by AJOY ASHIRWAD MAHAPRASHASTA
Ethiopia witnesses large-scale forcible displacement of villagers in what has become the norm in the past decade in Africa.
In what could be one of the worst cases of its kind, Ethiopia, situated in the Horn of Africa, is witnessing the systematic displacement of at least 70,000 indigenous people from its south-western region of Gambella. An extensively researched report, named “Waiting here for death”, released by Human Rights Watch (HRW), an international non-governmental organisation, has documented forcible evictions under the “villagisation” programme of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) government. The report becomes important in the context of Ethiopia’s long and brutal history of resettling millions of people in collectivised villages, particularly under the Derg regime, which was in power until 1991. Under the EPRDF, the villagisation concept has been reinvented under the guise of “socio-economic and cultural transformation”.
As has been seen in most such cases, the villagisation programme is taking place only in areas where massive land investment is planned or is occurring. The report states that since 2008 Ethiopia has leased out at least 3.6 million hectares of land (as of January 2011), an area the size of the Netherlands, to foreign and domestic investors. An additional 2.1 million ha is available through the federal government’s land bank for agricultural investment (as of January 2011). In Gambella, 42 per cent of the total land area is either set aside for leasing or has already been leased out to investors, and many of the areas from where people have been forcibly removed under the villagisation programme are located within these parcels.
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