The Hungry and the Powerless:
Understanding the Politics of Malnutrition in Oromia and Ethiopia
Kulani Jalata
“Kufu Mohamed stands outside his tukul as his mother Amima arrives home with the body
of his four-year-old sister Michu who died of malnutrition near Sheshemene, southern
Ethiopia, June 8, 2008. Kufu, who also suffers of malnutrition, was later taken to a Médecins
Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders intensive care unit.” (REUTERS/Radu Sigheti)
“Behind hunger stands poverty, and behind poverty stands powerlessness to bring about change.” 1
–Patricia L. Kutzner
Introduction:
Although farmers of Asia, Africa, and Latin America produced over half of the grain
harvested worldwide during 1989-90, Patricia L. Kutzner in her 1991 work Contemporary World
Issues: World Hunger points out that at least a billion people within those continents during that
harvest period suffered from hunger.i Today, nineteen years after institutional responses and
media coverage on the world hunger crisis, this paradox, in which food exists in abundance
amidst intensifying world hunger, still plagues the most vulnerable parts of the world. How are
we to understand the unwavering continuance of this global dilemma? Kutzner posits, as the
introductory quote reveals, that beyond poverty, “powerlessness” is the fundamental root of this
global crisis. In this paper, the vulnerable part of the world that I will focus on and seek to
understand the effects of “powerlessness” on a preventable hunger situation is Ethiopia. I aim to
see how the distribution and impact of power or the politics of Ethiopia affect the hunger crisis
and its product, the malnutrition crisis.
Although Kutzner provides this perspective in which “powerlessness” and the effects of
political inequalities should be considered when trying to understand hunger, literature on
exactly how the politics of the Ethiopian government plays a direct role on the malnutrition crisis
within Ethiopia remains to be written. Furthermore, despite the fact that prominent medical
anthropologist Paul Farmer brought forward in Pathologies of Power the notion of “structural
violence” in which an attack by those in power against the human dignity of the powerless can
manifest through poverty and health epidemicsii, what remains to be precisely addressed for is
how an examination of the Ethiopian government’s policies and actions must be made and
From Patricia Kutzner’s Contemporary World Issues: World Hunger, pg. 7. Patricia Kutzner was the Executive
Director for World Hunger Education Service.
1
responded to before attempting to address the country’s severe malnutrition crisis. In this paper, I
seek to initiate the closing of this gap of analysis on the politics of Ethiopian hunger and
malnutrition. While Ethiopia’s history is one that entails continuous famines, droughts, and
hunger and malnutrition crises, it is also one plagued by ethnonational conflicts, political
violence, wars, coups, and a continuous succession of dictatorial regimes ruled by minority
ethnonational groups2. In this context of ethnonational rivalry and violent political struggles for
state power, I aim to unravel what political “powerlessness” and the lack of democracy mean for
the health of the peoples within Ethiopia by examining their effects on the hunger and
malnutrition crisis. In this investigation, I particularly plan to examine the history of
ethnonational domination in Ethiopia and the policies and practices of the current Ethiopian
government and its leader Prime Minister Meles Zenawi3. Then, with this analysis, I intend to
assess whether institutional responses to Ethiopia’s hunger crises, which have been primarily
financial and food assistance, actually address the underlying triggers of malnutrition and hunger
in Ethiopia. Beyond the popularly asked vague question of whether aid helps or hurts, I
specifically question whether short-term financial aid for hunger and malnutrition instead
consolidates the long-term continuation of an undemocratic government and its long record of
human rights abuses. But first, I will begin with describing the nature of the malnutrition crisis in
Ethiopia.
The State of Malnutrition in Ethiopia
Because malnutrition is officially defined as a condition in which “the body does not get
the right amount of the vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients it needs to maintain healthy
tissues and organ function”, malnutrition can generally refer to either getting not enough or too
2
While Ethiopia is composed of over 80 ethnonational groups, there are two specific minority groups that have
maintained absolute state power for Ethiopia’s modern-state history together or in alternating regimes: the Amhara
and the Tigre.
