Former Ethiopian Colony on UNESCO World Heritage Site List

"The city's recognition as a heritage site of outstanding universal value fills us with tremendous pride and joy."

The capital of Eritrea was named a World Heritage site by the United Nations' cultural body, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

The classification is the culmination of the efforts of Eritrean officials, who tirelessly petitioned for the city of Asmara's unique architecture to be recognized by the U.N. body.

Eritrea's permanent delegate to UNESCO, Hanna Simon expressed pride in response to the appointment.

"The city's recognition as a heritage site of outstanding universal value fills us with tremendous pride and joy, but also with a profound sense of responsibility and duty," the lobbyist said.

It is a "victory not just for the Eritrean people but for Africa and the world at large," she explained.

The decision was made Saturday at a meeting of the World Heritage Committee in Krakow, where the committee will review the nominations of 33 sites seeking inscription on the list.

The members of the group were stirred by the value of Asmara's 19th and early 20th-century modernist designs — by the colonial-era Italian architects — immersed in an African highland environment.

The distinct, futuristic architecture includes an art deco bowling alley with colored glass windows and a gas station that resembles an airplane, both date back to colonial-era Italy.

Eritrea, once a part of Ethiopia, displays the work of architects who were rejected in conservative European cities. Many Eritrean cities were destroyed during the decades-long war.

But, Asmara — coined "Piccola Roma" or "Little Rome" at the time — largely withstood the conflict, and was declared a national monument in 2001.

According to the authorities, efforts made to restore the marble facades and Roman-style pillars of the theaters and cinemas in the city have hit a wall due to limited funding and local expertise.

Eritrea's government has faced widespread criticism from the U.N. commission's inquiry into alleged abuses, which include enslavement, rape and torture.

Eritrea is also a major source of migration into Europe. Read more here

Ethiopian Food Inflation Slows, Headline Inflation Ascends

July 6, 2017 - The Ethiopian Central Statistics Agency (CSA) reported that food inflation slowed to 11.2 percent in June from 12.3 percent in the previous month, reports Reuters. The authority has attributed the slowdown to the decline the prices of vegetables, pulses, potatoes and other tubers. Nevertheless, the price of fruit has increased in June when compared to May.

According to the report by CSA, food inflation slowed to 11.2 percent in June from 12.3 percent. Non-food inflation, on the other hand, has increase from 4.7 percent in May to 6.7 percent in June. This was attributed to the rise in the prices of clothing and footwear as well as household items and furniture. Despite the slowdown of food inflation, CSA also disclosed that the nation’s headline inflation grew to 8.8 in June, up 8.7 from May.   

In Ethiopia, the highest rate of inflation was recorded in July 2008 at 64.2pc. This was induced by a huge cash injection by the state. The following year, conversely, it hit the record low of 4.1pc below zero inflation.

Measuring inflation has remained a difficult problem for government statisticians, according to experts. To measure inflation, a number of goods that are representative of the economy are put together into what is referred to as a "market basket." The cost of this basket is then compared over time. This results in a price index, which is the cost of the market basket today as a percentage of the cost of that identical basket in the starting year.

Source: Reuters

Ethiopians are having a tense debate over who really owns Addis Ababa

Nine months into a state-of-emergency imposed to quell popular unrest, Ethiopia’s ruling party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), has unveiled its first significant political concession. But the furor surrounding the draft bill presented to parliament last week reveals just how deep tensions in Africa’s second most populous country still run. At stake is the answer to a highly charged question: who owns Addis Ababa?

For Oromos, who make up at least a third of the population and formed the backbone of last year’s mobilization against the central government, the answer is simple: the federal capital, which they call Finfinne, belongs to Oromia. They recount a long history of grievance which casts Oromos as colonial subjects violently displaced from their land and alienated from their culture.

This anger became especially acute in the past decade as Addis Ababa expanded rapidly and when, in April 2014, the authorities published a new master plan which proposed further eviction of Oromo residents and farmers in the name of development. “The issue of Finfinne is the heart of our politics,” says Gemechis, an Oromo resident of the city. “It is where we lost everything.” The master plan was dropped in January 2016 but demonstrations continued unabated until October.

Addis Ababa, with a population approaching four million people, is also home to the African Union and the UN Economic Commission for Africa and is widely regarded as Africa’s diplomatic capital—and indeed the world’s third largest diplomatic hub.

Read more here

In Ethiopia, drought shoves the ordinary – even marriage – just out of reach

July 5, 2017 Shabelle Zone, Ethiopia—In another life, it would have gone like this: Duniya in a floor-length dress, something gauzy and loudly colored; Muftah tall and slender and serious beside her.

Duniya and Muftah. Muftah and Duniya. They had known each other since they were kids, when they spent long, slow days together walking their families’ cattle and camel herds across the scrubby brush to pasture or water. For a long time, they were friends, close ones, until one day they were not only that anymore. It was that simple, she says, and that obvious.

