Landgrabbing in Ethiopia: Legal Lease or Stolen Soil?

By Philipp Hedemann*

Red (8, foreground) and his friends are weeding in a sugarcane field on the Karuturi farm.
Credit:Philipp Hedemann

ADDIS ABABA, Nov. 12, 2011 (IPS/Street News Service) - Kneeling in the middle of a sugar cane field in blistering 40 degree heat, a young boy is digging up weeds while an Indian worker stands over him to make sure he does not miss any. Red is eight years old and earns 73 pence for one day’s work - less than the cost of using pesticides.

By exporting food produced by child labour in Ethiopia, an Indian farm manager hopes to earn millions within three years. "It's still total wilderness here, but we will soon start growing sugar cane and palm oil and everything will look tidy," explains Karmjeet Singh Sekhon as he drives in a Toyota 4x4 through the burning bushland on his farm.

The 68-year-old Indian is the manager of a huge farm, which covers an area of 100,000 hectares in Western Ethiopia. Soon he wants to farm 300,000 hectares, an area bigger than Luxembourg.

Since 2008 there has been an unprecedented rush to secure farmland in Africa, South America and Asia. This is a result of the rise and fluctuation in food prices on world markets, which has seen food riots in a number of countries. Countries such as India, China and the Gulf states want to feed their growing populations, but are also looking to position themselves in the race to produce bio-fuels.

The World Bank says 45 million hectares of farmland were leased in 2009 - up from only four million a year between 2006 and 2008. It is estimated that by 2030 another six million hectares will be leased annually in developing countries, two-thirds in sub-Saharan Africa and South America.

Maize, rice, wheat, soy, sorghum, sesame, sugar cane and oil seeds are the main commodities. The World Bank sees both opportunities and risks.

"These large land acquisitions can come at a high cost. The veil of secrecy that often surrounds these land deals must be lifted so poor people don't ultimately pay the heavy price of losing their land," said former World Bank managing director Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

In the world's thirteenth poorest country, the race for the country's most productive agricultural land has only just begun and the social and environmental consequences are unforeseeable. According to the U.N., 4.5 million people in Ethiopia are currently in need of aid as a result of a devastating drought. The majority of the food aid is imported from abroad.

"No problem," says farm manager Sekhon. "Some parts of our production remain in the country, and through the export Ethiopia gains hard currency to buy at the world market."

There is no law in Ethiopia to ensure that a certain percentage remains in the country. Karuturi marketing and logistics boss Birinder Singh makes no secret of the fact that his company is commercially orientated. They will sell to those who pay most, whoever that may be.

Eighty-five per cent of Ethiopia's population of 80 million live off the land, and little has changed over the past 100 years: most of the tiny fields are still worked using ox-drawn ploughs and the yields are low.

The government hopes that leasing farmland to foreign investors will lead to a wave of modernisation. According to the Food and Agricultural Organisation, food production needs a 70 per cent boost between 2010 and 2050 to meet global needs.

All Ethiopian land – 111.5 million hectares - belongs to the state. According to the government, three-quarters of it are suitable for agriculture, but so far only 15 million hectares are cultivated.

The government has now assigned 3.6 million hectares to foreign and domestic investors. One hectare of land costs between six and 231 dollars a year to rent, and the contract periods are between 20 and 45 years. Critics say the developing world is being sold off.

But Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi rejects the attacks as "ill-informed" or even "ill-intentioned." "We want to develop our land to feed ourselves rather than admire the beauty of fallow fields while we starve," Zenawi said.

It is not surprising that the Ethiopian government has become the darling of international agribusiness investors. "There is plenty of good land, enough water, a cheap labour force, and a stable government that ensures law and order", says Karuturi's Singh.

According to Esayas Kebede, head of the state agency which is responsible for the land leases, Ethiopia benefits in many ways from the deals. "By exporting food, we will receive dollars, the farms provide jobs, they import know how, they will help us to boost productivity and therefore to improve food security," says Kebede.

