Global access to basic health services my priority — WHO DG, Dr. Tedros

By Gabriel Olawale

The new Director-General of the World Health Organisation, WHO, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has identified the right of every individual to basic health services as  his  administration’s top priority.

According to him, improving global health requires effective engagement with all member states and across multiple sectors.

“Under my leadership an enhanced and independent WHO will take a science-led and innovation-based approach that is results-oriented and responsive, maximises inclusive partnerships, and ensures collective priority setting with all stakeholders.”

Tedros who previously served as Ministers of Health and Foreign Affairs in Ethiopia is optimistic that his administration would bring about a world where everyone can live healthy, productive lives, regardless of who they are or where they live.

“I believe in the global commitment to sustainable development which offers a unique opportunity to address the social, economic and political determinants of health and improve the health and well-being of people everywhere.

“Achieving this vision will require a strong, effective WHO that is able to meet emerging challenges and achieve the health objectives of the Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs. We need a WHO that is fit for the 21st century, that belongs to all equally. We need a WHO that is efficiently managed, adequately resourced and results driven, with a strong focus on transparency, accountability and value for money.

“I will champion mechanisms to meaningfully listen to, learn from and engage people and communities – including migrant, displaced and disabled individuals; people living in rural, urban slum and low-income areas; and other vulnerable populations.  “This engagement – and what we learn from it – will be at the centre of our efforts to mobilize resources and hold authorities accountable for the health of all, regardless of age, gender, income, sexual orientation or religion.

I will engage with Heads of State, Ministers across a wide range of portfolios, multilateral institutions, the UN system, civil society and the private sector to make access to health care and protection from infectious disease outbreaks a central.

Read more here

Ethiopia bids to become the last development frontier

Abebech Dansa says she could not be happier. Last year the 25-year-old single mother from Hawassa, 275km south of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, quit her job at a beauty salon. She moved to TAL Apparel, a Hong Kong-based garment manufacturer that was setting up a factory in Hawassa’s newly built, state-of- the-art industrial park. After several months’ training at TAL’s factory in Indonesia, Ms Dansa works stitching shirts on the company’s rapidly expanding production line in Hawassa, which has just started exporting to the US. She earns 1,040 birr ($45) a month plus benefits — 50 per cent more than in her previous role — making shirts for a company that supplies JCPenney, J Crew and Burberry.


 “There’s a good mood here, there’s a good feeling,” she says. “Many people were unemployed and unhappy but now they are getting jobs and making good money. The city is unrecognisable compared with a few years ago. There are new buildings, modern roads and big industries.” Her progress is part of a new economic plan for the east African nation that for decades was known for little beyond being a famine-blighted wasteland and producing marathon runners. Helped by significant foreign investment, mostly from China, which has poured resources into dams, roads and railways, Ethiopia has produced a China-style boom: for 10 years from 2005 annual economic growth has averaged 10 per cent. The continent’s second-most populous country has overtaken Kenya to become the largest economy in east Africa, according to International Monetary Fund data.


Ethiopia is trying to ape the centrepiece of Asia-style industrialisation: it aims to become the next global manufacturing hub as costs rise in places such as Bangladesh and even China. Roger Lee, TAL’s chief executive, describes Ethiopia as “the last frontier . . . in terms of major production”. In the process, Ethiopia’s authoritarian government is making a China-style bet on its own survival. With violent protests rocking large parts of the country and the imposition of a state of emergency, the authorities are gambling that continued strong growth — including plans for another nine industrial parks — will fend off widespread discontent over suppression of democratic rights and crony capitalism. Arkebe Oqubay, the minister in the prime minister’s office driving the industrialisation policy, says the goal is to “shift Ethiopia from an agrarian economy to a level of development where manufacturing becomes dominant”, with democracy coming later. “We have to focus on economic performance not to sustain any totalitarian political system,” he says. “We do it because the ultimate goal of any nation aspiring to develop, aspiring to catch up, is to improve the livelihoods of the people.”