3
2010 marks Meles Zenawi’s nineteenth year of rule.
many nutrients, undernourishment or overnourishment, respectively.iii However, in developing
countries like Ethiopia, undernourishment is the problem epidemic, not overnourishment. Hence,
the disorder of malnutrition in the context of Ethiopia usually equates to undernourishment and
all references to the malnutrition crisis in Ethiopia are references specifically to an
undernourishment crisis. Furthermore, undernourishment, defined as “the condition of people
whose dietary energy consumption is continuously below a minimum dietary energy requirement
for maintaining a healthy life and carrying out a light physical activity with an acceptable
minimum body-weight for attained height,”iv, results in Ethiopia particularly from a lack of
access to adequate food or hunger. So in this paper’s discussion of Ethiopia’s malnutrition
epidemic, because malnutrition and undernourishment are analogous, malnutrition can be said to
be a consequence of hunger crises.
The specific type of undernourishment in Ethiopia that is associated with hunger crises
and that is the most life-threatening is called protein-energy malnutrition (PEM), a deficiency in
the diet of protein and calories.v The two most common PEM diseases, kwashiorkor and
marasmus, hinder physical growth and brain development, diminish energy, and weaken the
immune system.vi While kwashiorkor symptoms include skin and hair discoloration, edema,
diarrhea, a large protruding belly, and lethargy,vii marasmus is characterized by physical
underdevelopment, a depletion of muscle and fat, a weak immune system, and lethargy.viii When
an overlap of these symptoms occurs, the in-between condition is called marasmickwashiorkor.ix But although PEM diseases are particularly defined as a deficiency in protein and
calories, a low protein-intake usually, because it is associated with an inadequate diet altogether,
also means a low consumption of needed vitamins and minerals as well, which is another
debilitating type of malnutrition.x
Although according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN that 44% of
Ethiopia’s population (34.6 million people) are estimated4 to be malnourished,xi there seems to
be a focus in research and policy response on the children portion of this percentage. In a policy
research paper by Patricia Silva of the Environment Department of the World Bank, three terms
were stated to be indicators of malnutrition in children of Ethiopia: stunting (too low height
considering age), wasting (“low weight-for-height”), and underweight (low weight for age).xii
With about half of all children under the age of five suffering from malnutrition, it is the child
malnutrition rates of Ethiopia, Silva crucially notes, that is one of the highest in the world.xiii But
with this focus on children, what remains opaque in Silva’s research and various other research
papers about malnutrition in Ethiopia is the extent of the crisis and the deaths it causes in
adolescent and adult populations. Kutzner provides some insight as to why when she writes the
following:
No one really knows how many deaths of adults or children above the age of five can be attributed to
hunger-related causes. Long before starvation sets in, the body loses its resistance to infections and
diseases. Public health records, if a record occurs at all, list only immediate causes of death such as
respiratory failure, diarrhea, tuberculosis, measles, hemorrhage, and so on. The role of undernutrition,
anemia, or vitamin A deficiency is rarely mentioned. xiv
Although malnutrition in Ethiopia undeniably has no age limit, Kutzner explains here that for
people above the age of five, diagnoses of causes of death are usually not associated with
undernutrition or undernourishment since these are more indirect causes of death and therefore
are more difficult to ascertain. In other words, because biologically or medically understanding
the impact of malnutrition on adult populations in Ethiopia is more complicated than in the
population of children below the age of five, there seems to be an emphasis on developing
diagnostic tools and research on the more transparent malnutrition crisis of children below five.
Additionally, the devastating effect on Ethiopia’s society and economic development when
4
2004-2006 estimation.
unaddressed child malnutrition produces an adult population that is permanently “intellectually
stunted” because of the irreversible mental damage that malnutrition leads to during childhood is
a highly acknowledged possibility that concerns many.xv
However, the most malnourished population of Ethiopia in reality has no age boundaries:
the rural poor. With a 2010 estimate of 80.51% to be the share of the rural population of
Ethiopiaxvi and with 80.7 %5 of the people living on less than two dollars a dayxvii, it is within
these large portions of the poor and rural that the majority of the 34.6 million malnourished
sector of Ethiopian society falls into. How are we to understand from what specifically such a
large sector of Ethiopia’s population is suffering?
In Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics Amartya Sen’s Poverty and Famines, Sen
critically notes that hunger, the forerunner of malnutrition in Ethiopia, “is the characteristic of
some people not having enough food to eat. It is not the characteristic of there being not enough
food to eat.”xviii In the context of Ethiopia, Sen defends this assertion that hunger does not result
from food shortages when he discusses about the devastating 1972-73 famine (leading to a
hunger crisis) of the rural parts of Ethiopia’s Tigrayan and Wollo regions. Sen notes that
according to the National Bank of Ethiopia, agricultural output for the Ethiopian state increased
ordinarily in the years before the famine and that there was “very little evidence of a dramatic
decline in food availability in Ethiopia coinciding with the famine.”xix Yet during this famine,
600,000 agriculturally-based peasants perished and international food aid was eventually
desperately sought for.xx Today, with a national hunger epidemic effecting 34.6 million and
evidence that the food resources of Ethiopia are still sufficient to feed all6, how are we to
5
2003 estimate.
Refer to pgs 5-8 of Harwood Schaffer’s “Impoverishment, Hunger, Undernutrition and Authoritarianism in Oromia
and Ethiopia.” Not published yet. Schaffer is a Research Associate in the Agricultural Policy Analysis Center of the
Department of Agricultural Economics at the University of Tennessee.
6
pinpoint then the basis of a seemingly endless Ethiopian hunger and malnutrition crisis? While
Sen proposes that hunger is an economic failure in which the “inability to establish entitlement to
food”xxi or a limited purchasing power is the central problem, he however does not explain how
such limited entitlements have come to be. Put simply, he does not address how such economic
problems are the “product” of a political system.xxii
The Politics of Hunger in Ethiopia
Ethnonational Domination and Exploitation in Ethiopia
Just recently at the United Nations’ Human Rights Council Sixth Universal Periodic
Review7 session, the representative8 for the United States criticized the Ethiopian government for
not adhering to its claim of ethnic federalism and fair representation of all ethnonational
groups.xxiii “The U.S. recommends that Ethiopia conduct a review to examine the ethnic balance
in government,” stated the representative. xxiv Although critical, this is a mild recommendation to
make considering that since the very formation of the Ethiopian state, a state composed of over
80 ethnonational groups, Ethiopian governments have always been ethnically unbalanced and
dominated by either or both of two related ethnonational groups: the Tigray and the Amhara,
referred to historically as Abyssinians.
During the mid-nineteenth century, Tigrayan king Yohannes IV and Amhara king
Menelik II, using Christianity as a religious “bridge” to connect to Europe, established an
alliance with European imperialists in order to colonize the peoples within the state known today
as Ethiopia.xxv Sociologist Asafa Jalata explains in Oromia and Ethiopia that while rival
European powers Britain, France, Russia, and Italy all competed to have regional influence in the
Horn of Africa during the “Scramble for Africa”, Yohannes and Menelik sought to use European
7
Held in Geneva, Switzerland, from November 30th to December 11th, 2009.
Douglas M. Griffiths, Deputy Permanent Representative serving as Chargé, ad interim, for the U.S. Mission to the
United Nations
8
modern weaponry to conquer and colonize their most resource-rich, formidable rivals, the
Oromo as well as other ethnonational groups.xxvi It was an exchange of resources and weapons
between European powers and Abyssinian colonialists motivated no differently than direct
European colonialism: to exploit labor and extract economic resources from the Oromo and other
peoples.xxvii
This colonial domination of the Oromo, a group that today represents 40% of the
Ethiopian population,xxviii and other peoples by Abyssinian rulers continued throughout the next
centuries: Amhara emperor Haile Selassie (1935-1974), Amhara Colonel Mengistu Haile
Mariam9 (1974-1991), and today Tigrayan ruler Meles Zenawi (1991- ). What should be
carefully noted though is that the transitions between these regimes were all violent and based on
coups. Furthermore, since 1974, various liberation movements of the colonized peoples such as
the Oromo Liberation Front and the Ogaden National Liberation Front have been struggling to
attain independence from Ethiopian colonialism.
