Posição Política da Etiopia

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PELOTAS MUN PAPER CONFERENCE 
ETHIOPIA’S POSITION
AND BASIC INFORMATION
	GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS: 
	Ethiopia belongs to the Southern Hemisphere, since the country is located to the south of Equator line; is also part of the Eastern Hemisphere (east of the Greenwich meridian). Most of the national territory is located above 2 thousand meters of altitude.
 	The capital, Addis Ababa, is located to 2,400 meters above the level of the sea. The country suffers from periodic droughts and has the highest average temperature of the planet: 34 ° C.
	With more than 82.8 million people, Ethiopia has several social problems. According to data released in 2010 by the United Nations (UN), the Human Development Index (HDI) of the country is one of the smallest in the world: 0.328.
	 Half of Ethiopians suffer from chronic malnutrition; the infant mortality rate is alarming (77 deaths per thousand live births) and the illiteracy rate is 64%.
	
	Area: 1,104,300 km².
	Capital: Addis Ababa.
	Languages: Amharic (official), English, regional languages.
	Population: 82,824,732 inhabitants.
	Population density: 75 inhab / km².
	Urban population: 17%.
	Rural population: 83%.
	Life expectancy at birth: 52.2 years.
	HDI: 0,328 (157th place in the world ranking).
Religion: Christianity 54.8% (Orthodox 34,8%, Protestants 17%), Islam 34,1%, Traditional beliefs 10,8%, No religion 0,2, Other 0,1%.
	Government: Parliamentary monarchy.
	Currency: Birr.
	GDP: $ 26.5 billion.
	THE ERITREIA PROBLEM: 
	
	In 1961, Eritrea, which belonged to Ethiopia, began the process of independence. This triggered a war between the two nations, causing the deaths of thousands of people. Eritrea gained political autonomy in 1993, however, the clashes did not cease. A new conflict between 1998 and 2000 led to the deaths of more than 120,000 people and 1.5 million refugees. The economies and infrastructure of the countries have been greatly impaired.
	ECONOMY:	
	 
	The national economy has the main source of financial income in agricultural activity. Ethiopia has cattle herds and is a major producer of sugarcane, oilseeds, beans and, mainly, coffee, which is a major export product.
RELIGIOUS ISSUES
For someone who comes from a civilization where people openly debate the existence of God, this might make the Ethiopian society a bit conservative. Unless you are talking to a somewhat acculturated Ethiopian, it is not acceptable that someone makes what are considered insulting or degrading remarks towards religious values. More so in rural areas where ancient values are kept intact.
HOMOSEXUALITY
One remembers the days where gay people used to be exposed to physical abuse by their communities in the western hemisphere. While at present the rights of gay people is being respected in different parts of the globe, it won't happen anytime soon in Ethiopia. The good news is people are not attacked for being gay anymore. But it is not a matter to discuss and most importantly show in public. Such acts in public places will create havoc.
OPEN SEXUAL DISCUSSIONS
This has been and still remains an area that several NGOs in Ethiopia are trying hard to change. In most parts of Ethiopia sex remains something that people indulge in and not something to discuss about. Due to the failure of parents to have open discussions with their adolescent children is considered by many as one of the reasons for the widespread of HIV in the last decade or so. It is not just with children: many Ethiopians do not discuss their marital sexual life even with friends. It even goes down to the level where a majority of couples do not even talk about their sexual preferences.
 	DRESS CODE
The imposition on women to cover their body and hair with long dresses and shawls is finally fading away, even in rural parts of Ethiopia. Women have now the freedom to pick whatever cloth they want. However in places with religious importance it is not acceptable to wear something that attracts the attention of the opposite sex. A man or woman who does not do so will not be condemned in any way but doing so, internally at least, is considered as taboo.
FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION
In the international African’s Conference happened in Addis Abbeba, capital of Ethiopia, they revealed that traditional acts as Woman Mutilation violated around 100 million of female body just in Africa.
The Genital mutilation is a brutal cultural aspect in more than 28 countries in Africa. Surprisely this practice also are present in Asia and some places in Europe that have a Muslin religion. The Women mutilation can be describe as little incision in the clitoris area or a huge incision that compromises all the genital area. This last description is the most barbarous and painful, that is about the removal of labia minora, with the labia majora putted together, leaving just a hole for the urine and menstrual fluid. The procedure can cause hemorrhaging, scarring, infections and psychological trauma.
