Problems in the World's Poorest Country...

What happens when the government uses the donations you make to further discriminate and hurt people in developing nations?

Donor Aid Backs Ethiopia's Repression
Government Distributes Aid Only to Supporters of the Ruling Party

{Residents of the southern Ethiopian district of Boricha wait for a regional government official to call their names outside a makeshift food distribution center.}


Ethiopia’s government, the largest recipient of foreign aid in Africa, distributes this aid in a partisan way to crush political dissent, denying assistance to people who don’t openly support the ruling party. Ethiopia received more than US$3 billion in 2008 alone.

Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 200 people in 53 villages across three regions of Ethiopia. Residents told us that high school students, teachers, and civil servants
are forced to attend indoctrination sessions on ruling party ideology. Although donations support much of Ethiopia’s education system, teachers are told that ruling party membership is a condition for promotion.

Farmers are denied micro-loans, seeds, and fertilizers if they do not support the ruling party. Rural villagers reported that many impoverished families of opposition party members had been barred from receiving food aid.

Donor officials from a dozen Western government agencies said they had heard allegations that Ethiopia’s government used donor-supported programs to repress political opposition. But they couldn’t know the full extent of the abuses, as most donor programs depend in part on Ethiopian government officials for monitoring.

Donors who finance the Ethiopian state need to wake up to the fact that some of their funding is contributing to human rights abuses.
 
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