And such is the state of Ethiopia today: the minority Tigrayan ethnonational group, which
represents 6.2%xxix of the population, holds total political and economic power by force, and is in
a constant, violent armed struggle with liberation movements. What does this mean for how the
government addresses food crises? According to Assefa Regassa Geleta10, an ex-member of the
Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture and also a research scientist on food security for the US,
“Instead of addressing the root causes11 of food insecurity, successive Ethiopian governments
have been spending the country’s scarce resources on building a strong military to maintain the
territorial integrity of an empire created by force and to consolidate their power.”xxx In other
9
Mengistu broke ties with the West and collaborated with the Soviet Union to attain access to modern weaponry.
This Assefa Geleta is not the same person as Asafa Jalata.
11
Geleta states that “low agricultural productivity, poor marketing systems, a rapidly growing population, and
poverty” are the immediate causes of food insecurity and hunger in Ethiopia (66).
10
words, the very existence and maintenance of today’s Ethiopian government depends upon
neglecting the food needs of the peoples within Ethiopia. Moreover, after importantly noting that
the Oromo region of Ethiopia receives the least amount of food assistance when in crisis, Geleta
goes on to assert that for governments illegitimately holding on to power like Ethiopia’s, the
distribution of food itself becomes a political instrument: “Under such conditions, food becomes
a currency with which to buy political support and famine a weapon to be used against the
opposition.”xxxi Because the Oromo are the majority ethnonational group, have access to the most
resource-rich regions of Ethiopia, and are currently waging war against Ethiopian colonialism,
they are considered the most formidable threat to Ethiopian colonialists—hence the denial of
adequate food aid to the Oromo region when in a malnutrition crisis.
Such food deprivation, writes Jenny Edkins in her essay “The Criminalization of Mass
Starvations”, is considered a war crime under Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International
Criminal Court which states that, “ ‘intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of
warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including willfully
impeding relief supplies’,” is a crime against humanity.xxxii What this implies is that the
Ethiopian government and its leader Prime Minister Meles Zenawi are not only responsible for
serious crimes against humanity, but that the malnutrition crisis of Ethiopia can not be addressed
simply by funneling financial and foods assistance to a government indictable for such war
crimes.
Looking at Ethiopia’s neighbor Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s president, was on July
14, 2008, indicted by the ICC for war crimes.xxxiii But although al-Bashir used the halting of food
and medical aid to Sudanese civilians of the Darfur region as a weapon of political war as
well,xxxiv al-Bashir was not officially indicted for the crime of intentional starvationxxxv; he was
indicted for “five counts of crimes against humanity: murder, extermination, forcible transfer,
torture and rape.”xxxvi This could mean that the current reality unfortunately is that neglecting
malnutrition is not yet considered serious enough to be an indictable crime despite the Article in
the Rome Statute of the ICC. Additionally, it could mean that convincingly proving the
criminality of the government in terms of malnutrition crises was more difficult than it seemed.
However, looking back at Ethiopia, if we further examine the Ethiopian government and
investigate the practices and economic, health, and agricultural policies of Zenawi’s
administration, we can start to determine the role that Zenawi and the Ethiopian government are
currently playing in the malnutrition crisis.