But many local farmers are not convinced. Ojwato is one of them. It only takes him a few minutes to cross his two acre field on foot, while Sekhon takes several hours to cover his by jeep.

The idea that his neighbour's harvests are being exported while he and his country regularly receive food aid makes Ojwato angry. "The foreigners promised to bring electricity, water and hospitals. But in the end only a few of us have worked in their fields and the pay was poor," the farmer says.

"We always pay the national minimum wage," Singh claims.

"Nobody is forced to work on the farm," Kebede says. However, many children labour on the fields.

Though his family could use some extra money from child labour, Ojwato forbids his children to work on the Indian farm. One day they shall become doctors, teachers or engineers, he says. But therefore they need to go to school, instead of working on the fields.

Not all parents are as far-sighted as Ojwato: "Sometimes only five out of 60 students are attending class. The others are working at the fields," says Tigaba Tekle, deputy headmaster of a school near the Karuturi farm.

Officially, only uninhabited land is used for the giant farms, but human rights groups fear that people are forced to leave their land. As a matter of fact, a state-run relocation programme is currently taking place in Western Ethiopia.

According to the government, there is no link between the relocation and the farm projects; everybody moves voluntarily. Human right groups doubt this, and the author was obstructed several times during the research for this article. The official reason given was: "We don't want you to gather politically unwanted information."

As well as human rights organisations, environmentalists also have a problem with the farms. Some four decades ago, 40 per cent of Ethiopia was covered by forest, but today it is less than three per cent - and the bushland in Gambella is burning.

Farm manager Sekhon does not hide his lack of interest in environmental concerns. For him, it is important to develop the farm, and he is behind his ambitious schedule. To catch up, little Red and his friends must continue weeding.

* Published under an agreement with Street News Service.

The issue of land grabbing is not new. Two years ago, Al Jazeera addressed this issue. See video.

U.S.-UGANDA: Award Honours Courageous Gay Rights Activist

By Amanda Wilson

Frank Mugisha Credit:Photo courtesy of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights

WASHINGTON, Nov 10, 2011 (IPS) - Frank Mugisha was just a young teenager in Uganda when he came out as gay. He faced bullying and threats, but he says the stories of lesbian, gay, and transgender friends he later met were much worse - some were kicked out of their homes by their families, subjected to sexual violence to "make them straight", or arrested.

In 2007, Mugisha and other members of Uganda's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community launched an unprecedented 45-day media campaign called "Let Us Live in Peace".

The activists provided their names and phone numbers for interviews and spoke out, sharing their personal stories. That campaign brought visibility to sexual minorities in a country where the government had, until then, denied their very existence.

On Thursday in Washington, Mugisha, director of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), an LGBTI organization in the East African country, will receive the Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) Human Rights Award. The award recognizes "an individual who stands up to oppression at grave personal risk in the nonviolent pursuit of human rights", according to the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.

The award marks the beginning of a six-year partnership in which the RFK Center will support Mugisha's work and that of SMUG, a membership organization working with 40 civil society partners in Uganda. This week, Mugisha and members of the RFK Center will travel to meet with prominent human rights groups, organizations, and members of the U.S. Congress to raise awareness about the situation of the LGBTI community in Uganda.

In a country where the government had maintained that sexual minorities did not even exist, the 2007 media campaign Mugisha organised with other members of the LGBTI community and their allies achieved an incredible first step for the country's sexual minorities movement.

"It ended the myth that there are no homosexuals in Uganda," Mugisha told IPS. "At least there is that acknowledgment that we exist."

Activists in Uganda have also gone beyond visibility-building for sexual minorities to direct advocacy and political lobbying for rights for members of Uganda's LGBT community. SMUG's education initiatives promote understanding and acceptance of Uganda's sexual minorities, who face discrimination in areas of life from education to health care.

The group also provides emergency response support for members of the community who have been arrested and seeks legal representation for them. It also educates on HIV/AIDS.

