By AFP,
Stuck on a track in eastern Ethiopia, trucks carrying food for the starving are forced to turn back. After one of the worst droughts for decades, the rains have finally arrived, but now only add to the complication of the delivery of food aid.
Flash floods have effectively transformed dry dirt tracks into impassable quagmires, adding to the woes of the victims in remote areas, some of whom have received no help for weeks. Continue reading Floods Following Drought Worsen Ethiopian Hunger
By ESAT News,
The Ethiopian government has stopped the fundraising campaign by UN agencies to help millions of Ethiopians facing famine, according to ESAT’s sources from Addis Ababa. The sources said the Special Envoy for the Prime Minister, Ambassador Berhane Gebrekiristos has asked the Addis Ababa representative of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) to stop the fundraising campaign that began on March 23, 2016. Continue reading Official: UN Emergency Food Appeals Tarnish Ethiopia’s Image
Author’s Note: The following is a true and correct copy of my letter to USAID Administrator Gayle E. Smith dated March 16, 2016, and the response I received from T.C. Cooper, Assistant Administrator, USAID Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs dated April 7, 2016…
My letter questions recent statements made by Ms. Smith regarding the famine in Ethiopia and solicits factual and policy clarifications.
Mr. Cooper’s letter is non-responsive to my inquiries and ignores specific factual and policy issues I have raised with the Administrator.
It is a matter of public record that I have fiercely opposed Ms. Smith’s confirmation to become USAID Administrator. But as a true-blue constitutionalist, I acknowledge and respect the Senate’s vote to confirm Ms. Smith despite my personal opposition.
My inquiry letter[1] is guided purely by my concerns as an American citizen and taxpayer, and not by any residual personal animus from the confirmation process.
In one of my first commentaries opposing Ms. Smith’s confirmation, I promised, “We will use every legal means available to us under American law to question Smith’s official actions and decisions…” The fundamental purpose of my inquiry letter is to hold USAID accountable in its use of American tax dollars in a country whose “government” has a proven history of “using aid as a weapon of oppression” and as an insidious tool of corruption. Continue reading USAID and Famine in Ethiopia: What Does Gayle E. Smith Have to Say?
By TesfaNews,
A biblical hunger crisis is unfolding in Ethiopia that is like no other in history of this drought-stricken country. Malnutrition, hunger, and lack of water have resulted in a state rife with individuals deemed “food insecure,” with numbers officially reaching the tens of millions.
According to the latest April 2016 Fast Fact Sheet released by UNICEF, the number of children that are at risk from hunger, disease and lack of water in Ethiopia have reached 6 million on top of the 400,000 children who are suffering from “severe acute malnutrition” and the 15 million people that are at the verge of starvation and need urgent food relief assistance. Continue reading UNICEF: Six Million Children at Risk of Hunger in Ethiopia
By William Davison | for Bloomberg,
Ethiopia signed a deal to boost trade through Somaliland’s Berbera port amid congestion at a facility in neighboring Djibouti, officials said.
Tariffs have been revised and a committee established to manage joint operations as part of the agreement signed on March 31, Sharmarke Jama, an economy and trade adviser for the foreign ministry in the semi-autonomous Somali region, said on Monday. Continue reading Ethiopia, Somaliland Sign Accord to Use Berbera Port
No one predicted the Arab Spring when it exploded on December 18, 2010 sparking the Tunisian Revolution. No one could have predicted a street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi would set himself on fire to protest harassment, abuse and humiliation by local municipal and police authorities and trigger a revolution to transform the Middle East and North Africa.
The Tunisian “Burning Man” burned Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Muammar Gadaffi in Libya and Ali Saleh in Yemen, among others. Continue reading Ethiopian Spring in a Winter of Discontent?
