Ethiopia: Land, Water Grabs Devastate Communities

Nairobi New satellite imagery shows extensive clearance of land used by indigenous groups to make way for state-run sugar plantations in Ethiopia's Lower Omo Valley, Human Rights Watch and International Rivers said today.

Virtually all of the traditional lands of the 7,000-member Bodi indigenous group have been cleared in the last 15 months, without adequate consultation or compensation. Human Rights Watch has also documented the forced resettlement of some indigenous people in the area.

The land clearing is part of a broader Ethiopian government development scheme in the Omo Valley, a United National Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site, including dam construction, sugar plantations, and commercial agriculture.

The project will consume the vast majority of the water in the Omo River basin, potentially devastating the livelihoods of the 500,000 indigenous people in Ethiopia and neighboring Kenya who directly or indirectly rely on the Omo's waters for their livelihoods.

"Ethiopia can develop its land and resources but it shouldn't run roughshod over the rights of its indigenous communities," said Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

"The people who rely on the land for their livelihoods have the right to compensation and the right to reject plans that will completely transform their lives."

A prerequisite to the government's development plans for the Lower Omo Valley is the relocation of 150,000 indigenous people who live in the vicinity of the sugar plantations into permanent sedentary villages under the government's deeply unpopular "villagization" program.

Under this program, people are to be moved into sedentary villages and provided with schools, clinics, and other infrastructure. As has been seen in other parts of Ethiopia, these movements are not all voluntary.

Satellite images analyzed by Human Rights Watch show devastating changes to the Lower Omo Valley between November 2010 and January 2013, with large areas originally used for grazing cleared of all vegetation and new roads and irrigation canals crisscrossing the valley.

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Ethiopia: Land, Water Grabs Devastate Communities