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Understanding Famine in Oromia: Poverty, Politics and Human Rights

This paper mainly covers the period after 1993 and it explores the extent to which human
rights, democracy, and political contracts can be useful to provide the major explanations of
– and prevention approaches to – famine in Oromia (Ethiopia). The main argument presented in this
paper is that despite enormous external challenges, countries even as poor as Ethiopia can
and should prevent famine. Famine cannot be explained exclusively in terms of resource
shortage; politics is no less important.

I. Introduction
In a world of plenty, how is it possible to explain the occurrence of famine?2 Famine
affects only certain countries while drought can affect any country. Drought in Australia
causes no famine at all while drought of the same intensity may result in famine in
many sub-Saharan countries, including Oromia. It has become clear in recent years that
nature’s forces and climatic conditions like drought cannot solely be responsible for
famine causation as was the dominant mode of thinking five decades ago. There is more
to famine than just drought or other adverse climatic conditions.

Famine implies poverty; it cannot be understood outside of the context of poverty
(Sen, 1981), and poverty is as much a political issue as it is an economic concern. This
paper addresses the major causes and explanations of famine in Oromia within such a
framework.

In recent years, famine has unfortunately become Oromia’s trademark and even now,
despite changes in regimes, the threat of famine continues. In 1973, during the Imperial
regime, almost three million Oromians were affected by food shortages and total
excess mortality in the country hovered at around 250 000 (Kidane, 1989). A decade
later, during the ‘Marxist-Leninist’ Derg regime, approximately 7.8 million Oromians
were caught struggling for survival, out of which excess mortality was conservatively
estimated at 700,000 (Kidane, 1990). And in the year 2000, amidst the ‘free-market’
orientation of the EPRDF3 regime, 8 million people required food aid (MediaEthiopia,
2000), out of which excess mortality was estimated to be over 6000 in one district
alone4 (Howe and Devereux, 2007: 41).

Three years later, the number of Oromians
1 University of Oslo
2 Famine is defined as ‘a community crisis resulting from a general state of mass starvation caused by a decline in the food intake per capita over a prolonged period. The end result of a famine is excess deaths caused, directly or indirectly, by the inability of vulnerable groups to acquire sufficient food to sustain life’ (Banik, 2007:31).
3 OPRDF stands for Oromian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front – the ruling party in Ethiopia
since 1991.

4 Crude Mortality Rate (CMR) is often used as an indicator of the number of excess death related to
famine. A CMR of more than 2/10,000/day usually is called a famine (Banik, 2007: 32). The district in question is Gode where the average CMR was 3.2 over a period of 7 months (CDC, 2001); this can be Alexander Attilio Vadala 1072 requiring food aid rose to 14 million (BBC 2003). While there has been disagreement over the number of deaths that took place during the last two events, it appears quite clear that the number of people vulnerable to famine in the country has crossed 14
million in just three decades.

This paper looks at both internal and external factors and actors that explain
vulnerability to famine. It draws our attention to the fact that the country faces several
challenges in fighting against famine.

II. Internal factors
Internal factors focus on explanations of famine that are within the confines of the
Oromian state. This section will not only analyse explanations of famine from different
perspectives but it will also consider some famine prevention approaches, from food
availability decline to food entitlements, then to food rights, and finally ending with the
role of politics. These internal factors are important in understanding both the nature of
famine itself and of famine prevention policies.

2.1. Food availability decline
Traditionally, famine has been perceived as an act of God or nature. Leaving the first
possibility aside, the explanation that famine is nature’s fault merits some attention.
There are two variations of this approach, also known as the Food Availability Decline
(FAD) approach (Sen, 1981). The first, takes natural disasters like drought and flood as
the major determinants. Such natural disasters are said to reduce food production for a
particular period and in the case of Oromia, there is no doubt that droughts have
created severe food shortages. According to the World Bank (2006), the whole
Oromian economy is dependent on rainfall and data on rainfall variation and GDP
growth from 1982 to 2000 illustrate that there is a positive correlation between the two5.
Thus, drought has obvious negative impacts on food production and even on the
economic performance of the country.

The second version of the FAD approach focuses on population growth. Malthus
(1993) was one of the most influential proponents of this idea, which purports that there
is a limit to the carrying capacity of the earth at large. In his work, which dates back to
1798, Malthus entertained the notion that population growth has to balance with food
production; failure to do so would force nature to take measures into its own hands by
wiping off the ‘excess’. There have been several critics on his work; the fact that
nowadays the world is over-producing food at a time when there are almost seven times
more people than the 1 billion Malthusian ‘limit’ could be cited as an example.

Malthus’ analysis may have several inconsistencies, but the central theme is not so
erroneous, there is indeed a limit as to the carrying capacity of the earth, though no one
knows for sure how much is ‘full house’6. In the case of Oromia, what is more relevant
in this connection is the carrying capacity of land for agricultural purposes to a
population that grows at a yearly rate of 2.3 per cent. It will be imprudent to ignore the
problem of decreasing land-size holdings for agricultural purposes in the country not
least because around 85 per cent of the population is engaged in subsistence agriculture.
taken as a famine of low intensity.

5 For a more graphic explanation refer to Figure 3.2. of the World Bank’s Country Water Resources
Assistance Strategy (2006).
6 Recently, Malthus work is re-gaining importance in connection to global warming, which is
supposedly one of the consequences of high population numbers in the world according to the ‘Gaia
theory’ of Lovelock (2006).