Others are not so forgiving. Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the UN high commissioner for human rights, warned on a recent visit to Addis Ababa that if the government does not open up “social pressure will build to a point where dramatic things happen” — even with strong economic growth. *** The Hawassa industrial park is the flagship facility for the industrialisation strategy. Despite the unrest, most foreign investors at the facility are continuing to back the government and its efforts to boost manufacturing.

“We were looking for a country that has a sufficient available workforce, is sufficiently near a seaport for exports, low enough wage levels, a well-thought-out framework from the government on how they will support industry . . . and duty-free access to the key US and European markets,” says Mr Lee at TAL. Another big draw has been some of the cheapest power in the world, at about $0.03 per kWh. Bill McRaith, chief supply officer for PVH, the New-York listed clothing company that has opened a factory at Hawassa, says the government has delivered on its promises. “Often you have a vision of what’s possible and the reality, as a general view, falls short,” he adds. “The pleasant experience in Ethiopia is that everyone has held the course. This investment has gone better than any other similar development we’ve done to date, although we’re still at the front end of the ramp-up of the development.”



What is unclear is whether the Hawassa model can be replicated across the country in a way that would ease social tensions. The industrial park took nine months to build and is expected to employ 60,000 and create another 150,000 indirect jobs. Of the nine other parks planned, several are due to open this year. Mr Arkebe says the government wants to create 200,000 jobs every year until 2025. That sounds impressive but the minister admits that when set against the 2.3m Ethiopians being born every year and with 80 per cent of the rural youth not finishing primary school, the challenge remains daunting.

Three-quarters of the population rely on subsistence farming for their livelihood yet agriculture generates only 37 per cent of gross domestic product. There are plans to expand commercial farms, modernising farming techniques and expanding the area of land being irrigated. Foreign diplomats are not convinced the broader policies will succeed, particularly since the financial services, retail and telecoms sectors are closed to foreign investors and the government is suspicious of the private sector. Export earnings of crops such as coffee fell last year and targets for manufacturing and power exports have been missed.



Even if the policies attract sufficient foreign investment to meet the job creation and other economic targets, there are a growing number of people who believe it will be in vain because the government is not dealing with a host of political and civic grievances. A one-hour drive north of Hawassa provides a reminder of the fragility of the foundations on which this apparent economic miracle is built. Burnt-out buses and trucks litter the side of the main road near the town of Ziway, in the Oromia region. They are monuments to the 11 months of protests that rocked swaths of the country until the government, which has been controlled by the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front since 1991, imposed a state of emergency in October.

The protests began in Oromia before spreading to Amhara and other regions. Hundreds, and possibly more than 1,000 people, were killed and tens of thousands detained, many without charge. Most were released after five weeks of “education and training”, as the authorities described it. Brute force has restored a veneer of stability to most of the country. But the state of emergency, which was meant to last six months, has been extended until August — albeit in a diluted form — as the government admits that armed groups remain active. *** Arguably more worrying for Ethiopia’s long-term prosperity is that, according to foreign diplomats, businesspeople and rights activists, the government is doing little of substance to address the grievances that stoked the unrest.



Broadly speaking, these include the economic favouritism shown towards members of the TPLF and other parties that make up the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front coalition, and the lack of civic and democratic rights. The EPRDF controls all the seats in parliament; many opposition parties are emasculated and their leaders detained or in exile; independent media is muzzled and critics are dealt with harshly. In May, Yonatan Tesfaye, a former spokesman of the opposition Blue party, was jailed for six-and-a-half years for “encouragement of terrorism” after he criticised the government’s handling of the protests in several Facebook posts. One of the country’s most prominent opposition politicians, the Oromo leader Merera Gudina, is on trial for terrorism after sharing a platform at the European Parliament with the leader of a political group that the government has branded as terrorists. “The government is scared of any criticism,” says Befeqadu Hailu, a blogger who has been detained several times. “There’s no way for people’s grievances to be told and it’s this hopelessness that gave birth to the protests.”

