Year: 2022

Ethiopia’s electric company says it has reconnected the Tigray region’s capital, Mekelle, to the national grid for the first time in more than a year.

Ethiopian Electric Power spokesman Moges Mekonen told VOA’s Tigrigna Service that work was underway to repair damaged power lines in eight other areas of the Tigray region. The director of Mekelle’s flagship Ayder Hospital, Kibrom Gebreselassie, told VOA on Wednesday that power has resumed in Mekelle. Residents who spoke to the BBC also confirmed that they are enjoying the “full resumption of electricity.”

Ethiopian state media reported Tuesday that power had been restored to the capital.

It was not possible for VOA to immediately verify the claims as Ethiopia’s government does not allow journalists into Tigray.

Mekelle’s power supply has been erratic since federal forces were forced to withdraw in June 2021, while most of Tigray has been without phone, internet and banking services since war broke out between the federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, more than two years ago.

Aid workers say the lack of services has worsened the humanitarian crisis in Tigray, where 90% of the 6 million population need aid.

The two sides signed a landmark cease-fire deal in early November that restored its services and commited the federal government to “unhindered” aid to the embattled region. However, since the deal was signed, power, internet and phone lines are still down in most parts of the Tigray region. And while food and medical aid has started trickling into the region, it has been limited.

The World Health Organization said Friday it still does not have “unfettered access” to deliver medical supplies to Tigray.

For its part, Tigrayan forces were expected to disband their fighters within 30 days of the November 2 cease-fire.

Tigray’s top military commander last week said his forces have withdrawn from 65% of frontline areas but would remain in areas where foreign forces are still present.

Tigrayan leaders accuse Eritrean troops of continuing to commit atrocities in the region, including rapes and executions.

Eritrea denies any wrongdoing and did not take part in the November peace deal.

Source: Voice of America

NAIROBI— Over 3.5 million children in Kenya will be out of school when schools reopen for the first term in January 2023, due to the ongoing drought, Save the Children said.

A 2021 study by the Global Out of School Children Initiative revealed that there are more than two million children aged between four to 17 years that have been out of school since the third term of 2021. The Long Rains Assessment Report by the National Disaster Management Authority projects that an additional 1.6 million children are at high risk of dropping out of school as schools reopen for the first term next year as the hunger crisis worsens.

Mandera, Garissa, Wajir, Turkana, and Marsabit are among the worst affected counties with Mandera having the highest number of school dropouts of 295,470 children aged between 4-17 years old. Garissa follows with 289,410, Wajir at 266,540, Turkana at 253,640 then Marsabit at 107,600 dropouts. Other counties also greatly affected are Narok with 83,020, West Pokot with 80,070, and Samburu with 64,818 school dropouts.

The 2022 Long Rains Assessment, October to December projection period report for the Arid and Semi-Arid Land (ASAL) region indicates that 4.35 million people in Kenya are facing high levels of acute food insecurity.

According to a recent survey done by Save the Children in June 2022 on the impact of the drought in 17 counties, a significant decrease in enrolment is seen in all the counties with an average of 52% affected schools across all levels (Early Childhood Education, Primary and Secondary).

Among the key reasons for high school, dropout was highlighted as inadequate or lack of school meals, poor learning environment, lack of teachers, dilapidated infrastructure, resource-based conflicts, and climate-related emergencies. Shortage of water in schools is also a major factor. An analysis of water in primary and secondary schools in the 17 counties targeted by the education sector revealed that 460 schools have no water source and 1,896 schools only rely on harvesting rainwater.

“Kenya is experiencing one of the worst droughts in 40 years. Children are the most vulnerable groups and are usually the most affected in such emergencies. Parents have to migrate with their children in search of food, pasture, and water for their livestock. This compromises their access to basic facilities such as food, clean water, healthcare, and education,” said Yvonne Arunga, Country Director for Save the Children Kenya and Madagascar.

Northern Kenya is majorly a pastoralist community and right now, parents are unable to pay school fees because they have lost their sources of livelihood. Communities are majorly focused on basic survival skills and school-going children have to help their parents take care of livestock and carry out domestic chores.

“Every minute that goes by means more children’s lives are increasingly at risk. Time is quickly running out for children. They’re missing out on education, making them more disadvantaged. We are calling on the government to make every effort to ensure maximized and efficient running of school feeding programs during drought situations, especially in the areas worst affected by drought. Most of these children depend on these meals,” said Yvonne.

Save the Children is also calling on the government to ensure there is an adequate supply of safe water to schools during the drought for purposes of drinking, sanitation, and personal hygiene in order to enhance a conducive school environment that will encourage children to stay in school. The government should also put in place real-time monitoring systems to assess situations in schools at the onset of drought to enable early responses before the impact of school closures is experienced.

To address these gaps in education, Save the Children is implementing the Operation Come to School Project dubbed ‘Watoto Rudi Shule’ to increase enrolment and retention of children who are out of school in Wajir Turkana, Baringo, and Bungoma Counties. The organization will work in partnership with the various departments – Ministry of Education, Teachers Service Commission, Youth, Gender and Social Service Department, County Directorate of Education Office and Public Health as well as other education stakeholders in the targeted Counties. This will ensure complementarity with county level priorities and project education priorities in the proposed project.

Save the Children is providing lifesaving assistance to children and their families affected by the drought in Turkana, Mandera, Wajir, and Garissa Counties through integrated health, nutrition, food security, child protection, water hygiene and sanitation and education interventions. We have reached 737,931 people including 405,511 children this year.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

Responding to the Eritrean government’s ten-year silence on the whereabouts of Ciham Ali, an Eritrean American who was arrested on 8 December 2012 when she was just 15 years old and held in secret detention ever after, Flavia Mwangovya, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Research and Campaigns in East Africa, the Great Lakes and the Horn of Africa, said:

“It is disgraceful that Ciham Ali, who was just 15 years old at the time of her detention, has been forcibly disappeared for a decade. The last years of her childhood and early adult life have been stolen from her, while her family faces the agonizing despair of not knowing where she is.”