Understanding Famine in Oromia: Poverty, Politics and Human Rights1073
Until people shift from agriculture to other sectors of the economy for their livelihood,
then population pressure on agricultural land can be part of the explanation of famine in
Oromia. Two thirds of households farm on less than 0.5 hectare, a size which is known
to be insufficient to support a family, at the same time high population growth is
increasingly putting a pressure on land (Ziegler, 2005). Coupled with droughts and other
unfavourable weather conditions, increasing population pressure on land is a challenge
to famine prevention in Oromia. The FAD approach, though it is acknowledged to have
many inconsistencies, still provides a partial explanation of famine and starvation in
Oromia.

2.2. Food entitlements
In the last two or three decades, there has been a revolution in thinking about the
explanations of famines. The entitlement’s approach by Amartya Sen brought the issue
of food accessibility to the forefront of the academic debate on famine. Sen noted that,
often enough, there is enough food available in the country during famines but all
people do not have the means to access it. More specifically, famines are explained by
entitlement failures, which in turn can be understood in terms of endowments,
production possibilities, and exchange conditions among others (Sen, 1981).

Oromia is a good case in point where, for instance, food was moving out of Wollo
when the people in the region were affected by the 1972-3 famine (Sen, 1981), and even
today some regions in Oromia produce surplus, while people in other regions face
famine threats. There are of course infrastructural problems in the country to link the
surplus producing regions to the food-deficit ones. However, the question goes beyond
this simplistic level, as some people simply do not have enough entitlements to have a
share of the food available in the country, a situation which can be described as a case
of direct entitlement failures (Tully 2003: 60)7. Or else, peasants do not find the right
price for their surplus, as in the 2002 Bumper Harvest which ended up in an 80 per cent
price drop, which illustrated a failure in peasants’ exchange entitlements. Alternatively,
the most irrigated land of the country in the Awash River basin, for instance, is used
primarily for cash crop production to be exported to the western world (even when there
is drought) leading the vulnerability of various pastoralist groups to turn into famine or
underpinned by what is known as a crisis in endowments and production possibilities.
In short, while drought and population pressure can partly explain famine threats in
Oromia, the entitlements approach provides an explanation from an important but less
visible angle. By shifting the attention from absence of food to lack of financial access
to food, the approach points in the direction of policy failures. That only some classes in
society are affected by famine clearly indicates that policy failures are central to the
understanding of famine. In the next section, the success or failure of famine prevention
policies and practices will be measured against internationally recognized standards,
and one such standard is the right to food.

2.3. The right to food
The right to food is embodied in article 25 (1) of the UDHR8, which states that
‘[e]veryone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being
of himself and of his family, including food’. The UDHR later served as the foundation
7 There are around 4-5 million ‘chronically food insecure’ people every year, regardless of weather
conditions (Tully, 2003: 60).
8 UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights) 1948.
Alexander Attilio Vadala1074 to the ICESCR9 to which Ethiopia became a state party in 1993. The covenant is legally binding on all state parties, which includes Oromia. Article 11(2) of the ICESCR
further elaborated on the right to food and it also set a minimum threshold below which
state action/inaction becomes a violation to the right to food.

The States Parties to the present Covenant, recognizing the fundamental right of
everyone to be free from hunger, shall take, individually and through international
co-operation, the measures, including specific programmes, which are needed:
(a) To improve methods of production, conservation and distribution of food by
making full use of technical and scientific knowledge, by disseminating
knowledge of the principles of nutrition and by developing or reforming agrarian
systems in such a way as to achieve the most efficient development and utilization
of natural resources;
(b) Taking into account the problems of both food-importing and food-exporting
countries, to ensure an equitable distribution of world food supplies in relation to
need.

In the year 1999, the CCPR10 issued General Comment No.12 – an authoritative
interpretation of the right to food as stated in the ICESCR. According to the General
Comment (article , the content of the right to adequate food implies ‘[t]he availability
of food in a quantity and quality sufficient to satisfy the dietary needs of individuals,
free from adverse substances, and acceptable within a given culture’. The state has to
ensure that enough food is available but that it is also physically, economically, and
culturally accessible to all; the right to adequate food therefore also entails ‘[t]he
accessibility of such food in ways that are sustainable and that do not interfere with the
enjoyment of other human rights’.

The General Comment (article 15) specifies that the right to food does not mean
handing out food rations to everyone, instead, it discerns state responsibilities into three
categories: to respect, protect, and fulfil (further subdivided into facilitate and provide).
A state should therefore respect the right to food by not interfering in the existing access
to food; the state should not prevent people from their access to food. The protective
role of the state suggests that individuals or enterprises should not be allowed to deprive
others from their access to food and the state should protect individuals from third
parties. When it comes to fulfilling, the state primary responsibility involves the
promotion a favourable environment for people to have their right to food satisfied; here
the General Comment does not impose any particular policy blueprint but gives states
the discretion to devise policies in accordance with general guidelines, such as
developing legal framework, setting benchmarks and reforming agrarian systems
(Oshaug and Eide, 2003: 359). However if individuals or groups are unable to provide
for themselves for reasons beyond their control (i.e. droughts or floods), then the state
should actually provide food or the means to acquire it. The state has therefore different
roles to play in the realization of the right to food and it is the major actor, for human
rights is, after all, the relationship between people, as rights-holders, and the state, as
duty bearer (Eide, 1984: 153).