One Addis Ababa-based businessman says the government’s approach to the protests is short-sighted. “It fears that if it gives even an inch it will lose everything but more and more people feel that if it doesn’t give anything it will lose everything,” he says. Government supporters counter that there are plenty of statistics that back up its record. Since the TPLF took power average life expectancy has risen from 45 to 65 years. Child and maternal mortality levels have fallen 70 per cent in the past 12 years. And per capita GDP has risen from $125 in 1994 to $650 last year, according to the World Bank. Zemedeneh Negatu, a prominent Ethiopian business leader, says the government’s policies are evolutionary rather than revolutionary. “They’re piggybacking on the best elements of China and South Korea, and perhaps, some aspects of Singapore, with an Ethiopian flavour,” he says. “And if they get it right, they have a high probability of creating an Asian Tiger-like economy in Africa.”



The big question is whether the unrest is running out of steam or if another wave of protests will be launched. This flurry of demonstrations started 10 years after the last major protests, triggered by the opposition believing the 2005 general election was rigged. “There’s this culture of apathy in the country,” explains a member of the Oromo Liberation Front, a group the government regards as a terrorist organisation that has stoked the protests. “The good news is that more people are [politically] conscious than in 2005. So the flame of protest will be ignited more easily than before.”



Most investors, however, are unfazed by the political tensions, even though many foreign-owned facilities were targeted in the protests because they were seen as a source of legitimacy for the government. “We work in many developing countries and I can’t remember a single country that we were in that didn’t have issues,” says TAL’s Mr Lee. “To me it’s just part of any developing country, as they grow, to have these issues.” Steve Meyer, the chief executive of Corbetti Geothermal, which is developing Ethiopia’s first private sector, large- scale power project, acknowledges that “investing in Ethiopia is a bet”. “Am I bullish,” he asks rhetorically. “We’re optimistic but we won’t bet the farm.”

Regional instability favours Addis Ababa 

Most western governments go out of their way to maintain good relations with Ethiopia despite a decade of creeping authoritarianism, hundreds of deaths and tens of thousands of arrests in the past two years of protests. Boris Johnson, the British foreign secretary, said he discussed Andy Tsege, the Ethiopian activist who was granted asylum in the UK and then citizenship, when he visited Addis Ababa last year.

Mr Tsege was seized by Ethiopia at a Yemeni airport in 2014 and is now in an Ethiopian prison, having been sentenced to death in absentia in 2009. But Mr Johnson’s public criticism went no further than saying: “We raised . . . the need for reform.” Mr Johnson largely escaped criticism, unlike Barack Obama, who during the first visit to Ethiopia by a sitting US president in July 2015, twice described the government as having been “democratically elected” in general elections two months earlier. He made the remarks in spite of his own government saying it was “deeply concerned” by restrictions on opposition groups and media during the election in which the ruling coalition won 100 per cent of the seats in parliament.

Rashid Abdi, the Horn of Africa project director of the International Crisis Group, a non-governmental organisation, says one has only to consider four of its neighbours to appreciate the western governments’ attitude towards Ethiopia: South Sudan is mired in civil war; Somalia is struggling to contain Islamist militants al-Shabaab; Eritrea is regarded as one of the world’s most repressive regimes; and Sudan is listed by Washington as a state sponsor of terrorism. Not only does Ethiopia provide a bulwark of calm amid the turbulence, it hosts some 800,000 refugees that European governments do not want to see migrating north. “It’s all about regional security and stability,” Mr Abdi says. “As long as the crises in these countries continue, Ethiopia will have leverage to build these very strategic relationships.” Economic considerations matter. “This is the largest economy in east Africa and it’s the largest population,” he says. “In short it’s a great market.”

Read more here

Ethiopia Attains Maternal and Neonatal Tetanus Elimination

“Maternal and Neonatal Tetanus Elimination in Ethiopia is hereby validated!” That was the conclusion of the joint mission from UNICEF and WHO today at its debriefing sessions with: the Ethiopian Ministry of Health; the WHO Representative to Ethiopia; and the UNICEF Representative to Ethiopia. The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia has thus become 42nd country in the world to have validated the elimination of Maternal and Neonatal tetanus.