In 1999, almost 97 percent of the people favored FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) in Kembatta-Tembaro, an zone area of about 680,000 people in Ethiopia. By 2008, with a campaign and education programs sustained by the KGM less than 5 percent supported the practice. In Ethiopia as a whole, 74 percent of women and girls were mutilated out of a population of 94 million, according to 2005 statistics. 
Meanwhile some groups are fight for the FGM eradication, it’s necessary to understand that a consider number of girls also see the genital cut as a part of your “growing up” cultural aspect. They developing their selves believing that a “Open girl” are not pure and its not ready to marry, so this way of thinking it’s a huge factor that contributes to this violence, that revealing ingrained patriarchal ideals of sexuality and the role of girls and women as primarily mothers and wives.
Hodan, 20, has never gone through the procedure but said she does not consider herself lucky. “All the girls of my age are married. Only I remain single, because people say that I am open,” she complained at the community forum. “If I ever have a daughter, I will make sure she is cut and sealed.”
But another young woman, Kauser, 18, had a different view. “Since the time I was cut I kept bleeding all the time. I am afraid of getting married because I will have to be cut again,” she said.
After hearing testimonies from many women and girls, Fateeh Mohammed Yassin, a single man in his early twenties, remained committed to the tradition. “I do not want a wife who has not been cut at all,” he declared.
KMG ORGANIZATION – A GROUP AGAINST FGM
KMG organization was found in Ethiopia by KMG was founded by 63-year-old Bogaletch Gebre, who grew up in Kembatta-Tembaro and was cut as a girl. Despite most of the girls was not expected to go school, Gebre went on to study biology at universities in Israel and in the state of Massachusetts in the United States as a Fulbright Fellow. 
The principal battle is for the rights of woman and girls, such as economic, social and political aspects. However the biggest female fight in Ethiopia is with the FGM, which are perpetuated as they are passed down from generation to generation. In reason of that, young women and girls are still subject to abduction and physical abuse because it is considered an ordinary practice.
The KMG project started with a community conversation in groups of 50, including people from all walks of life — men and women, young and old, elders and laborers. KMG facilitators guide regular meetings where people discuss issues until they reach consensus.
When KMG started out, issues such as women’s rights were abstract concepts to struggling poor people. So, it addressed day-to-day needs, such as repairing broken bridges and addressing HIV and AIDS. Over time, even taboo subjects such as FGM and gender violence were discussed openly.”
Gebre says that the important part is include the population in the conversation,give than half and social education that allows them reach their own conclusions. It is was crucial in changing deeply rooted practices.
“We don’t dictate, we just discuss. We facilitate. We allow them to talk. In the conversation nobody is wrong, nobody is right, nobody has better knowledge than the other. Every single one has spoken in that group has a value. There’s no judgment. That makes people comfortable to speak their mind. Women for the first time learn that they have something of value that people listen to them.”
Bogaletch Gebre, founder of KGM
THE CHILD MARRIAGE PROBLEM
Child marriage is also a struggle suffer by women in Ethiopia. Despite both genders are victims of this cultural practice, girls are most comum of having the sexual life started early, a fact that is explained by the adult-child marriage.
First of all, it’s important understand that child marriage remains a deeply rooted tradition in Ethiopia despite the legal age of marriage is 18 yeas old. The Criminal Code outlines provides punishment for the perpetrators of early marriage. However, the system of marriage/birth register is not functional, making really hard for the authorities to known if a girl is underage.
Ethiopia has a commitment policy to end the child marriage, called National Strategy and Action on Harmful Traditional Practices against woman and Children, that was realized in 2013 and expired in 2015. Also, at the Girl Summit in July of 2014, the government of Ethiopia committed to end child marriage and FGM by the 2025.
	CULTURAL ASPECTS OF CHILD MARRIAGE
It’s often assumed that families marry off their daugherts for economic reasons, but in Ethiopia, most of the cases are for consolidate family social status. In the south part of the country, Gorche, girls from better families are likely to marry early, because their parents can endow them with land, making them attractive to suitors. Also, elaborate a expensive wedding ceremony demonstrate theim financial position. A curious fact in some cases the parents are no longer the primary instigators of child marriage. Some girls are choosing to marry with their fits child love, making it a decision of their own.