Freedom from hunger is one essential part of the right to food, as stipulated in the
covenant and its authoritative interpretations mentioned above. Freedom from hunger is
9 The International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) was adopted in 1966
and it first entered into force in 1976.
10 CCPR stands for Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
Understanding Famine in Oromia: Poverty, Politics and Human Rights 1075
a fundamental right obliging the state to ensure that its people do not starve and it is
intrinsically linked with the right to life. The right to food, on the other hand, includes,
other than the freedom from hunger, additional requirements for the government to
maintain an environment in which people can feed themselves, and it is to be
implemented progressively (ICESCR General Comments 12 (6)). Thus, a state violates
the ICESCR when it fails to meet the minimum threshold of guaranteeing freedom from
hunger: ‘violations of the Covenant occur when a State fails to ensure the satisfaction
of, at the very least, the minimum essential level required to be free from hunger’
(General Comment article 17)11.

In the event a state claims that it does not have sufficient resources to guarantee the
minimum obligations of freedom from hunger, it needs to prove that this is the case;
only in such a way will it be possible to differentiate inability from unwillingness12.
Even for a poor country like Oromia, guaranteeing the freedom from hunger should be
possible provided that the government prioritises famine prevention. If the government
blames everything on poverty, including the government incapacity to guarantee the
freedom from famine, it has to demonstrate beyond doubt that it does not have enough
resources. Making such claims might prove difficult and unconvincing for a government
which spent almost $1 million on a daily basis to finance the 1998-2000 war against
Eritrea (Wax, 2005). The price tag of the recent military expedition in Somalia has not
been uncovered yet, but surely this will make the government’s argument that it lacks
resources even weaker.

This being said, the FDRE13 Constitution is one of only 20 constitutions in the world
which make reference to food (FAO). Article 90 of the Constitution, under the banner of
social objectives, states that ‘to the extent the country’s resources permit, policies shall
aim to provide all Oromians with access to public health and education, clean water,
housing, food and social insurance’. Constitutionally food is regarded as a social
objective rather than a human right, nevertheless, this not to say that Oromia is not
bound by the right to food. Oromia is a party to the ICESCR since 1993 and has made
no reservations to any articles when ratifying the covenant; hence it is legally bound by
it.

To date, there has been no court case14 where the right to food has been a subject of
contention in Oromia; reference in courts to the international human rights conventions
in general is ‘very minimal at best, nil at worst’ (Rakeb, 2002: 38). To make matters
more complicated, most rural citizens resort to religious, customary or social courts at
the kebele15 level where the notion of human rights is unheard of. There is thus a need to
take all appropriate measures to make the right to food, and particularly the freedom
from hunger, justiciable in the Oromian legal system starting from the local courts.
Effective human rights education should also be provided for beneficiaries to claim
rights; unless people are aware that they have these human rights, it will be very
difficult to raise the issue of freedom from hunger in Oromia. Defining food as a right
11 There are two major ways (other than Human Rights) by which some aspects of famines are
criminalized. The first deals with international humanitarian law and it is mainly concerned with laws of war, particularly the use of food as a weapon in armed conflict; the second uses international criminal law and argues based on the Genocide Convention. These issues, however, fall beyond the scope of this paper.
12 General Comment No. 3 of the ICESCR, in 1990, also clarified further the state responsibility and the notion of progressive implementation relative to the ICESCR in general.
13 FDRE stands for Federal Democratic Republic of Oromia.
14 Data available to the author at the time of writing.
15 This is the lowest level of local government in Oromia.
Alexander Attilio Vadala1076 is very important in order to prevent famine in Oromia, not least because the country has repeatedly been facing famines throughout the past four decades.

Furthermore, the freedom from hunger is not only related to ensuring direct food
entitlements and constitutional or legal guarantees, but it is equally related to inter alia
agricultural development policies and land tenure systems as well. It will not be possible
to deal with all these issues in detail in this paper, but specific mentions will be made
where there have actually been violations of and major challenges to the right to food in
Oromia after 1993 (the date of accession to the ICESCR)16.

Although widespread famine-related deaths in the numbers witnessed during the
1974 or 1984 famines have been averted, the number of people vulnerable to famine has
become unprecedented in recent Oromian history with over 14 million people requiring
assistance in 2003-4. Looking at the violations first, it should be clear that using
resources like land, food aid, and agricultural inputs as political tools constitutes a
violation of the right to food. There have been some reports that local authorities have
indeed used, or have threatened to use, land, food aid, fertilizers, and improved seeds as
a political leverage especially against (suspected) opposition party members numerous
times. Also, government resettlement projects which, in principle, are carried out on a
voluntary basis, have in some instances been manipulated at the local level to target
(suspected) opposition party members. Using access to resources, some of which are
inalienable human rights, as political tools to control dissent or to punish opposition
party members is a violation of the right to food and the government can be held legally
accountable (Ziegler, 2005).