Ethiopia began accelerated Maternal and Neonatal Tetanus Elimination (MNTE) efforts in 1999. In 2011, all the regions in the country except the Somali Region were validated for MNTE. The 2011 validation mission made recommendations that would see the Somali Region progress to MNTE over time. The recommendations were implemented especially corrective vaccination campaigns against tetanus in 2016. The administrative, as well as post-campaign survey data, revealed more than 85% coverage in each of the 9 zones of Ethiopia Somali Region. The Joint validation mission reviewed these and other related data during the period, 28-30 June 2017, and concluded that maternal and neonatal tetanus elimination had been achieved in the Somali Region and, by extension, in the whole of Ethiopia.

Receiving the good news of the validation of MNTE in Ethiopia, the State Minister of Health, His Excellency Dr. Kebede Worku exclaimed that “The country had worked hard on improving Maternal and Child Health services delivery with tangible results including the record attainment of MDG 4 three years ahead of the target year of 2015. Along with this, MNTE was given emphasis and hence between 1999 and 2009, over 15 million women of reproductive age (WRA) in 59 high-risk zones were immunized during three rounds of Tetanus Toxoid (TT) Supplementary Immunization Activities (SIA). Thus in April 2011, the validation survey concluded that the whole country except Somali region had been validated for MNTE, and now the whole country including Somali region has achieved MNT elimination. This was possible through the efforts and investments made to improve maternal and child health care. The ministry of health will continue to sustain this gain by integrating maternal and child health care services with other public health priorities”.

WHO Representative, Dr. Akpaka A. Kalu, congratulated the country and said that “WHO is grateful for this remarkable result. He added that WHO will continue to support the Ministry to sustain this achievement by prioritizing risk areas for public health interventions that need more support and interventions through specifically targeted strategies with active community involvement to achieve the desired results.” Dr. Kalu also revealed that the integration of vaccine preventable disease with other health programs will be also incorporated in the WHO response strategy.

“I would like to extend my warm congratulations to the Ministry of Health and its partners for this excellent achievement, which benefits the health of women and children,” said Ms. Shalini Bahuguna, Officer in Charge of UNICEF Representative to Ethiopia. “UNICEF will continue to support the government of Ethiopia to sustain this achievement and deliver results for every child” she added.

Zones were selected following an in-depth review of the risk factors for maternal and neonatal tetanus (MNT) using the high-risk approach. Clean delivery and cord care practices, reaching all women of reproductive age in high-risk districts through TT SIAs and immunization of pregnant women during routine immunization and conducting neonatal surveillance as it is a hidden disease, are some of the interventions that helped to achieve this remarkable result.

It is acknowledged that the validation of MNTE in Ethiopia is not an end in itself but the beginning of a new phase of interventions focused on sustaining the attainment of Maternal and Neonatal Tetanus elimination status, an endeavour that is possible only through: maintaining tetanus protection level at above 80 percent in every zone especially in the zones that achieved elimination through Supplementary Immunization Activities (SIAs); strengthening partnerships for improving Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) activities; and  implementing the sustainability plan of action-2014 which incorporates a  switch from Tetanus Toxoid (TT) to Tetanus-diphtheria (Td) vaccine, and annual joint review of national MNT risk status to guide the interventions.

Distributed by APO on behalf of United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). 

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Saudi Arabia Detains 12 Ethiopian Muslims On Hajj and Umrah Pilgrimage

Twelve members of Ethiopian Muslims who were in Saudi Arabia on Hajj and Umrah pilgrimage were detained by the Kingdom's security on Thursday June 29, according to friends and family members.

The detainees include Ustaz Abubeker Ahmed and Ustaz Yasin Nuru, prominent members of the Ethiopian Muslim Arbitration Committee, a committee formed by the Addis Abeba Muslim community in the wake of the 2011 rift between the government and Muslims in Addis Abeba.

However, as the initial rift escalated and sustained anti-government Friday sit-ins by Muslims throughout the country intensified, both Ustaz Abubekr and Ustaz Yasin were detained, subsequently charged and tried for terrorism.

During a three year trial marked by several inconsistencies, in August of 2015 each were sentenced to 22 years in prison. A year after the sentencing however both were pardoned by Ethiopia's President Mulatu Teshome in Sep. 2016.