But an anti-gay law currently being reconsidered by Parliament would criminalize those health and education efforts as "promotion of homosexuality". And although Uganda's laws already criminalize homosexual acts – it is one of 70 countries worldwide where consensual homosexual conduct is punishable as a crime – the new law would make homosexual activities punishable by death in certain cases.

According to the RFK Center, 80 percent of Ugandans support the bill. The bill had earlier been shelved under international scrutiny, but on Oct. 25, it was reintroduced. Human rights organizations and governments around the world have vocally condemned the bill and voiced concerns that it could lead to more violence against Uganda's LGBT community.

Gay rights activist David Kato, former advocacy and litigation officer for SMUG, was murdered in January of this year. He had received death threats after his name and photo were published by a Ugandan newspaper in 2010.

An 'international struggle'

The timing of the introduction of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in 2009 has been linked in news stories to visits to Uganda by U.S. ministers that same year.

"Then we had religious leaders coming from the U.S. in 2009 bringing words that we don't understand," Mugisha said, referring to concepts such as "ex-gay" and the idea that activists were "recruiting" others to be gay. "We are just gay people who want to be accepted and live in peace."

Mugisha spoke Tuesday in Washington at a panel on sexuality and intolerance in East Africa hosted by TransAfrica, the Center for Constitutional Rights, SMUG, and the University at Buffalo Law School.

Makau Mutua, dean of Buffalo Law School and prominent human rights law scholar, also spoke at the conference Tuesday. He challenged the idea that homophobia had roots in Ugandan or African culture in general.

"When I was growing up there was no word for homosexuality," Mutua said. "There is nothing that is inherently homophobic in African societies."

Sylvia Tamale, a professor and legal scholar based in Kampala, Uganda, said the Anti-Homosexuality Bill was being used by both political and religious leaders for their own interests and that it was "being dangled like Damocles sword over the heads of LGBT citizens and activists in Uganda".

She said the bill was being used to divert public attention from other issues in Ugandan society such as "skyrocketing unemployment, inflation, our health facilities", Tamale said. "For weeks it becomes the issue on all the FM stations."

But she asked members of the international community not to think of homophobia in Uganda and the struggle of the LGBTI community there as a problem exclusive to East Africa.

"I want us to look at this resurgence of homophobia on the whole continent, I want us to look at it as an international struggle – it is not as if the West is homophobia-free," Tamale said.

She added that she did not support aid sanctions against countries with anti-gay bills, such as those proposed by United Kingdom prime minister David Cameron in October, as she said it could "unleash a terrible backlash".

Mugisha said Tuesday that the positive achievements of the LGBTI movement in Uganda gave him hope, but that much work remained.

"I tell people I am not so afraid of my government," Mugisha said, adding that if he were arrested, people would likely protest. "But what about my neighbor? If we don't change people's minds, if we don't end the ignorance about homosexuality in Uganda, the challenges will continue."

G20 Remiss in Tackling Food Security

By Cléo Fatoorehchi

Sylvia Meltina, a Kenyan woman, says her family can no longer afford regular meals because of rising food and fuel costs. Credit:Peter Kahare/IPS

AIX-EN-PROVENCE, Nov 10, 2011 (IPS) - Last Friday Benoit Miribel, President of Action Against Hunger, delivered a strong indictment of the outcome of the Group of 20 (G20) summit in the south of France: "The G20 meeting in Cannes has been a missed opportunity."

He was referring to the paucity of discussions on agricultural policies and food security between the heads of state of twenty major industrialized and emerging market economies during their long deliberations on the future of the world economy last week.

Olivier De Schutter, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the right to food, told IPS, "The food crisis and (questions of) food price volatility were overshadowed by the Greek crisis and the Eurozone crisis."

But "unless decisive action is taken now, vulnerable populations will grow hungrier, food markets will be increasingly unstable, and the world will remain completely unprepared for the challenge of feeding nine billion people by 2050," he added.

G20 leaders ended the summit declaring they fully understood that "Promoting agricultural production is the key to feeding the world’s population."

But Michael Klosson, vice president of policy and humanitarian response at Save the Children stressed to IPS that the problem is not about the quantity of food supplies but the quality.