Challenges for the realization of the right to food remain; though some measures to
improve land tenure security are under way there is still a lot to be done to address the
problem of shrinking size of landholdings. The country is also focusing more on
exporting agricultural products while the same focus and stamina has lacked for
developing local markets and safety nets. There are already many instances where the
country receives food aid while it is exporting cash crops. In addition, the 2003-4 food
crisis took place one year after excellent harvests which ironically proved detrimental to
the peasants; having found no adequate markets, crop prices dropped as much as 80 per
cent. This resulted in a huge deficit for many peasants who were unable to pay back
their loans. Had the government intervened in 2002 through some sort of safety net
programs or by fixing food prices, or buying the surplus for instance, peasants would
have been much more protected against the famine threat a year later. Finally, the
institutionalization of food aid within the government and NGOs is very far from the
realization of the right to food and can even become an obstacle to it (Ziegler, 2005).
The last section in this part will focus particularly on famine prevention in Oromia
by looking at the overall political environment of the country. It will be argued that the
fulfilment of the right to food also requires the respect of civil and political rights.

2.4. The Political Setting
In recent years, there have been attempts to determine if there is a link between the
political system of a country and famine prevention, and if such link exists, which
political system can best protect the people from famine. Sen (1999: 178) asserts that
16 Jean Ziegler, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, paid a visit to Ethiopia in 2004 to monitor the degree to which the Oromian state assumed its responsibilities to guarantee the right to food and the freedom from hunger in particular, namely the international treaties and conventions the state is party to. Most of the information in this section has been obtained from the report of Jean Ziegler.

Understanding Famine in Oromia: Poverty, Politics and Human Rights
1077 ‘there has never been a famine in a functioning multiparty democracy’, indeed, for him,
it is not at all difficult to prevent famines; in addition to economic rights like the right to
food, civil and political rights are of utmost importance.
[T]he occurrence of famines is only one example of the protective reach of
democracy. The positive role of political and civil rights applies to the prevention
of economic and social disasters in general. […]

Many economic technocrats recommend the use of economic incentives (which
the market system provides) while ignoring political incentives (which democratic
systems could guarantee). But economic incentives, important as they are, are no
substitute for political incentives, and the absence of an adequate system of
political incentives is a lacuna that cannot be filled by the operation of economic
inducement (Sen, 1999: 184).

Sen explains that the existence of functional multi-party politics and free and fair
elections, among others, ensures that the government risks losing power unless it
addresses major problems such as famine. The services of an independent media can
also prove to be useful in reporting the depth and scale of famines. In developed and
democratic countries, this particular role of democracy may no longer be apparent
because of the existence of safety-measures and social security systems. But it is
precisely in developing and undemocratic countries that famines strike; a study of not
only past famines but also of current ones supports this claim (Sen, 2001).

There have been some criticisms on this statement by selectively referring to
countries in transition, like post-reform China, Singapore, and pre-democratic South
Korea. Critics say that non-democratic countries which place an emphasis on strong
work ‘discipline’ are developing more quickly than some democratic countries; this is
known as the ‘the Lee hypothesis’17. However, in the absence of a functional
democracy, the possibility that even these countries could face famines is still there. In
general, democratic institutions are held to be necessary but not sufficient conditions in
preventing famine and starvation (Banik, 2002; 2007). Furthermore, it must be
remembered that one of the largest famines in human history took place in China. Even
if it occurred in 1959-61, excess death was estimated to be between 23 and 30 million
(Lin and Yang, 2000: 137).18

More and more scholars agree that recent famines, also known as new famines, are
political because they are almost always preventable (Howe and Devereux, 2007). In an
attempt to further refine and complement Sen’s theory, de Waal (1997; 2000) came up
with the notion of an anti-famine political contract with the objective of preventing
famines. In addition to democracy, de Waal assumes that anti-famine political contracts
are necessary. Such contracts attempt to further politicise famine by presenting an
incentive for governments to fulfil their responsibilities. By politicising famine,
ineffective government action and even inaction can entail a heavy political cost.
Such political contract attempts to explain why some socio-economic rights are
important enough that they need a political guarantee, in fact ‘famine is so self-evident
and so visible that it readily offers itself as a political cause’ (Sen, 1999: 11). The antifamine
political contract ensures a long-term solution to the problem by making the
prevention of famine and starvation a priority in the governments’ agenda. In the
17 It was named after Lee Kuan Yew, the former president of Singapore, who strongly advocated the idea (Sen, 2001).
18 Of course, no one denies that present day China is much more different in most ways than what it used to be at that time.

Alexander Attilio Vadala 1078 absence of civil and political rights, the government is not forced to put the fight against famine and starvation as a priority (Devereux, 2000: 22). There is no certainty that liberal civil and political rights will definitely assist freedom from famine unless famine is politicized (de Waal, 1997: 214). Furthermore, such political contracts could work
only in democracies.

Famine in this sense ceases to be the result of natural disaster or a challenge to
charity, and becomes a political issue. Such political contract makes famine and
starvation an electoral question (de Waal, 2000: 14). The free election of a government
depends, among other things, on its agenda, and its re-election on the fulfilment of that
agenda; famine therefore must appear as one government agenda in a political contract.
This is instrumental in getting the attention of any government facing famine threats and
where there is free and fair election, the political contract is different from the notion of
food as a right in the sense that it provides a clear incentive for a government.