Investigating Meles Zenawi and the Ethiopian Government
Francoise Piguet, a United Nations field officer in Ethiopia, alleges that despite the fact
that Ethiopian officials blame droughts or hostile weather for hunger and malnutrition crises in
Ethiopia, these crises “ha[ve] been created mainly by poor economic policies.”xxxvii In his article
“Food Crisis in Ethiopia: Drought or Poor Economic Policies?”, Piguet states that the policies of
the Ministry of Agriculture and the market system of Ethiopia work against the large peasant
farmer population by for example institutionalizing an “unequal exchange system”: driving down
the prices peasants sell their harvest and driving up the prices of the food they must purchase to
subsist.xxxviii
But what is further important to consider when looking at the economic undermining of
peasant farmers in Ethiopia is the new phenomenon of land-grabbing of these farmers’ lands by
investing foreign companies. Tamrat G. Giorgis, Addis Fortune staff writer, explains in the
following:
A new global trend is rising whereby companies from emerging economies grab vast land in poor host
nations to grow and export cereals and grains to their home countries. It has happened here in Bako [,
Ethiopia,], where people from India have been granted tens of thousands of hectares of land for commercial
farming. The locals however, are unhappy.xxxix
While the Indian company Karuturi Global LTD has invested 4.3 billion dollarsxl to lease
765,000 hectaresxli of farmland from the Ethiopian government, peasant farmers have lost the
lands they once farmed for subsistence to foreign investors and a land-expropriating government.
Giorgis notes that Olivier De Schutter, a UN rapporteur, explained the central problem in this
phenomenon: “ ‘Frequently, they [farmers] do not have property titles to the land upon which
they depend for their survival and well-being. They do not have possibilities of legal recourse in
the event of expropriation’.”xlii Besides India, various other foreign investors have been seizing
subsistence farmable land: Olusegun Obasanjo, the former president of Nigeria, just purchased
20,000 sqm of land in Oromia, the region known as the breadbasket of Ethiopia, to invest in
tourism and hotelsxliii; Ismael Omar Guelleh, president of Djibouti, purchased 10,000 sqm of land
in Bishoftu, Oromia, (“Debre Zeit”) to build “a holiday home” and 3,000 hectares in Bale,
Oromia, for agriculture productionxliv; and Egypt made a multimillion-dollar agricultural
investment in 20,000 hectares of land.xlv What is critical to note here is that these lands are in
Oromia, the land of the Oromos—the primary political targets of the government.
What does this prioritization of foreign economic investments over the land rights of
Oromo farmers mean for the hunger and malnutrition crises? With the WHO estimating in
September 2009 that 6.2 million people in Ethiopia were in urgent need of food assistancexlvi, the
subsistence farmers who lost their farms to government land expropriation and foreign investors
are likely to join or have already joined this 6.2 million. Furthermore, what remains unanswered
or unverified by documentation is where the money paid by investors is ending up. While the
WHO makes such chilling projections about the hunger crisis, Ethiopian news and opinion
journal Ethiopian Review announced in December 2009 that Prime Minister Meles Zenawi had
amassed a net worth of $1.2 billion making him the “11th richest head of government in the
world.”xlvii Although it is quite difficult to currently prove from where Zenawi accumulated such
wealth, there should be a serious concern as to how the leader of one of the poorest and most
hungry countries in the world has been able to attain such prosperity.
Besides this reputation for economic corruption, Zenawi’s human rights abuse record is
one that places him, according to the President of Genocide Watch, Dr. Gregory Stanton, in the
ranks of recently indicted Omar al-Bashir.xlviii In a letter to the United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights, Dr. Stanton stated that the Ethiopian government organized
Ethiopian National Defense Forces and civilian militia groups to ruthlessly massacre 424 people
from the Anuak ethnonationality in Gambella, Ethiopia, on December 2003.xlix The
government’s motive was to suppress Anuak opposition to “exclude them from any involvement
in the drilling for oil on their indigenous land,”l:
As militia groups chanted “Today is the day for killing Anuak,” both the military and militias used
machetes, axes and guns to kill the unarmed victims, frequently raping the women while chanting, “Now
there will be no more Anuak children.”li
Reports from Amnesty International, the U.S. State Department, and the Human Rights Watch
can all continue to list Zenawi’s and the Ethiopian government’s extensive record of chilling
crimes against the politically and economically oppressed peoples of Ethiopia. So if we realize
that the Zenawi regime holds responsibility for a politically and economically motivated
genocide and, by looking at what was previously addressed, that the regime’s authoritarian
nature and ethnonational make-up inevitably inhibit an adequate and accountable response to
hunger and malnutrition crises, we then can trace more clearly the root sources of the ceaseless
malnutrition epidemic of Ethiopia.