He regrets the G20 leaders did not agreed on bolder actions, such as collectively promoting the SUN (Scaling Up Nutrition) Movement, already supported by a handful of nations and U.N. agencies since its launch in 2009.

In a nod to the increasingly vociferous movement for food justice and sovereignty, the G20’s final communiqué last Friday promised actions "in the framework of the Action Plan on Food Price Volatility and Agriculture agreed upon by our Ministers of Agriculture in June 2011."

A key component of the Action Plan is the creation of the Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS), to reinforce transparency in agricultural markets.

Carmel Cahill, senior counselor of the directorate for trade and agriculture at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), believes that AMIS is critically important to prevent the world from enduring food crises as devastating as those in 2008-2009 and 2010.

Indeed, "one of the major deficiencies in 2008-2009 and again in 2010 was a lack of timely or accurate information about the market situation, resulting in hasty and uncoordinated policy decisions," Cahill told IPS.

"Some of the worst problems might have been avoided had there been better market information," she added.

The G20 also agreed to the creation of food reserves to assist in the fight against poverty and hunger but experts believe this, too, is a largely symbolic gesture.

According to De Schutter, "the Action Plan refers to food reserves only in the context of humanitarian emergencies or as a response to humanitarian crises," when it should be done to reduce food price volatility.

"If we buy from the poorest farmers and release the food stocks when prices go up to make food affordable to the poorest segment of the population, these food reserves can be a useful way to reduce volatility at the local level of food commodities; yet it is apparently not a step the G20 is ready to take," he told IPS.

He believes this lack of political will in the G20 is a result of strong commercial interests, particularly in countries producing biofuels.

Back in 2008, a note released by the World Bank’s development prospects group spotlighted how biofuels were responsible for a full 75 percent of the then skyrocketing food prices.

But in spite of strong evidence that biofuels and agrofuels are "one of the major drivers of speculation on the commodities markets and one of the major reasons why we have such high pressure on land in developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa," according to De Schutter, the G20 completely bypassed the issue.

The issue of biofuels also raises thorny questions about speculation, a practice many experts believe needs to be terminated altogether.

The G20 made some inroads here by endorsing the International Organization of Securities Commission (IOSCO)’s recommendations about improving regulation and strengthening market infrastructure.

But De Schutter is pessimistic, believing that powerful financial actors will continue to adopt a ‘herd mentality’, mimicking each other in the realm of speculation and paving a path towards a future of fragile 'bubbles' on commodity markets.

According Matt Davies, head of international policy and advocacy at ATD Fourth World, a necessary step towards food security, especially for the most vulnerable populations and low income countries, requires "states to set up mechanisms which enable the participation of extremely poor people in policy making, as they possess the knowledge of what works best for the most vulnerable."

If the G20 adopted this approach, they could move closer to the grassroots call for "people first, not finances."

U.S.: Helping Immigrants Fight Wage Theft By Chelsea Apple*

Dimas Rodríguez and Mariana López at an August training session for the Workers' Dignity Project. Credit:Raven Lintu

NASHVILLE, Tennessee, USA, Nov 10, 2011 (IPS/The Contributor) - For many immigrants living in the U.S., a good job can be hard to come by. For those who do find employment - generally in low-paying jobs – every paycheck counts. Which is why, when a paycheck is smaller than it should be – or when it doesn't show up at all – everything comes to a halt.

It's in predicaments like these that members of one Nashville advocacy organisation lend a hand: fighting on behalf of vulnerable populations who are often taken advantage of by employers.

All Mariana López wanted was to get paid. After emigrating to the U.S. from Mexico, she got a job with a cleaning company in May 2010, and had just spent two weeks scrubbing offices. Now it was payday, but her check – which was supposed to total 300 dollars – was 200 dollars short.

Her employer claimed that it was an issue with the accountant, but López began to have her doubts. "I met with two other workers who said the same thing had happened to them," she says. "They worked for him, but he doesn't pay all of them the money that he says he's going to pay."