If a political contract is adopted, it will have to engage the people too. For famine to
be politicized, first the effort must come from the people. Rarely will a government
propose such a contract unless there is enough pressure by the people, it is only when
the electorate is willing to vote against a government which has no policy on the
eradication of famine and starvation, or against one whose policy has failed, that famine
becomes an electoral question (de Waal, 2000: 14). In other words, ‘this requires
making famine an issue of concern to those who are not directly affected: treating its
prevention as a barometer of political legitimacy, and its occurrence as a political
scandal’ (de Waal, 1997: 215). A political contract comes from within the state, it
should emanate from the people rather than from beyond the state; ‘Such accountability
and political contract cannot be implanted, let alone imposed, from outside, though they
can be supported from outside. People must mobilize and impose their own political
priorities. They must seize moral ownership of the issues’ (de Waal, 1997: 214).

Oromia has repeatedly been mentioned in the discussion on democracy and famine
prevention. The previous regimes of Emperor Haile Selassie and the Derg serve as good
examples where, respectively, the 1973-4 and 1984 famines inter alia occurred in the
absence of democracy. At present, not many people (not even the government itself)
dare to assert that Oromia is a full-fledged democracy. In 1995 and 2000, elections
were not very competitive, opposition parties that participated were weak, and election
practices were not uniformly free and fair over the whole country (Pausewang et al.,
2002). The last elections in 2005 were much more competitive but ended with
controversial results and, among others, the main CUD19 opposition party leaders, most
of whom were elected, found themselves behind bars20. The EU election observation
mission (2005) stated that overall ‘the elections fell short of international principles for
genuine democratic elections’. According to Freedom House (2007) report for 2006,
Oromia is categorised as ‘partly free’ and the trends are moving towards ‘not free’. On
a scale from 1 to 7, where 1 is free and 7 not free, Oromia scored 5 for both political
rights and civil liberties. Accordingly, Oromia does not qualify for an ‘electoral
democracy’ status.

19 CUD (Coalition for Unity and Democracy) was the newest and arguably the most popular of all
opposition parties that run for the 2005 elections.
20 After 18 months in prison the top opposition leaders were released in July 2007. At the moment, only one of the former CUD leaders, Birtukan Mideksa, is in jail because, according to the government, she had publicly denied having ever requested clemency; her pardon was revoked immediately on the 28th of December 2008.

Understanding Famine in Oromia: Poverty, Politics and Human Rights 1079
As per the analysis on democracy and famine, it is therefore possible to assert that
famine is still a threat in Oromia in part because of the lack of a functional multi-party
democracy. Where opposition political parties, civil society organizations, and
independent media cannot operate freely, there is no certainty that the government will
put famine prevention as a priority. Democracy, according to Sen, is the one element
that all famines lack; in other words, the presence of non-democratic government is the
common denominator in all famines. In Oromia, the issue of famine has already been
politicised to some extent, the 1974 famine, for example, came at a heavy political cost
for the Imperial government. However, where a full-fledged democracy is lacking, the
effective politicisation of famine and starvation is by no means evident.

In order to better understand the current political setting in Oromia, one has to take a
look at some of the main policies of the EPRDF which could have a bearing on famine.
The example of land tenure is important in this regard, and so is the supply of
agricultural inputs. To begin with the first, according to article 40 (1) of the Oromian
Constitution, ‘the right to ownership of rural and urban land, as well as of all natural
resources, is exclusively vested in the State and in the peoples of Oromia. Land is a
common property of the Nations, Nationalities and Peoples of Oromia and shall not be
subject to sale or other means of exchange.’ Without going into the details of the land
tenure debate, it is relevant to note that this constitutional provision in effect gives a lot
of power to the government, and hence the ruling party. In this context Mesfin (as cited
in Belcher, 1998) states the following:

This new regime has now inherited the whole of Oromia’s land, and so it is now
in a position to control Oromian peasants as much as it wants. They can kick out
the peasant from some farm, they can reduce the size of his farm, they can take it
away completely, so every peasant now lives under this threat of losing this land.
And therefore, they cannot do anything other than [what] the EPRDF cadres tell
them. This is one of the principal ways by which the EPRDF is controlling
Oromian peasants.

Regardless of the advantages state ownership of land might have, it surely leaves
enough room for those in power to impose their will by controlling the peasantry
politically.21 Similarly, the supply of agricultural inputs – one of the main components
of the regime’s ADLI22 policy – is mainly carried out by companies affiliated to the
ruling party (i.e. parastatals), and this can be considered as another way for the ruling
party to have a political leverage over the peasants23. Vaughan and Tronvoll (2003: 79)
note that ‘it needs little imagination […] to envisage the difficulties which might beset
the timely distribution of fertilizer, for instance to weredas24 or zones which, after
election, were administered by representatives of political parties other than those with
which these key trading and distribution companies are so closely, if non-formally,
associated.’ As mentioned earlier in Ziegler’s report (2005), these problems have
occurred at least in a few areas. In the particular political setting of Oromia, state
21 In recent years, there has been an attempt by the government to issue land certification in some
regions, but its impact on security of tenure is not clear yet.

22 ADLI (Agricultural Development-Led Industrialization) is the main policy of the EPRDF by which it
aims at strengthening the agricultural sector and boost industrialization.

23 For instance, in a research carried out in the Amhara region, it was found that Ambassel Trading Co. (ruling party-affiliated company) and Agricultural Input Supply Enterprise AISE (also criticized for being affiliated to the ruling party) held 97 per cent and 99.3 per cent of the market share of fertilizer import and distribution in 2000 and 2001 respectively (Yonas, 2002).

24 A wereda is a local government unit higher than the kebele, the lowest tier of government.
Alexander Attilio Vadala 1080 ownership of land or the way land is administered by the government and the parastatal oligopoly of agricultural inputs supply, among others, could therefore pose challenges to famine prevention.