According to this information posted on Facebook, among the twelve detainees are: Aleem Dr. Joylan Khedir, Ustaz Khamil Shemsu, Ustaz Raya Aba Mecha, Ustaz Hassen Ali, Ustaz Abdurrahman Sultan, Ustaz Khedi Kahsay and Engineer Bedru Hussien.

So far, there has been no official statement both from the Kingdom and the Ethiopian ministry of foreign affairs. But according a report on DW Amharic, some of the detainees were already residents of the Kingdom. Read more here

Vision Ethiopia 4th Conference to be held in Washington

ራዕይ ለኢትዮጵያ – Vision Ethiopia
Vision Ethiopia and ESAT Fourth Conference
Second call for papers, July 3, 2017
Conference Theme
Building Democratic Institutions in Ethiopia
የዲሞክራሲ ተቋማትን በኢትዮጵያ ስለመግንባት

Vision Ethiopia, an independent network of Ethiopian scholars and professionals, in collaboration with the Ethiopian Satellite Television and Radio (ESAT), is pleased to announce that the Fourth Conference will be held in Washington D.C. on September 16 and 17, 2017. We thank those who responded to our first call for papers which was issued on March 4, 20117. The second call is intended to provide a reminder to potential contributors, and a more focused list of transition issues that the conference aims to address. Abstract, and preferably the entire paper should be sent to visionethiopia2016@gmail.com on or before, August 20 2017. The theme of the conference is Building Democratic Institutions in Ethiopia.

Authors are reminded that the theme of the Fourth Conference builds upon the deliberations of the Third Conference that was held from October 23 to 24, 2016. At the Third Conference where more than 20 panelists and moderators and hundreds of participants were engaged, and conference resolved that there is an urgent need to build a road map for transition from

conflict to a post-conflict constitution making order in Ethiopia. The communique of the conference highlighted the contemporary issues, assessed the challenges, and identified the actionable areas to realize the road map. Since October 2016 there have been a number of conferences and town hall meetings held by Ethiopians in various parts of the world. Alliances and counter alliances are being formed. As expected the ruling regime has had its own panel discussion to fight back the pressure and manage public and international opinion by defying, manipulating, and trying to capture the call for transition, while others perhaps inadvertently mimic the call for positioning themselves and remaining relevant. Vision Ethiopia notes these developments and encourages the engagement of the wider public in these important deliberations. Most conferences share the view that transition in Ethiopia is unavoidable.

The discourse has turned into the type of transition, how to make the transition inclusive, effective, relevant and capable to manage the various issues in Ethiopia while strengthening national unity and maintaining the territorial integrity of the country. It has also become important to take lessons from the 1975, 1991/92, and 2005 failed transitions. The question now is how to make the vehicles of transition and agents of change stronger. The myriad of political, economic, social, and security problems, coupled with the unrest, state of emergency, conflicts, tensions, drought, outmigration, internal displacement and the paralysis and tensions within the ruling regime, all indicate the need for a carefully planned change, that controls chaos.

The Fourth Conference aims at providing a forum for consolidating the discussion about the type of transition that is needed in Ethiopia. It addresses two critical issues that are the cornerstones of successful transitions: maintaining and strengthening national unity and creating, enabling and maintaining effective institutions. The continuity of the Ethiopian state, with its territorial integrity, the unity of its diverse population, and their
democratic aspirations are critically dependent on the quality and strength of institutions that exist during and after the period of transition.

The protection and cultivation of an enduring and evolving national unity and sovereignty, through effective institutions, is the central tenet of a meaningful national discourse on transition. History, nostalgia and normative analysis of social and political orders must be separated from contemporary (real) politics. Self-determination becomes an empty idealization of a utopian state unless it is contextualized. Transition thus must not be defined as change of government or another meaningless election or a ritual copied from others. Formal and national institutions should have a number of attributes which should include, consistent with theory: shared national values, sets of functioning rules, ethical standards, procedures and norms designed to constrain offenders and those in authority, prevent cheating, system of entry to and exit from political office, defining the role of traditional authority/leadership, releasing the institutions of the modern state from their captured status, separation of powers, and mechanism for fending the tyranny of the state. Hence it is important to examine and understand what can go wrong in the transitioning processes. The process of transition is an important determinant of the outcome.