López waited another 15 days for the issue to be resolved. But her next paycheck was short by more than half. Her employer said he had to deduct taxes and contractor's insurance, since she was doing maintenance on a building. She promptly quit, and was told to wait two weeks for her final pay. When she was paid, it was short once again.

"He had a really tiny check for me…and he had a letter written that he wanted me to sign saying, 'I'm paying you in full,' basically where I would agree that he didn't owe me any more," she explains. "I knew that this was wrong so I didn't sign it, and I didn't take the check."

Together with her friend Florentina "Flor" López, who was refused three weeks' worth of pay when she was laid off by a food service provider at a local private academy, López went to the Tennessee Department of Labour. The department called to say that the employer would "give me my final check – about 500 dollars," she says. "What they owed me was 670 dollars."

"Then no one called me," López continues. "Every time I called I left messages – I couldn't talk to a person." The department finally sent her a letter refusing her case, leaving her uncertain what she should do next.

López and López are victims of wage theft, a national epidemic that affects thousands of low-wage workers in the Nashville area alone, says Jack Willey. He is the coordinator for the Workers' Dignity Project, a volunteer organisation that galvanises workers to recover stolen wages and provides free education on how they can protect themselves from wage theft.

"Our goal is to empower low-wage workers to defend their rights," Willey says. "Our goal is to build an organisation led by those directly affected…working together and building something that can counter some of the more widespread abuses."

Willey says that wage theft particularly affects "the most vulnerable sections of the working class" – namely immigrants and refugees, parolees and the homeless.

"They're people who employers think they can take advantage of," he explains. "They use physical intimidation, or threats of calling the police or calling immigration. Even if somebody has a green card, they don't want to get caught in an investigation."

Wage theft is especially rampant in the cleaning, restaurant, landscaping and construction industries, which are more prone to "cheating on the edges," says Willey. Since April 2010, Workers' Dignity has helped 30 workers reclaim 21,600 dollars in stolen wages, and has educated 180 more about their rights in free monthly labour workshops.

López and López turned to the organisation for help. Three other Workers' Dignity members accompanied Flor López to the office of the local food service provider to support her cause. "It was like night and day, between the first time I went alone and when I went with the group," she recalls. Faced with the threat of a lawsuit under the Fair Labour Standards Act, she says, "the manager's attitude changed completely."

According to the company, the information on file for López was inaccurate, which, when they could not get in touch with López, resulted in a delay in payment.

In the end, López was paid in full. "If we work, we have the right to be paid," she asserts. "If we are silent, this is going to continue."

Mariana López was forced to take a more direct, creative approach. Workers' Dignity found a labour lawyer who agreed to work both her case and a similar one pro bono, but her former employer's lawyer slowed the legal process. So López and fellow organisation members papered the city with flyers displaying the employer's photo, name, company and the exact amount he had stolen from his employees.

"We tried to put them strategically in his neighbourhood and other areas that we knew he went to…and where other Hispanics who worked for him would see them also," she explains.

It worked: within a week, her former employer had settled out of court to pay her double what he owed, in compliance with the Fair Labour Standards Act.

Dimas Rodríguez, also a Mexican immigrant, fell victim to wage theft while he was working as a concreter. His employer kept promising to meet with him and pay him for his work, but he never showed up and wouldn't return Rodríguez's phone calls. Without the employer's last name and address, Rodríguez didn't know how to find him.

Driving around town one day, Rodríguez spotted the employer's truck in an apartment complex. A neighbour identified the employer's apartment, and Rodríguez knocked on his door. When he explained that he was there to retrieve his wages, the employer responded, "You? When did you work with me? I don't even know you."

"That's what really drove me to say, 'I am going to get my money back. I am going to recover my wages' – because of the way he treated me," Rodríguez explains.

At Workers' Dignity, Rodríguez learned about his legal rights and the steps he could take to recover his wages. A demand letter and a visit by a delegation of workers received no response from the employer, nor did scheduled meetings to make payment and phone calls from Workers' Dignity representatives. Finally, Rodríguez filed a civil suit.

