Violent land grabs in Ethiopia’s Lower Omo Valley are displacing tribes and preventing them from cultivating their land, leaving thousands of people hungry and ‘waiting to die’.
As the awareness of the issues behind poverty and hunger were raised across the world on October 16, World Food Day, Ethiopia continued to jeopardize the food security and livelihoods of 200,000 of its self-sufficient tribal people.
Survival International has received disturbing reports from members of several tribes in Ethiopia’s Lower Omo Valley, which describe how the government is destroying their crops to force them to move off their land into designated resettlement areas.
Those most affected by the land grabs are Suri, Bodi and Mursi pastoralists, and the Kwegu hunter-gatherer people, who are being violently evicted from their villages as Ethiopia’s government pursues its lucrative plantation projects in the Valley.
Depriving tribes of their most valuable agricultural and grazing land, security forces are being used brutally to clear the area to make way for vast cotton, palm oil and sugar cane fields. Cattle are being confiscated, food stores destroyed, and communities ordered to abandon their homes and move into designated resettlement areas.
Many families are now desperate as they have no sorghum, and their cattle grazing land is also being rapidly destroyed as the government continues to lease out their land for sugar cane and oil palm plantations.
One Mursi man told Survival International how the process of villagization is destroying his family. “The government is throwing our sorghum in the river. It has cleaned up the crops and put them in the river. I only have a few sacks left… We are waiting to die. We are crying. When the government collects people into one village, there will be no place for crops and my children will be hungry and have no food.”
A Suri man also said, “They cleared the land. Why did the government sell our land? There is no grass for the cattle. People are hungry… We are worried about fodder. We have become angry and hopeless.”
Key to the plantation program is Ethiopia’s controversial Gibe III Dam. Once completed, the dam will stop the Omo River’s annual flood, preventing tribes from using its fertile banks to produce valuable crops and feed livestock.
Ethiopia has not consulted any indigenous communities over the construction of Gibe III or its aggressive plantation plans in the valley, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Stephen Corry, Survival International’s Director, said, “On World Food Day, people need to be aware of Ethiopia’s decision to violently strip Lower Omo Valley tribes of their self-sustaining way of life. These peoples have used their land to cultivate crops and graze cattle to feed their families for generations. This basic right has now been taken from them, in a brutal manner, leaving them hungry and afraid.”
Source: Survival International.