Authors are expected to use research and experience while analyzing a specific problem or series of problems. They need to contextualize their theories, and attempt to present the problem and solution dispassionately. With respect to specific topics, Vision Ethiopia would like speakers to focus on the following interconnected problems, and identify types of tried and tested transitions, and state why a specific type of transition is appropriate for today’s Ethiopia. Speakers can select sub topics of transition from the following. The list is indicative and by no means restrictive.

1. Comparative Constitutional Analysis: Constitutions & National Charters provide the broad framework of the political, legal, social, economic, and policy aspirations of a country and its transition framework. Setting and analyzing the constitutional/charter issues, provisions, priorities, challenges, and comparative context are important issues in drawing the road map and the transition to a post-conflict political order.

2. National Unity & Institutions: Outlining the mechanisms for maintaining and strengthening national unity through effective institutions. Which institutions (laws and organizations) have worked/failed in post-conflict countries? What are the lessons (if any) for Ethiopia?

3. Institutional Framework: Identifying existing formal and informal institutions that can be used for mediation, reconciliation, conflict management and resolution. How to connect truth and reconciliation with the various dimensions of justice?

4. The duration of the transition: How long/short should the transition period be? What are the determinants of shorter transition periods in militarized societies? What effective instruments can be put in place to prevent transitional/provisional governments from making themselves “permanent”? How does one minimize factors that make transitions periods unstable?

5. Policy and capacity Issues: What should be the economic, social, land and foreign policy of a transitional administration? How should it deal with priority issues of land, territorial disputes, drought, outbreak of diseases, and national crisis of outmigration and deportations of Ethiopians from various parts of the world?

6. Economic Policy Issues: Mechanisms for establishing fair, just and largely market-based economic institutions. Addressing mechanism for resolving property rights issues including ownership by political party affiliated economic entities and individuals and entities that serve as fronts; examination of the credibility of macro-economic and demographic statistics, the management and sustainability of sovereign debt.

7. Management of conflicts and Conflict Prevention: Establishing the mechanism to prevent and control the escalation of conflict, including controlling irresponsible targeting of communities, as well as upholding values, customs, and traditional practices that
can be reflected in national identity/symbols and legal instruments so that conflict is controlled.

8. Corruption and state and regulation capture: Releasing the institutions of the state and the economy from capture and preventing future captures is critical for successful transition. What is the situation of corruption in Ethiopia and what are its manifestations? Using case methods speakers can identify political and economic corruption, economic crime, illicit financial flows, and the alleged widespread market rigging in the country? Corruption, state capture, contract awards and mega projects (e.g. dams, railway lines, sugar plantations, industrial parks, etc.), donor and tender “preneurship” are examples. How to complete strategic national projects (dams, railway lines, etc.) which are showing cost overruns and delays during the period of transition while controlling corruption? Using an institutional perspective, speakers can explain why the corruption watch dog became toothless and the Prime Minister’s statements ended up in thin air.

9. Freedom of Information and the Press: Establishing a dynamic system that ensures the legal and constitutional rights of citizens’ access to information and eliminating of censorship; ensuring pluralistic and responsible media that helps keep citizens informed; and empowering citizens to the freedom of information while at the same time controlling disinformation and “fake news”. Should Ethiopians (inside the country and out of the country) establish an independent media monitoring organization?

10. Civil Society Organizations: How to guarantee the emergence and protection of independent and vibrant civil societies that protect national and ethnic heritages, places of worships, civil and political rights, including the rights of labor, peasants, land lords and tenants, women, children, youth, minorities, the disabled, war veterans and victims of conflicts? How does one stop the penetration and capture of faith and other social organizations by the ruling regime and political parties?

11. Managing and Preventing Extremism: Establishing mechanisms that fend off against the spread of religious and cultural fundamentalism and extremism, and legally restrain those that
attempt to fuse ethnicity and faith for advancing separatist agenda. What can be done to prevent extremist tendencies and behavior and to address the underlying factors in the country?