In one hour, he received two phone calls: one from the sheriff, confirming that the court papers had been delivered, and the other from his former employer, agreeing to meet with Rodríguez so that he could recover his stolen wages in full. He has since encountered wage theft at another job, and his case is still pending.

A recent survey of more than 4,000 low-wage workers by the National Employment Law Project found that two in three low-wage workers (a total of 68 percent) have experienced wage violations of some kind. Seventy-six percent of those polled were refused overtime pay, and 26 percent have been paid less than the minimum wage.

Wage theft can also include docking pay due to tacked-on "fees" or outright threats of violence and police investigation.

Misclassifying employees as "independent contractors" is one of the many methods of wage theft, says Willey. "By misclassifying someone as 'independent,' that employer doesn't pay taxes on the person. If that person gets injured, they're out of luck unless they sue him. Social security doesn't pay them anything."

Rodríguez says that fear of legal or financial repercussions and poor understanding of legal protections keep many workers from confronting wage theft. "So many cases are never even discovered or realized, because people keep it to themselves," he explains.

Mariana López, Flor López and Dimas Rodriguez are now active members of Workers' Dignity leadership, helping host labour workshops and providing case assistance to fellow workers. They also assist in more direct action, like the organisation's October protests against Vito Randazzo, Master Chef of Vito's Ristorante and Wine Bar.

According to Workers' Dignity Project, Randazzo owes 10,700 dollars in back wages to Bernardino Ruíz Morales, a 64-year-old employee who worked at Randazzo's previous restaurant, Caesar's Bistro, which closed in January 2011.

Randazzo, who took over the business from his father before it eventually shut down, says he informed Morales that he could not pay him as much as his father did in previous years at the restaurant, due in part to a spike in rent at the property.

"I want to work something out," says Randazzo. "I have no animosity towards him. I didn't want to take advantage of him."

In the meantime, Willey says that more protests will occur until the worker collects his wages.

"You're not alone because we are organising, we are unifying ourselves," Mariana López says. "With one person going against an employer, oftentimes they ignore you. But together as a group, we can win."

Although they have worked primarily with Latino immigrants, Willey emphasises that Workers' Dignity is open to all workers. "This does not just happen to immigrants. It affects Americans the exact same way," he says.

The group hopes to target industry-specific wage theft, while expanding its focus to include health and safety violations.

Willey identifies three main ways for people to protect themselves against wage theft. First, talk to coworkers. "Your best defence always is numbers," Willey asserts. "We've found that when there's a group of people, they're much more likely to win." Second, know your rights. And third, know your options.

In the end, the Workers' Dignity Project is about much more than recovering stolen wages, says Willey: it's about recovering someone's personal dignity and empowering workers to stand in solidarity.

"It's a form of degradation to not pay someone their money," Willey stresses. "(This is) about humanity. When we find our own humanity, that's when we can stand with others. Real change can happen when we're seeing our own humanity."

* Published under an agreement with Street News Service.

U.S. TO HEAD ZIMBABWE ‘BLOOD DIAMONDS’ MONITORING GROUP

by Fungai Maboreke

Nov. 8 (GIN) – The United States has captured the chair of the Kimberley process certification scheme, allowing Washington to have a major role in whether Zimbabwe may sell its diamonds on the world market starting in 2012.

The Kimberly Process is an international government certification scheme set up in 2003 to prevent the trade in so-called “blood diamonds” that fund conflicts.

Opposition to Zimbabwe diamond sales came regularly from human rights groups who claimed there were abuses against illegal miners, that smuggling was rife and that certain mines remained in the hands of Zimbabwe's military forces.

But monitoring teams sent by Kimberley concluded the country had met minimum regulatory standards and sales were finally permitted this year.

Zimbabwe is a major exporter with potential to constitute about 20 percent of diamonds traded on international markets. At current production capacities, Zimbabwe could rake in excess of US$2 billion from diamond revenues each year.