In all the cases, the education problem was connected with the cultural aspect. For most of families, if a girl is no longer in the school, her next step is build her own family. In Ethiopia, because of the poverty, most of boys and girls left school at 12 years old. Eventually, for the parents, as they are not seen as children anymore, the only way to ensure sexual purity is with a marriage.
The combat in this ancestry practice is with the education that can make boys and girls understand that woman can contribute so much more with their sociality as they think. Also is knowing that a girl that reach 10 years of school is 6 times less vulnerable to children marriage.
It’s very known that a early marriage can cause a teenage pregnancy, greater vulnerability to sexually transmitted disease and higher rates of lifetime fertility rate and maternal mortality.
The most successful programs rely on strong government support and often piggyback on local government initiatives. They focus not only on child marriage but also on shifting broader gender roles and inequality, and include men and boys as well as traditional and religious leaders in their interventions.
In order to better target and tailor programs to local realities, there is an urgent need for governments and development partners to collect district level data on child marriage more regularly and to invest in rigorous baseline data collection before embarking on new initiatives.
Human Traffic 
Women in Ethiopia live under constant fear of violence, illness, hunger and poverty and for trying to runaway of that, they are also facing the human trafficking. According to veteran women’s rights campaigner Bogaletch Gebre (of KGM) “When a child is born a girl in Ethiopia she is born into servitude. She is literally there to serve the family”. But despite women are the target of this kind of violence, boys and men are also victims of the traffickers. 
Young people from Ethiopia’s rural areas are aggressively recruited with promises of a better life and are likely targeted because of the demand for cheap labor in the Middle East. The result of these false promises is severe abuse, including physical and sexual assault, denial of salary, sleep deprivation, passport confiscation, and confinement
Girls from Ethiopia’s impoverished rural areas are exploited in domestic servitude and prostitution within the country, while boys are subjected to forced labor in traditional weaving, construction, agriculture, and street vending. Addis Ababa’s central market is the site of numerous brothels, where girls as young as 8 years old are exploited in prostitution.
The Government of Ethiopia does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however Since 2013, Ethiopia has banned its citizens from going to the Gulf to work as domestic workers, and last year enacted a wide-ranging anti-trafficking law that introduces stiffer penalties for traffickers and greater victim protection. Also, in 2015, the government enacted a comprehensive anti-trafficking law, which overhauls existing legislation to define and punish trafficking offenses and to enact measures to support victims of trafficking. 
The country need to continue to make efforts to battle down traffickers, including for internal cases, and compile and share trafficking statistics. Also, it’s important to improve the investigative capacity of police throughout the country to increase prosecutions of internal child trafficking offenses; implement, distribute to, and train law enforcement and judicial officials on the anti-trafficking proclamation. Another way to fight back the problem is requiring registration of all births nationwide, that in Ethiopia is poorly made. 
SEXUAL ABUSE’S CASES IN ADDIS ABEBA
A frustrated representative from the Ethiopian Woman Lawyers Association (EWLA), who was part of the discussion, spoke of a incident in 2013 which a man who has been accused of committing several sexual abuses against a number of small girls and is known by many as such has been released out of jail due to lack of ‘sufficient evidence.’
The word ‘Sufficient evidence’ against child predators in Ethiopia usually mean a laborious procedure that involves victims’ parents, who are often unwilling to come forward to report cases of sexual abuses against their children because it is normally considered a taboo, a report only from police recommended hospitals, which are less than half a dozen, and the police itself, who are often unwilling to see through such cases.
Owing to that, partially, the clear extents of sexual abuses against children in Ethiopia are increasingly getting hard to come by. Coupled with traditional practices of child exploitations of various forms that are socially embedded in most parts of the country and go largely unreported, sexual abuses against children seem they have now become part of the society’s ‘normal life’, says a sociologist at the Addis Ababa University. A 2006 study paper by Save the Children Sweden and The Africa Child Policy Forum on its part states that “violence against children remains a pervasive, but largely ignored issue in many parts of the world, particularly in Africa. This is certainly the case in Ethiopia, where children regularly face humiliating physical punishment and psychological abuse at home, in school and in the community-at-large.”