Furthermore, with this analysis, international organizations and Western governments
striving to alleviate the suffering of the hungry and to eventually eradicate malnutrition in
Ethiopia should be able to approach this health crisis of Ethiopia more effectively. However, I
have come to the conclusion that the current predominant approach that such institutions are
taking to fight malnutrition in Ethiopia, although undeniably necessary and beneficial for the
short-term, is for the long-term perpetuating the malnutrition crisis, as well as other crises.
Evaluating Current Institutional Responses and Implications for the Future
For the past three decades, Ethiopia has received more emergency food aid than any other
African country.lii Looking at recent statistics for 2009, while Britain granted 316 million dollars
in food aid,liii USAID provided an estimated 575 million dollars in food and disaster aid to
Ethiopia.liv Amidst this constant funneling of large bundles of financial and food aid to Ethiopia,
questions about when Ethiopia will not need aid and why hunger and malnutrition crises
continue to worsen have arisen. Back in 2004, the administrator of USAID, Andrew Natsios,
asserted that, “While donors can assist, the ultimate responsibility for putting in place an
enabling environment that will facilitate pro-poor economic growth [necessary to eliminate
malnutrition] rests with the Government of Ethiopia.”lv But if Natsios had realized that the very
undermining of the nutrition of the poor and mostly politically unrepresented portion of
Ethiopian society actually sustains the Ethiopian government, he would have had to reassess his
statement. Instead of stating that “donors can assist”, there needs to be a realization that in order
to address the malnutrition crisis of Ethiopia, Ethiopia’s political crises stemming from
authoritarianism and ethnonational domination must be addressed as well. If not, sending
financial and food aid to Ethiopia while turning a blind eye to the Ethiopian government’s
policies and human rights abuses is instead consolidating a corrupt regime and also its use of
hunger as a political weapon.
Because it was the famine of 1972-73 that led to violent civil unrest and the overthrow of
Emperor Haile Selassie I’s regime in 1974 and also the 1984-85 famine that led to the eventual
topple of Colonel Mengistu’s regime12, there is a noticeable pattern in Ethiopia of food crises
eventually leading to social uprisings and political coups. Another noticeable pattern is
successive Ethiopian regimes’ denial of the extent or existence of a hunger crisis. While recently
the UN just announced that 5 million people in Ethiopia will be needing emergency food aid for
the first half of 2010lvi, the Disaster Prevention Minister of Ethiopia was quoted telling BBC that
although “although 5.7 million people [are] currently getting food aid”, “ ‘in the Ethiopian
context, there is no hunger, no famine.”lvii Considering this denial is being made at the beginning
this election year of 2010, the possibility of political uprisings partially triggered by neglected
hunger and malnutrition crises does exist.
Conclusion
In Ethiopia, authoritarianism and corrupt economic policies perpetuate poverty, hunger
crises, and the problem of malnutrition. From this analysis, I have come to the conclusion that
institutional responses in the form of food aid and other assistances from international
organizations and Western countries have not and cannot solve these economic and health
disorders. If institutional responses from the West are limited to feeding the hungry through the
agencies of the Ethiopian government and exclude pressuring for political reform by the which
the peoples of Ethiopia could attain political and economic control over their lives, the problem
of hunger and malnutrition will remain a permanent part of Ethiopia. In order to overcome
poverty and related economic and health problems, the peoples of Ethiopia must be politically
empowered and must have a representative, accountable government.
12
The Derg, a military junta led by Miriam Mengistu, ruled from 1974 to 1991.
