Report
Ethiopia condemns aid pull-out
The Observer
January 2, 2006
The Ethiopian government has expressed outrage over plans by international donors to withhold $375 million in direct budgetary support to the country following a recent crackdown on the opposition and revelations about large-scale human rights abuses. |
Some spoke of how they were taken away in mass round-ups in Addis Ababa and how they suffered appalling beatings at the hands of the security forces. Witnesses spoke of seeing people tortured and killed at Dedesa camp in west Ethiopia, where about 50,000 people were detained.
The withholding of donor funds is a further blow to the credibility of Zenawi, who has also come under international pressure as border tensions grow with neighbouring Eritrea, with which Ethiopia fought a war in 1998 that left tens of thousand dead.
The quandary for donors, who provide about $1.9bn in development aid into the country annually, is how to be seen to be taking a tough stance towards the government while at the same time working to alleviate conditions in the impoverished nation. A large portion of the country’s 77 million people live below the poverty line and just last week it emerged at least one million people in southeastern Ethiopia are at risk of a another famine following a prolonged drought.
Zenawi has yet to respond publicly to the move by donor countries but at the end of November, in an interview with The Observer, he was nonchalant as he brushed off the threat to withhold aid. ‘I believe the right path is for democratisation and continuing our economic reform programme,’ he said of the crisis. ‘I believe we are on that path and believe we deserve assistance from our friends. But if our friends feel otherwise, I respect their decision. After all, it’s their money.’
The $1.9bn Ethiopia receives yearly makes it one of the largest recipients of foreign aid in Africa.
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