Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much for allowing me to participate.

Foreign Affairs committee  Well, in a way, I think 2005 was Ethiopia's voted Arab Spring, as that was when you really had, for the first time in its history, a really popular movement around the elections. I think most Ethiopians learned a very harsh lesson from those events and from the repression that ha

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, we've had a number of discussions recently with the World Bank, because our research, in Gambella in particular, on the forced resettlement of communities is linked to the provision of basic services program. Officials from that program are implementing this policy of resett

Foreign Affairs committee  As I'm sure you know, the EPRDF and its allied parties won more than 99% of the parliamentary seats in May 2010. Two seats were not won by the ruling party and its allies: one went to the opposition and one went to an independent. I think, to be honest, that number speaks for its

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, as you say, it's a very grim picture. It's a very difficult situation. I don't want to minimize the challenges there are in dealing with Ethiopia. I recognize it's a very difficult context. I think that too many red lines have been crossed already. I think that when the cha

Foreign Affairs committee  You remember that in 2005 and 2006 the donors suspended direct budget support to the central government because of the concerns over the violence and the breakdown of rule of law that year, and a lot of the programs—

Foreign Affairs committee  I think that you have to very seriously question handing over funds to a government that has a proven track record of serious human rights abuses.

Foreign Affairs committee  First, as I said, is to improve your monitoring. We have pointed out in our research that the money is going through PBS, the protection of basic services program. Of course, it's not going to the central government, but the protection of basic services program, as you know, fund

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes. There are definitely groups or categories of people that are most at risk of being attacked or targeted, for everything from intimidation to torture and detention. Those groups include political opposition members or supporters, or sometimes even people who are perceived to

Foreign Affairs committee  This was the subject of one of the reports we published in 2010, which looked at the way that individuals perceived to be supporters of the opposition were denied access to some government services because they were perceived to support the opposition, and we documented this, par

Foreign Affairs committee  In a way, Ethiopia has quite a privileged position, because it is the host of the African Union. Of course, the African Union is located in Addis Ababa. Basically, I would say that the UN and the African Union have been extraordinarily weak in making any kind of criticism of the

Foreign Affairs committee  This is what I mentioned before about donors, particularly the large donors—the U.S., the United Kingdom, Canada, the European Union, the World Bank and others—really needing to put their feet down, first, in terms of actually monitoring their own programs. As I mentioned, there

Foreign Affairs committee  It's not ours. The bank accounts of the Ethiopian Human Rights Council,an Ethiopia n organization, were frozen, and they've been in a long-running lawsuit over the last two years to try to get them unfrozen.

Foreign Affairs committee  They were one of the organizations that had to cut back enormously. They had to let go of most of their staff. Some of their senior staff fled the country because of threats. And they are operating on a shoestring.

Foreign Affairs committee  That's a very good question. It's always unwise to make predictions about Ethiopia. But it is very strong concern that the economic development and the growth that is taking place will be undermined, inevitably, if we see this level of repression maintained over the long term. Yo