References
i
Kutzner, Patricia. Contemporary World Issues: World Hunger. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, Inc. 1991.
pg.1.
ii
Farmer, Paul. Pathologies of Power. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2005. pg. 8.
iii
“Malnutrition.” The Free Dictionary. <http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/malnutrition>.
iv
FAO Statistics Division. <http://www.fao.org/economic/ess/food-security-statistics/food-securitystatistics-metadata/en/>.
v
World Hunger Facts 2009.
<http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm)>.
vi Kutzner, Patricia. Contemporary World Issues: World Hunger. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, Inc. 1991.
pg. 171.
vii “Kwashiorkor.” New York Times.
<http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/kwashiorkor/overview.html>.
viii “Marasmus.” <http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/m/marasmus/intro.htm>.
ix “Marasmus.” <http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/984496-overview>.
x Kutzner, Patricia. Contemporary World Issues: World Hunger. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, Inc.
1991.pg. 171.
xi FAO Statistics Division. <http://www.fao.org/economic/ess/food-security-statistics/en/>.
xii Silva, Patricia. Environmental Factors and Children’s Malnutrition in Ethiopia. The World Bank:
Environment Department. January 2005. pg. 6.
xiii Ibid, pg 2.
xiv Kutzner, Patricia. Contemporary World Issues: World Hunger. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, Inc.
1991.pg.159.
xv Wines, Michael. “Malnutrition is Cheating Its Survivors, and Africa’s Future.” The New York Times.
December 28, 2006.
<http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9406e5dd1f31f93ba15751c1a9609c8b63&sec=
health&spon=&pagewanted=1>.
xvi Omamo, Steven Were, et al. Strategic Priorities for Agricultural Development in Eastern and
Central Africa. Washington D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute. 2006. pg. 5.
xvii Ibid pg 31.
xviii Sen, Amartya. Poverty and Famines. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1981. pg. 1.
xix Ibid, pg. 92.
xx United Nations Environment Programme. GEO: Global Environment Outlook.
<http://www.unep.org/geo/geo3/english/453.htm>.
xxi Sen, Amartya. Poverty and Famines. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1981. pg. 8.
xxii Edkins, Jenny. “The Criminalization of Mass Starvations: From Natural Disaster to Crime Agains
Humanity.” The New Famines: Why Famines Persist in an Era of Globalization. London: Routledge.
2007. pg 53.
xxiii
Griffiths, Douglass M. United Nations Webcast: Human Rights Council Sixth Universal Periodic
Review. November 30-December 11, 2009. www.un.org/webcast.
xxiv Ibid.
xxv Jalata, Asafa. Oromia and Ethiopia: State Formation and Ethnonational Conflict, 1868-2004.
Trenton: The Red Sea Press, Inc. 2005. pg 65-67.
xxvi Ibid, pg. 67-69.
xxvii Ibid, pg. 73.
“Ethiopia-Geography, Administrative Decisions, Economy, Demographics, Culture, Archaeology,
Sports.” Cambridge Encyclopedia. Vol. 24.
<http://encyclopedia.stateuniversity.com/pages/7132/Ethiopia.html>.
xxix “Ethiopia Demographics Profile 2009.”
< http://www.indexmundi.com/ethiopia/demographics_profile.html>.
xxx Geleta, Assefa R. “Food Insecurity: A Real Threat to the Oromo People.” The Journal of Oromo
Studies. Vol. 14, No. 2. A Publication of the Oromo Studies Association. July 2007. pg. 66.
xxxi Ibid, pg. 74.
xxxii Edkins, Jenny. “The Criminalization of Mass Starvations: From Natural Disaster to Crime Agains
Humanity.” The New Famines: Why Famines Persist in an Era of Globalization. London: Routledge.
2007. pg. 58.
xxxiii Maweni, Rumbidzai. “Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir indicted by the ICC: What’s
Next?”
<http://www.globalsolutions.org/issues/sudans_president_omar_hassan_al_bashir_indicted_icc_w
hat_s_next>.
xxxiv Prendergast, John. “Obama Must Halt Starvation in Darfur.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
March 2009.