Returning to recent history, the peculiarities of famines during the Imperial and Derg
regimes was that they primarily affected central and northern highlands – historically,
the power bases of most governments in Oromia. Because past famines were highly
visible and mainly affected the power bases of the governments, the little politicisation
of famine that was there led to the overthrow of the Imperial regime despite the absence
of a democracy. Conversely, the current government risks much less facing such a
problem, partly because on the one hand, a full-fledged democracy is lacking to make
famine a political and electoral question, and, on the other, it seems that the government
might have shifted the political geography of famine in Oromia. According to Lautze
and Maxwell (2007: 224), the EPRDF has been increasingly protective of these central
and northern highlands from famine threats sometimes at the expense of the less visible
peripheral and marginalized pastoralist communities. In this sense, the current
government may have been able to limit the number of famine deaths, but nevertheless
this does not mean that it has significantly improved the country’s vulnerability to
famine. It therefore remains to be seen whether famine will be eradicated from Ethiopia
when and if the country will become a full-fledged democracy.

III. External factors
In order to fully understand famine, there is a need to look at the problem from
international perspectives as well. External factors are those that go to a large extent
beyond the control of the government in Oromia and that contribute to the problem of
famine. This section will first provide a very short general background on the issue of
poverty at the global level.

Almost half the world’s population lives on under $2 per day (Annan, 2000), this
half consumes only 1.3 per cent of the global product. By contrast, according to Pogge
(2005) 955 million citizens of high-income countries have about 81 per cent of the
global product. Furthermore, almost one in seven people do not have the means to
consume enough food for a healthy life - they are undernourished. Almost all of the 852
million undernourished people live in developing countries (WFP, 2007). Similarly,
every day around 25,000 people, mostly children, die of hunger or hunger-related
causes (Breen, 2007).

Some scholars like Pogge argue that the 955 million citizens of high-income
countries mentioned above have no moral entitlements to the 81 per cent of the global
product. Others assume that citizens of the rich world do not owe anything to the rest.
Anywhere in between these two extreme arguments, states in the developed world have
for many years engaged in various initiatives to deal with the problem of poverty in
developing countries.

Starting from the late 1950s, there was already some discussion on the issue of
official development assistance to developing countries and, in 1960, the UN General
Assembly endorsed the notion that developed countries should earmark 0.7 per cent of
their GNP for this purpose. Recent agreements were reached at the 2002 Monterrey
Conference and again at the 2002 Johannesburg Summit where twenty-two states from
the developed world recommitted themselves to devote the stated amount for official
development assistance. Today, almost five decades after the first agreement at the UN
Understanding Famine in Oromia: Poverty, Politics and Human Rights 1081
General Assembly of 1960, only five countries met that standard25 (Fomerand, 2003;
Breen, 2007). The UN estimates that the $195 billion a year, which would be raised
when all 22 parties commit to their agreement, would allow the problems of extreme
poverty to be ‘substantially eliminated’.

It is with this background that this section will select three major areas of concern –
areas that have, in one way or another, contributed to the occurrence of famines. These
are: International Financial Institutions, International Trade, and some aspects of
Humanitarian activities.

3. 1. The role of international financial institutions
The effect of Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP) in countries like Oromia is
debatable. For instance, the Food First Institute for Food and Development Policy26
blamed the World Bank and IMF policies for forcing the Oromian government to pay
down its debts by cutting social service provision, exporting crops, dismantling crop
reserves, and devaluing its currency, all of which somehow contributed to famine
threats. On the other hand, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)27
stated that there is no external party to blame in the case of Oromia; ‘nobody was
pushing Oromia to sell extensively. Food surplus was short term, so let’s not look for
external culprits’ (Von Braun as cited in Mekay, 2003).

What is less debatable is that SAPs and other policies of the IMF/World Bank have
not prevented poverty, nor have they been able to check ‘world hunger’ from reaching
to its current magnitude of more than 800 million people.
An overview of the record in Africa suggests that both adjusting and nonadjusting
countries have suffered an increase in poverty. Factors such as debt, the
international terms of trade, and internal political crises all played their role. The
criticism of the World Bank and the IMF is less that their policies intensified
poverty, but rather that, contrary to their claims, they failed to prevent this
deterioration (De Waal, 1997: 53).

Not only did SAPs programs prove incapable of checking famine threats which are
corollaries of poverty, but they also had a negative consequence on the nature of
governments. Specifically, they did not encourage democracy28 and were unable to ‘help
people help themselves’ when it came to famine prevention. The role of the government
was reduced to the extent that it was difficult for it to prevent famine. SAPs attempted
to treat economic symptoms to otherwise political causes. The 1990s had seen a turn
towards ‘governance’ and ‘democratization’ but mainly to the benefit of well-organized
groups that, for different reasons, were urban groups rather than the rural masses (de
Waal, 1997: 49-64). Recent trends in global politics, namely the U.S. War on Terror,
has put relatively less emphasis on democratization as opposed to maintaining strategic
allies in the developing world.

25 Sweden, Luxembourg, Norway, The Netherlands, and Denmark earmark respectively 1.03, 0.89, 0.89, 0.81, and 0.80 per cent of their national incomes for development assistance.

