Eritrea/Ethiopia: Punish Ethiopia for noncompliance, Bloc MP
11 May, 2005, Embassy
NEWS STORY
By Sarah McGregor
Bloc
MP seeks to coax Ethiopian action
An estimated 100,000
lives were lost during the two-year war between Ethiopia and neighbouring
Eritrea that ended with the Algiers peace agreement in 2000. Since then,
Ethiopia has rejected a binding world court ruling that drew a line between the
two nations, awarding the town of Badme to Eritrea.
A Bloc Quebecois MP is
urging Canada to raise the stakes in an African border dispute by tying
Ethiopian development assistance to a move by Addis Ababa to end the escalating
conflict.
International Cooperation Critic Francine Lalonde says humanitarian assistance
should continue to flow from Canada through multilateral channels, such as
United Nations agencies. However, she says bilateral aid to Ethiopia from
the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) should be conditional on
the Ethiopian government ending the stalemate. There must be a
"consequence" to the nation's refusal to comply with the decision of
an independent boundary commission, says Ms. Lalonde.
International Cooperation Minister Aileen Carroll, testifying at a Commons
committee this week, dismissed that suggestion, saying foreign aid to poor
nations must not ebb and flow with their changing political situations.
"If... CIDA, adopted that approach we would only continue to give aid...
to those countries that are really meeting [political] benchmarks," she
says.
While Ms. Lalonde declines to describe
her idea as a suspension of development assistance, that would be the essential
result if Ethiopia refused to budge from its current position. Ms. Lalonde
introduced this proposal as an amendment to a motion put forth by NPD MP Alexa
McDonough at the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee last Thursday. Ms. McDonough
worked furiously behind the scenes to refine a comprehensive motion asking
Canada to take a more aggressive stance on the border disagreement.
Prior to last week's meeting, Ms. McDonough discussed the wording with
officials from the departments of Foreign Affairs and CIDA, and earned the
support of Liberal and Conservative MPs. Her motion, which eventually passed
unanimously with only a few minor additions, calls on Canada to pressure
Ethiopia to accept the demarcation decision, and offer UN assistance in
demobilizing both nations' armies and support the extension of a UN force there
until Sept. 15, 2005.
Only Ms. Lalonde and fellow Bloc MP Pierre Paquette voted to go even further by
attaching conditions to Ethiopian aid, a move that was defeated.
Ethiopia, with a population of about 70 million, is one of the Canadian
International Development Agency's largest bilateral aid partners. It received
about $76 million in development assistance in 2002-2003, focusing on projects
related to food security, democracy and good governance. Eritrea is home to
about four million people, and has received only $10.8 million from CIDA since
2002, mostly in emergency assistance.
Ms. Lalonde says she was also considering a second amendment asking that
financial assistance be funneled to Eritrea for post-conflict reconstruction.
The nation is one of the world's poorest and is run by an oppressive regime
criticized for its poor track record on human rights.
UN Special Envoy to Ethiopia and Eritrea, Lloyd Axworthy, testified to the
Commons Foreign Affairs Committee in late March, noting a flare up in
hostilities along a security zone could lead to a new war. He reported that regional
instability is taking a downward turn, with a substantial increase in arms
sales to the impoverished nations and a military build-up along the
1,000-kilometre border. The dialogue between the Horn of Africa countries is
increasingly taking a "more military tone," noted Mr. Axworthy,
Canada's former foreign minister. The political instability is also causing
economic suffering that could lead to 500,000 Eritreans and 14 million
Ethiopians living in poverty by 2010, according to a new report he submitted to
the UN Security Council.
Parliamentary Secretary of Foreign Affairs Dan McTeague says that holding back
humanitarian assistance to Ethiopia would only serve to penalize citizens.
"I think using aid as a sort of stick would not do anything to bring the
players closer to a resolution but in fact would hurt the very people we are
trying to help," he says. Conservative Foreign Affairs Critic Stockwell
Day agrees, saying the consequences of such action are too uncertain. "We
at least need time to assess what that's going to mean," he says. "We
don't know what the implications are."
Ms. McDonough says the suspension of funds could jeopardize the health or lives
of people who are facing starvation. She says that emergency provisions, such
as foodstuffs, would be impossible to deliver without ongoing investments in
infrastructure. "Given that development assistance deals with the
infrastructure of transportation, water and so on that either makes the
humanitarian assistance as effective as possible or the opposite," she
says.
Mr. Axworthy has met with Ethiopian officials to discuss the dispute, but the
Eritrean government refuses to speak with him until Addis Ababa abides by the
world court ruling.
A United Nations peacekeeping force is deployed along the border.
PS.: Storyline and boldfacing inserted editorially.