12. Human Resource Management and Equity: Promoting equal opportunities and inclusiveness in the national defense, security, police force establishments, including in their top brass, as well as other public institutions to reflect judicious participation by wide spectrum of the Ethiopian population. Reforming economic organizations, including party and state owned enterprises that provide employment shelters to specific ethnic or other social groups. Reforming exclusive regional “charity/development organizations” that serve as fronts, shadow government network and long arms of the ruling party. How to make the national defense, security, and police forces apolitical (loyal to the country and its people and not to a ruling party or the ruler), professional and free from corruption and prejudice? Identifying ways and means of integrating armed combatants to the national army; demilitarizing the country, mechanisms for handling victims of conflict, including former combatants, solders and war veterans;

13. Political Parties: Establishing a system of party politics based on political pluralism; a representative and effective electoral system that encourages regional parties (ethno-nationalist and faith based political organizations) to transform themselves into national parties, where factionalism and regionalism does not become a cause of instability. Analysis of existing legal and clandestine political parties and movements, by shapes, sizes, political programs and their membership and funding characteristics, and identifying where duplication and waste exists, and mechanism for reduction of their number by aligning and tweaking their programs so that personalities are not causes of conflict. How to minimize the incentive to create a party while respecting the civil and political rights of individuals and groups? Should there be a threshold of the number of political parties? If so what should be the criteria or would they simply vanish as time progresses?

14. Justice System Reforms and Independence: Establishing an independent, accountable and transparent national and regional
governance and justice system that fuses the trias politika doctrine (separation of powers) with local institutions (cultures, beliefs and cognitive systems), with role for traditional authority/polity (See also item #1 above). Who should interpret the constitution? The House or an independent constitutional court? How does one ensure the independence of the judiciary, the constitutional court and how does one make justice affordable and free from corruption?

15. Electoral System: Institutional frameworks that guarantee an unfettered free and fair electoral processes and popular participation in political issues and processes both at federal, regional and local levels; which type of electoral system is preferable for Ethiopia? Should voting be mandatory?

16. Diaspora Issues and Policy: Institutionalizing the role of the diaspora and its active engagement in the national economic, political, and social issues of the country. What is the size and capacity of the Ethiopian diaspora? What can the diaspora do to accelerate and support the transition and ending the state of emergency? What is the role of the diaspora in exacerbating illicit financial flows and black markets, land grab, the eviction of farmers from their ancestral lands? Why is the Ethiopian diaspora restricted from participating in the national voting for so long?

17. Territorial Dispute Management: Land shortage and administrative structures have brought territorial disputes. How should these disputes be resolved?

18. Population and Environmental Matters: Establishing the connections between political power, conflict, population policy /, economic growth and control of resources is important. Conflicts often start with grievances in poorer regions where population groups feel deprived while richer regions feel that their resources are unfairly being taken away from them by “others”. How should fiscal decentralization, environmental degradations, vulnerability of regions to climate change be managed in an environment of resurgent regional or ethno-nationalisms?

The main purpose of the Fourth Conference is to bring together researchers, professionals, political and rights activists, former civil servants
and experts from different background and disciplines to deliberate, without fear or favor, on these and interrelated issues, and explore ways and approaches to make the transition successful. It requires redefining our isms and rethinking our collective future. The focus is on strengthening national unity through the creation, reform and strengthening of national institutions in Ethiopia. The Conference will facilitate discussion and debate on different ideas and approaches to be considered on the basis of their merit and analytical foundations and practicality. It is with this understanding that speakers and participants are encouraged to address the issues documented above, and present their thoughts to the Ethiopian public so that the direction and content of the transition towards post-conflict, stable and democratic political order is clearer and made understandable to the masses.

Papers may be written in either Amharic or English, follow acceptable reasoning and decorum. For the presentation, speakers are encouraged to communicate using language(s) that most of the audience at the conference venue and in Ethiopia comprehend. Speakers who want to use other languages must provide their own interpretation services. Papers must be short and to the point, and the message must be deliverable within 20 minutes. Please avoid jargon, foul and inflammatory language, and untested and anecdotal evidence. Read more here