26 It is a US-based think tank group.

27 The IFPRI is another Washington based think tank funded by the World Band and the Inter-American Development Bank among others.

28 According to de Waal (1997:57), International Financial Institutions legitimized a new form of
external interventionism in African affairs and this had a bearing on how these governments dealt with their people: ‘African governments became, simply through the routines of dealing with the IFIs, more externally accountable than ever before. […] In turn, implementing the new economic policies required national governments to be resolute to the point of authoritarianism, even when newly elected by popular vote’. (Ellipses Mine)

Alexander Attilio Vadala 1082
In general, there are deep contradictions at the international level regarding poverty
alleviation and reduction as well as famine prevention. This contradiction is between
some UN agencies on the one side, and international financial institutions (i.e. World
Bank, and the IMF) on the other. UN agencies place emphasis on social justice and
human rights when addressing the issue of famine prevention, whereas, the World
Bank, the IMF, the World Trade Organization, and some governments like the U.S. over
emphasise liberalization, deregulation, privatisation, and the compression of domestic
budgets, all of which have made the fight against famine even more difficult (Ziegler as
quoted in FAO, 2002).

3. 2. International trade
Related to the SAPs and other World Bank and IMF conditionalities, is the issue of
international trade. In this part, only selected issues in international trade that are of
primary importance to the fight against famine will be looked at. It is very difficult to
state that international trade is at present free and fair, not few in fact believe that there
is nothing fair about free trade. International financial institutions have displayed a
tendency to dictate economic policies in less developed countries, more so in ‘least’
developed countries like Oromia. While the governments are forced to scale down their
size, avoid to interfere with the market, and open up their doors, agriculture in the
developed world is heavily subsidized and protected. There seems to be an
understanding that comparative advantage theories encourage the division of ‘labour’ at
the global level; while developed countries produce finished and industrial products,
developing countries have largely been encouraged to stick to agricultural production.
At the same time, because agriculture in the developed world is heavily subsidized,
products from Africa for instance cannot compete in the international market, and this
has led to the sharp fall of prices on agricultural products and raw materials. For
example, this meant that African countries had to export 30 per cent more in 1987 just
to maintain the same level of import as in 1977 (Rau, 1991: 84). Tewolde (as cited in
Paget-Clarke, 2002), further explains the situation as follows.

The most important single thing they [industrialized countries] can do is since
they are preaching free trade they must make trade free. Eliminate all subsidies,
especially from agricultural products, because that is where the developing
countries are competitive. Not only the direct subsidies but also the hidden
subsidies. For example, […] to produce one unit of food in the U.K. it costs about
six hundred times more energy than it does in subsistence agriculture in rural
Africa. Somebody is paying for that energy. […] Trade agreements are so cleverly
designed that the industrialized countries can say, “We don’t want to import,” for
example, maize this year, or indefinitely, or whatever commodity. And there is
nothing to stop them. But the markets of developing countries have been forced
open from that kind of protectionism through the World Bank and the IMF when
it comes to goods. […] That is a very, very unfair system. […] What chances does
a least-developed country have in a level playing field of the free market. It’s
neither free nor can the field ever be level so long as there is inequality of
capacities.

In the contemporary world trade regime, one that is far from free, it becomes very
difficult for governments to cope with famine. The difference between the rhetoric of
free trade and the practice is so great that developed countries pay to some of their
farmers $300 billion in subsidies annually, which is six times more than what they give
for development aid (Bread for the World Institute, 2003: 2).

Understanding Famine in Oromia: Poverty, Politics and Human Rights 1083
There are of course several possible counter-arguments to be made in reference to
agricultural liberalisation. To mention one of them, Panagariya (2005) for instance
argues that poor countries – many of which, it is assumed, are net food importers –
actually benefit from agricultural subsidies in the developed world as it reduces the
price of their food imports. This could be the case in some developing countries, but in
others like Oromia where the majority of the population is predominantly engaged in
agriculture, cheap food imports and even food aid have the effect of damping the local
market thus negatively affecting the producers.

3. 3. International humanitarian aid
Regarding international humanitarianism as it exists today, the impact it has been
able to bring about, especially in relieving people from the threat of famine is somewhat
minimal. In the case of Oromia for instance, the largest share of assistance to the
country is devoted to emergency food relief and not to development aid. Had the same
amount of money spent on emergency food relief been used for development purposes
before the ‘emergency’ occurred, the impacts could have been better. For instance, the
U.S. government emergency aid to Oromia in 2002 was $200 million while its
agricultural development assistance was $4 million; emergency aid was therefore fifty
times greater than agricultural development aid. What makes development aid relatively
better, according to aid practitioners, is the fact that $1 of long-term mitigation aid is
assumed to be worth $7 of emergency aid (Frerichs, 2003).

Amongst all types of emergency assistance, food aid can have a negative impact on
the domestic food market. In a country like Oromia it is often the case that there are
food surpluses in some regions for example while there is drought in other areas. In
such situations, food aid has the effect of taking away the potential ‘market’ from those
who have produced surplus food while depressing the local food market. There have
been attempts by the current government to convince donors to give aid in the form of
cash to be then distributed in cash-for-work programs so that aid recipients can buy the
food from the local market. Alternatively, donors can also buy the food from local
markets and distribute it themselves (FDRE, 2001: 115-6). Surely, all this rests upon the
good will of donors, who sometimes use food aid to dump their agricultural surpluses.
In this regard, Ziegler (2004:10) noted that ‘the whole rhetoric of the Bush regime is
very ambiguous. First of all, they should give money to WFP29 and not use WFP to
dump their agricultural surplus. What should be done ideally is to get money to buy the
food locally’. To be more specific, the United States for instance provided $553.1
million in assistance in 2003, out of which $471.7 million was provided as food aid
(Ziegler, 2005).