This paper also referred to a cross-sectional study conducted in Addis Ababa that identified child sexual abuse prevalence rate of 38.5% out of which 29% were committed by victims’ family members. Sixty eight percent of the victims were wronged by adults they knew. This fact reverberates too close to many hearts and ears. Currently, most cases of sexual abuses are filed against adult family members and people whoare close to their victims.
A year ago Ethiopia’s Ministry of Justice has established a center called Integrated Care and Justice Centre for Sexually Abused Women and Children (ICCSAW) located inside Ghandi Memorial Hospital. The establishment of the center is aimed at providing medical services for victims of sexual violence including children. It’s a pilot project taking experience from other African countries.
According to figures obtained by this magazine, in the five months since the center went operational in May last year, 111 cases of sexual violence against children between the ages five to 10 were brought to it of which 47 were committed against children under the age of five. The record also shows that children of both sexes are victims of sexual abuses, although the number of abuses against girls outweighs that of boys.
Victim students’ frequency and tendency of reporting rape to anyone, 2015 (n = 71)
	Variables
	Frequency
	Percentage %
	Frequency of facing rape in life time
	 One time
	39
	55.0
	 Two times
	13
	18.2
	 Three times
	12
	17.0
	 Four times or more
	7
	9.8
	Family shared (knew) about the rape
	 Yes
	14
	19.7
	 No
	57
	80.3
	Rape applied/reported to the legal system or police
	 Yes
	6
	8.4
	 No
	65
	91.6
	Reasons for not sharing/telling to anybody about the rapea 
	 Feeling of shame/guilty
	39
	54.9
	 Afraid of families reaction
	28
	39.4
	 Didn’t know what to do
	26
	36.6
	 Afraid of the public reaction
	14
	19.4
	 Afraid of the perpetrator
	11
	15.4
	 Other
	7
	9.8
			THE MIGRATION CRISIS 
Ethiopia faces the triple challenges of being a host, transit and origin country of migrants and continues to grapple with the multi-dimensional problems in national, regional and international level. In this respect, Ethiopia continues to host 800.00 refugees and migrants in line with its commitment to international protection. As a respond to that, in Summit conference, Ethiopia has made bold commitments to provide 30.00 jobs to refugees in industrial parks, local integration, access to education and health services and scale up its out-of camp policy.
Ethiopia faces daunting challenges of irregular migration of mainly women migrant’s workers. Migrants workers face extortion, gender violence and curtailment of fundamental freedom and rights of labour. They face torture, organ harvest, illegal detention, forced labour, denial of freedom of movement, extortion of wages and discrimination including xenophobia and racism. 
Ethiopia need support to face the migration problems because, despite your country send a huge number to Sudan Africa (Most of that Woman, searching for a better life) they also receive from their neighborhoods. In result of that, is important use the human rights instruments and labour conventions to have interventions. 
Having said this, Ethiopia would like to make the following recommendation in addressing social inclusion and cohesion.
Refine implementation and monitoring mechanism of normative international and regional frameworks of human trafficking and smuggling including the Palermo Protocol.
Foster coherence and synergy in different migration initiatives and encourage ratification and domestication of international human rights system.
Remove legal and administrative barriers that prevent migrant victims from seeking justice through local judicial structure irrespective of their status.
Encourage bilateral overseas employment treaties to meet core humen rights treaties and the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrants Workers and Members of Their Families and the 1948 Employment and Migration Labour Convention.
Encourage new instruments in migrant rights protection and employment standards of overseas employment agencies.
Encourage increased role of migrant wokers defender civil society and nonstate actors in availing legal support to migrant workers.
Work towards financial inclusion of migrants and their families through lowering costs of remittances.
Encourage multi-cultural approach to social inclusion and cohesion through inter-communal dialogue and by recognizing the positive contribution of migrants and encourage inter-communal dialogue.
SOURCES USED 
http://kmgethiopia.org/our-story-2/
https://www.unicef.org/protection/ethiopia_34881.html
http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-women-conference-ethiopia/ethiopian-women-face-new-threat-of-human-trafficking-as-economic-gains-slow-to-trickle-down-idUKKBN13J00Z
https://www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/countries/2016/258765.htm
: http://addisstandard.com/sexual-abuse-against-children-in-ethiopia-increasingly-worrisome/