The last years of her childhood and early adult life have been stolen from her

“Ciham Ali continues to be secretly detained without trial. Her family has heard nothing from her, despite concerns over her wellbeing. Her arrest and detention by the Eritrean authorities’ amounts to enforced disappearance, which is a crime under international law. She should be immediately and unconditionally released. All those responsible for her enforced disappearance should be held criminally accountable and all victims, including her family members, should have access to justice and full reparations.”

“The US government has also failed to intervene in Ciham’s case. Amnesty International is calling on the US State Department to urgently act, as the status quo of refusing to speak up amounts to a failure to protect one of its own citizens.”

The US State Department should urgently act to protect one of its own citizens

Background

Ciham, who is now 25 years old, has been secretly detained for ten years in an unknown location. She was arrested in December 2012 at the Sudan border as she was attempting to flee Eritrea. Ciham was born in Los Angeles but raised in Eritrea.

Prior to her arrest, Ciham’s father, Ali Abdu, who was Minister of Information at the time, had fled into exile following an attempted military coup against the government. Her enforced disappearance appears to be in retaliation against her father’s suspected involvement in the coup.

In 2021, Amnesty International launched a petition calling on the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to intervene in Ciham’s case and demand her immediate and unconditional release.

Source: Amnesty International

ADDIS ABABA— The capital of Ethiopia’s Tigray region has been reconnected to the national power grid after more than a year of cuts caused by war, the electricity operator said.

The announcement came a month after a peace deal between the federal government and Tigrayan rebels aimed at ending the brutal two-year conflict and humanitarian crisis in northern Ethiopia.

The power control centre in Mekele and its line were “connected to the national power grid after repair work was finished”, Ethiopian Electric Power said in a statement.

Access to and communications in Tigray are limited or banned and it is impossible to independently verify the situation on the ground.

Humanitarian aid has trickled into the north since the agreement but remains well short of meeting the population’s acute needs.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent troops to Ethiopia’s northernmost region in November 2020, accusing the local governing party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), of attacking federal army camps.

The war spread to the neighbouring regions of Afar and Amhara and drew in Eritrean forces, leaving Tigray devastated and lacking access to basic services including banking, electricity, fuel and communications for more than a year.

On Nov 2, the government and the TPLF signed an agreement in South Africa aimed at ending the hostilities, withdrawing and disarming Tigrayan fighters, restoring federal government authority and reopening access to the region.

The peace deal does not explicitly mention restoring electricity and telecommunications in Tigray, but its terms are gradually being applied and the fighting has ceased.

Ahmed told Ethiopian lawmakers last month the authorities had begun to restore telecommunications and electricity in some areas affected by the conflict.

The casualty toll of the war is unclear, but the International Crisis Group think-tank and Amnesty International have described it as one of the bloodiest in the world.

All sides have been accused of abuses, while the United Nations says more than two million Ethiopians have been displaced and hundreds of thousands are in extreme food insecurity.

The commander-in-chief of the Tigray rebels, General Tadesse Worede, has said 65 percent of his forces have “disengaged” from battle lines and “moved to designated places”.

But he added that there were still “forces in the areas that don’t want peace”, apparently referring to Eritrean soldiers and other regional Ethiopian militias.

Tigrayan authorities in recent weeks have regularly denounced abuses against civilians allegedly committed by troops from Eritrea, which did not take part in the November peace accord, and regional Amhara forces.

According to the UN World Food Programme, more than 13 million people in northern Ethiopia now depend on humanitarian aid, including more than five million in Tigray, whose population is around six million.

The TPLF had long ruled over the Horn of Africa country before Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ahmed came to power in 2018.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

Response to a complaint brought against the Deputy President

The Office of the Deputy President has noted the media reports of a criminal complaint filed by OUTA in tandem with Fred Daniel, accusing Deputy President David Mabuza of participating in the so-called “land scam”.

To set the record straight, the Office of the Deputy President asserts that this complaint is a regurgitation of old allegations of Mr. Fred Daniel, which have been and continue to be litigated in other courts, including the High Court. Every application that Mr. Daniel has filed against the Deputy President has been rejected with punitive costs. The judicial system has found him to be a dishonest litigant who takes advantage of the system.

The allegations they have now made to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) were encapsulated in previous false criminal charges brought against the Deputy President. The Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation and the Specialised Commercial Court prosecutors declined to prosecute anyone because of the false charges. Similarly, the allegations in this complaint are completely false and without merit.

In the current civil litigation brought by Mr. Daniel, the Deputy President is not even a respondent in his personal capacity. Records of the civil case are available for anyone to see how Mr. Daniel has been exposed for who he is.

The Deputy President is utterly disappointed that an organisation of the stature of OUTA would take the extraordinary step of associating with those whom the courts have pronounced to be abusing the legal system, including those who are eager to discredit the Deputy President in order to further their own nefarious goals.

On countless occasions, including before Parliament, the Deputy President has maintained that if anyone has any evidence of wrongdoing on his part, they should bring the case to the attention of the appropriate law enforcement agencies. The Deputy President stands by this statement and is not naive about the true motives of the complaint.

The Deputy President remains confident that the courts will dispense with this flagrant abuse of the criminal justice system expeditiously, allowing the nation to focus on matters that will improve the lives of South Africans.

Source: Government of South Africa