.
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