Security Alert – Dire Dawa, Harar, Jijiga and the Somali Region

The Embassy reminds American citizens to avoid travel to the cities of Dire Dawa, Harar, and Jijiga, including the areas surrounding these cities, and to the Somali Region of Ethiopia. 

More on American embassy in Ethiopia issues security alert

Corrupt and violent Kenyan police abuse and extort money from hundreds of thousands of refugees who have fled volatile Somalia, a human rights watchdog said on Monday.

Kenyan officials did not immediately comment on the report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), which also accused the authorities of forcibly deporting hundreds of asylum seekers desperate to reach the world’s largest refugee settlement.More On Kenya police abuse Somali refugees-rights group

PRESS RELEASE 

The evidence of war crimes in Somali Region of Ethiopia is a challenge to universal justice: will Ethiopian official perpetrators ever stand trial as the Sudanese authorities have been brought to book?

To depict the general condition of human rights abuses of Somali Region will give us a glaring description of the miserable condition that the innocent young Ethiopian, Makhtal is incarcerated. More on ESAC- Will Makhtal be brought to Fair Trial under Butcher of Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi?

It is not exaggeration if I made a bold statement that Ethiopia is among those countries where the dignity of a human being is absolutely disregarded. This goes from the fact that human rights violations and naked tyranny are commonplace experiences under the regime of Meles Zenawi. There is no trend of improvement in human rights protection in the country and a general culture of impunity for violating human rights is rampant.   More On The Unvoiced Weeps from Nairobi to Mogadishu

Denmark and Sweden once again lead the rankings of The Global Information Technology Report 2008-2009, released for the eight h consecutive year by the World Economic Forum. The United States follows suit, up one position from last year, thus confirming its pre-eminence in networked readiness in the current times of economic slowdown. Singapore (4), Switzerland (5) and the other Nordic countries together with the Netherlands and Canada complete the top 10. More on World Economic Forum Report ,Ethiopia Ranked next to Zimbabwe

Ethiopia has no independent judiciary, no free press, no civil society, and individual liberties have been severely curtailed, so why isn’t Meles Zenawi a persona non grata in the international community, asks human rights activist Mitmita. More on Ethiopia: Why No-One Speaks Out: Politics and Human Rights

Geneva – Somalia is the scene of one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world and its citizens have been victims “of most terrible human rights and humanitarian law abuses,” the United Nations expert on the east African country said Wednesday. Shamsul Bari, addressing the Human Rights Council in Geneva, said a third of the 9 million Somalis have become refugees and 1 million have been internally displaced due to the almost unabated violence that has plagued their country in the past two decades. More on UN expert: Somalis are victims of the ‘most terrible’ rights abuses

The corporation also short-circuited the environmental and social impact assessment (EIA) process. Instead the study – which gave the project a clean bill of health – was published two years after construction began.

One of the project’s staunchest critics, Kenyan ecologist Richard Leakey, suspects the study was produced with one aim in mind.

He said: “The scientists that I’ve shown [the EIA] to – some of whom have worked in Ethiopia for years and may have even advised the Ethiopian government at some point – suggest it is fatally flawed in terms of its logic, in terms of its thoroughness, in terms of its conclusions More on The dam that divides Ethiopians

GENEVA (AFP) — The human rights situation deteriorated last year in war-wracked Somalia with serious violations by all parties, but there is a new “window of opportunity” now, a UN expert said Wednesday. More on Rights violations worse in Somalia in 2008

The Ethiopian government has revoked the licences of six of the country’s main coffee exporters, accusing them of hoarding supplies.Meles confiscates 17,000 tonnes of coffee from traders

It also confiscated 17,000 tonnes of stock of around 80 other traders, saying it would auction the coffee. More on Ethiopia revokes coffee licences