<http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/2009/03/22/prendergasted_0322.html>.
xxxv Edkins, Jenny. “The Criminalization of Mass Starvations: From Natural Disaster to Crime Agains
Humanity.” The New Famines: Why Famines Persist in an Era of Globalization. London: Routledge.
2007. pg. 62
xxxvi Rice, Xan. “Sudanese President Bashir Charged with Darfur War Crimes.” Guardian. March 2009.
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/04/omar-bashir-sudan-president-arrest>.
xxxvii Piguet, Francois. “Food Crisis in Ethiopia: Drought or Poor Economics Policies?” Review of
African Political Economy, Vol. 30, No. 97, The Horn of Conflict (Sept., 2003). pg 488.
xxxviii Ibid, 486-487.
xxxix Giorgis, Tamrat G. “A Stranger Comes to Town.” Addis Fortune. Vol. 10, No. 486. August 23, 2009.
pg. 1.
< http://www.addisfortune.com/Vol%2010%20No%20486%20Archive/agenda.htm>.
xl Ibid.
xli O’Kadameri, Billie. “Indina Company Acquires 765, 000 hectares of land in Ethiopia.” Ethiopian
Review. November 2009. < http://www.ethiopianreview.com/content/11418>.
xlii Giorgis, Tamrat. “A Stranger Comes to Town.” Addis Fortune. Vol. 10, No. 486. August 23, 2009.
pg. 3. <http://www.addisfortune.com/Vol%2010%20No%20486%20Archive/agenda.htm>.
xliii “World Leaders are Taking Notice of Land in Debre Zeit.” Capital. Vol. 12. No. 577.
<http://www.capitalethiopia.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12046:globalvillage&catid=12:local-news&Itemid=4>.
xliv Ibid.
xlv “Ethiopia’s Ruling Junta Gives Egypt 20,000 Hectares of Land.” Ethiopian Review. December 30,
2009. <http://www.ethiopianreview.com/content/12018>.
xlvi “Ethiopia: Emergency and Humanitarian Action.” Weekly update: September 13, 2009. World
Health Organization.
<http://www.who.int/hac/crises/eth/sitreps/13september2009/en/index.html>.
xlvii “Editing War Over Ethiopian Dictator’s Net Worth.” Ethiopian Review.
< http://www.ethiopianreview.com/content/11785>.
xlviii Stanton, Gregory. “An Open Letter to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Justice Navanathem Pillay.” March 23, 2009. Link can be found on: <
http://www.genocidewatch.org/ethiopia.html>.
xlix Ibid.
xxviii
Ibid.
Ibid.
lii Greste, Peter. “Ethiopia’s Food Aid Addiction.” BBC News. February 2006. <
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4671690.stm>.
liii “Britain Grants $316-M Food Aid for Ethiopia.” Sudan Tribune. November 2009.
<http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article33153>.
liv USAID: Ethiopia Fact Sheet. Find link on: < http://www.usaid.gov/locations/subsaharan_africa/countries/ethiopia/>.
lv Natsios, Andrew S. Introductory Letter in “Breaking the Cycle of Food Crises: Famine Prevention
in Ethioipa.” USAID. May 2004. Find link on: <http://www.usaid.gov/locations/subsaharan_africa/countries/ethiopia/>.
lvi “Nearly 5 Million Ethiopians Will Need Food Aid In First Half of 2010.” UN News Centre. December
2009. <http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=33176&Cr=ethiopia&Cr1=>.
lvii “Ethiopia Rejects Warning of Hunger after Drought.” Somaliland Press. January 1, 2009. <
http://somalilandpress.com/10555/ethiopia-rejects-warning-of-hunger-after-drought/>.
l
li
Acknowledgements:
I would like to thank Professor Georges Reniers, Professor Joao Biehl, Pablo L.Ruiloba, and
Henry Barmeier from the Writing Center for their insights and advice.