{"id":476,"date":"2014-02-12T10:36:41","date_gmt":"2014-02-12T10:36:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.globalbuzz.net\/us\/?p=476"},"modified":"2014-02-12T10:36:41","modified_gmt":"2014-02-12T10:36:41","slug":"cover-up-overruled-by-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz.net\/us\/news\/cover-up-overruled-by-congress","title":{"rendered":"Cover-up overruled by Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"

The United States Congress has acted to prevent its aid to Ethiopia being used to fund forced evictions of tribal peoples in the south west of the country.<\/p>\n

The provisions in the Omnibus Appropriations Bill for 2014 represent a slap in the face for USAID, which last month said that \u2018there are no reports of widespread or systematic human rights abuses\u2019 in the region.<\/p>\n

In fact, tribes of the Lower Omo Valley are being violently evicted from their villages by the government to make way for lucrative cotton, palm oil, and sugarcane plantations whose irrigation will be made possible by the controversial Gibe III dam. Transferred to designated resettlement areas, the once self-sufficient tribes will be left with no access to their livestock or lands and, consequently, will be unable to sustain themselves. Intimidation tactics, such as rape and beatings, have reportedly been used against those who resist resettlement.<\/p>\n

One Mursi man told Survival International, \u2018We are waiting to die. We are crying. When the government collects people into one village there will be no place for crops, and my children will be hungry and have no food.\u2019<\/p>\n

The Ethiopian government has not consulted any indigenous communities over its aggressive plantation plans in the Omo Valley, and very few were consulted over the construction of the Gibe III dam.<\/p>\n

The region\u2019s top human rights body, the African Commission on Human and Peoples\u2019 Rights, has written to the Ethiopian government asking it to halt the forced resettlement of the Lower Omo tribes while it investigates Survival\u2019s submission regarding human rights violations in the area.<\/p>\n

Ethiopia is one of the biggest recipients of American and British aid through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the UK Department for International Development (DFID).<\/p>\n

Although the provisions in the recent spending bill will force USAID to reevaluate the funding given to Ethiopia, it will ultimately be the responsibility of Congress to guarantee that the terms are upheld.<\/p>\n

Survival International Director Stephen Corry said today, \u2018This bill is a huge step in the right direction, and shows that USAID\u2019s shameful denials of the human rights abuses being committed in the Lower Omo simply haven\u2019t been believed.<\/p>\n

\u2018American taxpayers want to be sure that their money isn\u2019t going toward the destruction of tribal peoples\u2019 lives. Hopefully the historic provisions in this year\u2019s spending bill will ensure that\u2019s the case. It is now high time that British parliamentarians follow suit and ensure that DFID does not use UK taxpayers\u2019 money to fund human rights violations in the Lower Omo.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The United States Congress has acted to prevent its aid to Ethiopia being used to fund forced evictions of tribal peoples in the south west of the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":477,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[114,188,60,1],"tags":[755,754,757,756],"class_list":["post-476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eco","category-featured","category-health","category-news","tag-econews","tag-ethiopia","tag-healthnews","tag-usaid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz.net\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz.net\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz.net\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz.net\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz.net\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz.net\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":478,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz.net\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions\/478"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz.net\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz.net\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz.net\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz.net\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}