She thinks of it often, that wedding that would have been. There would have been seven days of dancing – the entire village gathered around them – and fresh roasted goat every night. She would have eaten soor, a soft corn porridge, mashed with milk, butter, and sugar, and worn a different new dress each night. And then, when it was done, she and Muftah would have slipped quietly into the rest of their lives.Instead, she is here – in a sun-baked settlement of displaced persons near the market town of Gode – and he is there – 40 miles away in the parched village where they both grew up. She hasn’t seen him in two months. She worries, she says, that she never will again. Read more here

Politics of Death: The Mapmaker Who Finds the Bodies in Ethiopia's Land Battle

LONDON — 

It was late 2015 when Endalk Chala began documenting deaths in his home country of Ethiopia, scouring Facebook, Twitter and blogs to piece together who had died and where.

FILE - Protesters run from tear gas launched by security personnel during the Irecha, the thanksgiving festival of the Oromo people in Bishoftu town of Oromia region, Ethiopia, Oct. 2, 2016.

Chala comes from Ginchi, a town 72 km (45 miles) from Addis Ababa where protests began in November 2015, initially over a government plan to allocate large swathes of farmland to the capital city for urban development.

The plan would have displaced thousands of Oromo farmers, the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia.

"There were reports that people were killed in the protests and no one was reporting about it. No one cared who these people are," Chala told Reuters by phone. "The information was all over the internet, not well organized. I just wanted to give perspective."

FILE - Ethiopian migrants, all members of the Oromo community of Ethiopia living in Malta, protest in Valletta against the Ethiopian regime's plan to evict Oromo farmers to expand Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, Dec. 21, 2015.

While the land re-allocation project was officially scrapped by authorities, protests and conflict reignited over the continued arrest and jailing of opposition demonstrators with full-scale protests over everything from Facebook to economics.

Several hundred protesters were killed in the next 11 months. Then, in October 2016, the government declared a state of emergency and shut down communications, including the internet.

More than 50 people died at a single demonstration that month, after a stampede was triggered by police use of tear gas to disperse anti-government protesters at a religious festival.

Witnesses also reported security forces firing live rounds into crowds of protesters at multiple locations.

A government report presented to parliament in April acknowledged a death toll of 669 people — 33 of them security personnel — although activists believe it could be much higher.

The government shutdown of the internet for periods of time all but ended online contact across Ethiopia, leaving it to the Ethiopian diasporas to pull together the facts.

Diaspora's database

Enter Chala, a Ph.D. student in Oregon, in the United States, who decided to log every death he could on an interactive map, inspired by a similar Palestinian project.

FILE - Women mourn during the funeral a construction engineer who died during a stampede after police fired warning shots at an anti-government protest in Bishoftu during Irreecha, the thanksgiving festival of the Oromo people, Oct. 3, 2016.

"I started to collect the information from the internet: Facebook, Twitter and blogs. And I started to contact the people who had put that information out," he said.

Once word spread that Chala was collating the deaths, Ethiopian friends and activists began to send details, including photographs of those injured and killed. They contacted Chala via social media and instant messaging applications like Viber.

Chala learned that Ethiopians in rural areas were driving miles to put evidence of the killings online, but he still feared there were information black holes.

In its report of 669 deaths presented to parliament, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission — which works for the government — blamed protesters for damaging land and property.

In the report, seen by Reuters, the Commission said the disturbances had damaged public services, private property and government institutions. It also cited harm to investment and development infrastructure.

However, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, criticized the government for a lack of accountability and called for access to protest sites.

Neither the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission nor the Ethiopian government responded to requests for comment.

Facebook leads to jail

In a country where fear of reprisals is commonplace, it is easier for those living outside Ethiopia to speak out, said Felix Horne, Ethiopia researcher at Human Rights Watch.

"Any time victims of human rights abuses share information with outside groups, with journalists — either domestic or international — there's often repercussions, quite often from local security officials," he said.

Horne said Facebook was a key source of information in the early stages of the protests but this was quickly seized on by the government, and security officials checked students' phones.

Last month, an opposition politician was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison because of comments he wrote on Facebook.

Horne, whose organization also attempted to document the deaths, agreed that numbers are important for accountability, but said a focus on the death toll alone can be dehumanizing.

FILE - Injured protesters wait for help after several people died during the Irrechaa, the thanksgiving festival of the Oromo people in Bishoftu town of Oromia region, Ethiopia, Oct. 2, 2016.

"We've talked to so many people who were shot by security forces. Many of them children. Many of them students. The numbers sort of dehumanizes these individuals."

Cost of free thinking

Benta, a 29-year-old veterinarian and former government employee who took part in the protests, saw nine people shot.

Speaking to Reuters by phone from Kenya, his new home, he recalled how a soldier fired directly on a car in Aje town, West Arsi, on February 15 last year. Five people were shot, two died and three were wounded, he said.

Six months later, on August 6, Benta was participating in another protest in Shashamane in the Oromia region, when he saw four people shot. He says he was detained and tortured for nearly two months and has now made a new life in Nairobi.

"If you're expressing your freedom, you'll be shot, and if you're asking for your rights, you'll be detained," he said.

Chala said bullet wounds were the most common injuries visible on the photos that flooded in to him from Ethiopia, and the brutality he witnessed has stayed with him.

"It really hit me very hard," he said. "People will forget. They'll bottleneck their emotions and grievances and the government will just extend and buy some time, and there will be another bubble sometime in the future. That's a vicious circle." Read more here