My take on Ambassador Haley’s comments
Bereket Gebru
The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, visited Ethiopia this week. She discussed a range of issues with Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn on strengthening the bilateral cooperation of the two countries and on regional security. Readout of their meeting states that the Prime Minister and the Ambassador:
“discussed peace and security in the region, particularly developments in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. On South Sudan, Ambassador Haley and Prime Minister Hailemariam agreed on the importance of moving forward with the high-level revitalization forum to revive the 2015 South Sudan peace agreement as soon as possible. Both underscored that resolving the situation in South Sudan would require sustained engagement and attention from the African Union and others in the region. On the Democratic Republic of the Congo, they agreed on the importance of holding elections as well as the need to address the root causes of conflict in the country.”
In addition to the above stated security issues of regional states, the two sides touched upon a few issues. It would be too naïve to expect that President Donald Trump sent his UN envoy to three African countries (Ethiopia, DRC and South Sudan) for humanitarian purposes as his “America First” policy usually appears too pragmatic to the liking of the rest of the world. Ambassador Haley too didn’t have the heart to boldly state that her mission was strictly humanitarian as she noted that their interests are certainly humanitarian, but they are also economic and strategic.
On the humanitarian noted, Ambassador Haley thanked Prime Minister Hailemariam for his country’s leadership in continuing to host desperate people fleeing conflict in the region and for Ethiopia’s decades-long generosity hosting refugees from nearby countries.
In my opinion, the Americans shouldn’t have bothered talking about hosting desperate people fleeing conflict as they have unsuccessfully tried to ban citizens of such countries from entering their country. Donald Trump’s three attempted travel bans included the East African states of Somalia and Sudan – two of the largest refugees given sanctuary by Ethiopia. Other banned countries include Syria, Libya and Yemen. In these countries, the U.S. has directly or indirectly interfered to send these countries down the path of failure. What moral or any other ground does the U.S. have to extend gratitude to others about being there for desperate people fleeing conflict?
Most African societies are communal. They know how to share the meager wealth they have with each other. During hard times and that is often in most cases, Africans have no problem sharing with their fellow humans. The existing conflicts in most African countries are orchestrated by greedy western powers that would stop at nothing to loot their resources. Therefore, they are unfit to thank an African state for showing its solidarity with its fellow Africans at the time of despair created by the very powers showing gratitude.
The choice of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan as the other countries in the Ambassador’s travels also shows that it is more of a business trip than a humanitarian one. DRC is obviously one of the resource rich countries in the world with deposits of uranium, diamond, cobalt, coltan, etc. The youngest nation in the world, South Sudan, also boasts a large quantity of oil reserves. If Ambassador Nikki’s travels have any humanitarian motives for real, they probably would have included not so resource rich countries in conflict.
Other issues, Ambassador Nikki Haley disclosed to have deliberated on with Prime Minister Hailemariam were human rights and giving the youth a voice. The American definition of human rights is very narrow in the sense that it only considers the political rights of opposition politicians. Realistically though, human rights refer to the thirty stated rights in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). These incorporate within them economic and social rights that the Americans prefer to forget about. By effectively screening the wide range of political parties in the political spectrum and instating the two major parties as the only choice, the U.S. system clumps down on political pluralism.
The neo-liberal capitalist model that works tirelessly to get national resources into the hands of a handful of individuals has left the majority of the people at the mercy of the greedy corporate apparatus. Despite its stand as the biggest economy in the world, the U.S. has worse social indicators than a large section of the developed world. That means, it has a bad record of economic rights. It has thus systematically clung on to a small corner of political rights to define human rights.
In the case of Ethiopia, the country has been trying to widen the political platform through dialogue with opposition political parties. The government hosts periodic elections to renew its legitimacy. Economically, it has lifted half of the country’s poor people out of poverty, ensuring a large chunk of the thirty rights stated in the UDHR. Therefore, the state of human rights in the country is improving from time to time.
The government of Ethiopia owned the issue of empowering the youth some years back and it has embarked on nationwide programs to achieve that goal. The decision was passed last year to make the equal participation and fair benefit of the youth the most important undertaking. Accordingly, a strategy and implementation package for the growth and change of the youth has been revised and ready to allow them play their irreplaceable roles in the growth and transformation journey. There was active participation of the youth in the development process of the package. The manuals and directives used to put the package into practice were made work guidelines. Training was also given to familiarize them.
In addition to the 10 billion Birr youth fund earmarked by the federal government to implement the change and growth package, regional states similarly allocated a combined sum of 10 billion Birr. Out of the fund’s total 20 billion Birr, the activation of half of it at the end of last year after delay in getting it activated led to the creation of jobs for two million young people. Considering we need to work hard to address the large level of unemployment, better performance is expected this year after evaluating the achievements and challenges of the past. Moreover, this year is going to be one in which we strive to achieve success in personality building of the youth through their active participation.