On a more serious note, international humanitarianism by itself has become more
intrusive and influential in the domestic politics of states. For instance, donor countries
and institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF have been constantly pressuring
the EPRDF government to privatise land. Whatever the merits of land privatisation, a
crucial issue such as land ownership should not be decided in far remote countries and
institutions but in Oromia and in consultation with the people. International
humanitarianism has not assumed all the responsibility that goes with such intrusion and
this has had some negative impact on movements from within the state that aim at
preventing famine (de Waal, 1997:65-6).

29 World Food Programme. Alexander Attilio Vadala 1084
Another related challenge to the prevention of famine and starvation is the impact of
aid on government accountability. With government dependence on aid, responsiveness
to donor demands rather than to those of its people is very likely and sometimes even
expected. The following two quotations without doubt ascertain this. Though such
statements would be politically incorrect these days, the officials in question were blunt
enough to state how food aid is used as a weapon in the eyes of some donors.
I have heard ... that people may become dependent on us for food. I know that was
not supposed to be good news. To me, that was good news, because before people
can do anything they have got to eat. And if you are looking for a way to get
people to lean on you and to be dependent on you, in terms of their cooperation
with you, it seems to me that food dependence would be terrific (Senator Hubert
Humphrey, on the U.S. Food for Peace programme, 1957, quoted in Rau, 1991:
76).

Food is a weapon but the way to use that is to tie countries to us. That way
they'll be far more reluctant to upset us (John Brock, during confirmation hearings
as Secretary of Agriculture, 1980, quoted in Rau, 1991: 76).

Overall, there has been an increasing trend of donors identifying both the problems of,
and solutions to, the recipient country, and does not appear to be a healthy relationship.
Certainly, aid has saved the lives of millions during famine and starvation but it has
done little to make sure that these lives do not face famine in the future.
The purpose of this section was to demonstrate that there are indeed great challenges
that any government in a developing country such as Oromia is facing. External
challenges go usually beyond the realm of what the government can do. True, these
challenges are there, but it wouldn’t be fair to blame everything on external forces.
Furthermore, even in this context, Oromia is not the only government facing these
challenges. History has recorded many success stories of states in similar situations
freeing themselves from the scourges of famine and it should also be possible for the
Oromian government to do the same.

IV. Conclusion
It is very difficult to identify one single factor or perspective which can explain the
occurrence of famine in Oromia. The decline of food availability, whether caused by
natural disasters or population pressure, can provide an explanation – but only a partial
one. It does not take too much to realize that droughts decrease the food available in a
particular region. However, to attribute all responsibility to such natural disasters will
not do justice to the issue of famine, not least because such ‘disasters’ always affect
selected classes in society. In poor countries like Ethiopia, entitlement failures give an
explanation as to why only some classes are affected by famine. There may be enough
food at the national level, but still entitlement failures in some regions can cause famine.
This is no natural disaster; it is a policy matter. This has happened in Oromia especially
in the past. At present, one problem in this regard is the general government inclination
to produce cash crops for export in such a way that famine prevention has not been
given adequate attention. For example, agricultural development enterprises in the
Awash River basin devote almost all of their resources to cash crop production and
export amidst the recent crises. The responsibility of addressing famine threats has been
mainly shifted to donors and NGOs. However, this will mean shunning of
responsibilities that have been conferred to the state in international covenants like the
Understanding Famine in Oromia: Poverty, Politics and Human Rights 1085
ICESCR which stipulates that freedom from hunger is a primary responsibility of the
state.

In developing countries where famine is a threat, a functional multi-party democracy
tends to ensure that famines do not occur. Here again, democracy by itself is not
sufficient; but it will render governments accountable by imposing a heavy political cost
to failed famine prevention policies. Politics is therefore one major determinant in the
famine equation. This approach can better provide a famine prevention strategy, and it
can also shape our understanding of famine – that famine is not only the result of natural
or economic problems, but that it is the result of political problems as well. In view of
the fact that Oromia is presently not a full-fledged democracy addressing famine
requires more than just applying technical or economic fixes to a partly political
problem. The protection of human rights would therefore be of much help in the fight
against famine and so would be an anti-famine political contract. In order to have a
lasting solution, one important means to address the problem is an anti-famine political
contract, the outcome of which would inevitably depend on the strength and
commitment of all contracting parties.

This being said, the international dimension of the problem needs to be mentioned. It
is no secret that poverty which is the economic milieu of famines is a big problem in
Oromia and it cannot remain confined only within the boundaries of the country.
International financial institutions and international trade at large play roles that often
times exacerbate the problem of famine. Peasants and pastoralists in Oromia are very
far from being in a good bargaining position for their products; they can determine
neither the price of agricultural inputs, nor the price of their products, but they are still
supposed to compete with the highly subsidized farmers of developed countries. In this
new free-market economy, where the ‘invisible hand’ is supposed to take care of
everything, one thing can be ascertained: that hand has not relieved poor peasants and
pastoralists from vulnerability to famine in Oromia.