Archive for June, 2011
Ethiopian girls fight child marriages
By Will Ross BBC News,
“I wanted to get an education but my
parents were determined to marry me off,” says Himanot Yehewala, an Ethiopian
girl who was married five years ago at the age of 13.
“I tried to run away but my mother said she would kill herself if I did not
marry him.”
“I was not mature physically or emotionally so it was not easy for me to go
and sleep with my husband.”
She had never met her bridegroom, 18-year-old Gedefaw Mengistu, before their
wedding day.
“Start Quote
In one case the husband was eight and the supposed wife was
seven. I mean you want to say it’s abominable”
End Quote Desmond Tutu
Archbishop emeritus
“I knew she was too young. I was in grade five but my
father died and I was forced to stop school, get married and keep the family
going,” Mr Gedefaw told the BBC.
The couple live in Ethiopia’s Amhara Region – an impoverished rural farming
area where half of all girls are married before they turn 15.
“It’s quite shattering to have met people who were married off,” Archbishop
Desmond Tutu told the BBC on a visit to the area.
“In one case the husband was eight and the supposed wife was seven. I mean
you want to say it’s abominable,” he said.
The South African Nobel Peace Prize winner may have recently announced his
retirement from public life but he is out fighting injustice again as one of the
Elders – the group of eminent global leaders brought together by South Africa’s
former President Nelson Mandela.
“I wasn’t aware of the extent of the problem – and it is just fantastic that
things are taking a turn for the better and incredibly so,” he said.
The archbishop was referring to the impact of government-led programmes in
several dozen villages in the region which focus on delaying marriage.
Fear of abduction
“Start Quote
When I finish my high school I will join university; I’ll
complete my BA degree and get a job and help my family. Then if my partner has a
degree too then I will marry him”
End
Quote Abay Asnakew, 12
In this impoverished area where people live off the
land, the lure of a bride price causes many families to push for early weddings.
But there is another reason.
“Fear of abduction is also a
factor,” said Alemseged Weldegerima from the Ethiopian government’s Bureau
of Women, Children and Youth Affairs.
“We will try to stop abduction, not by using the police, but by increasing
the awareness of the people.”
Beside a small eucalyptus plantation Archbishop Tutu was sharing a low wooden
bench with two Elders who have broken the mould; the first woman to be president
of Ireland, Mary Robinson, and the former prime minister of Norway, and ex-head
of the World Health Organization, Gro Brundtland.
They listened to young unmarried girls with big dreams, as well as women who
had no chance of getting an education after being married off at a young
age.
Abay Asnakew is 12 and she has her life all mapped out.
“When I finish my high school I will join university; I’ll complete my BA
degree and get a job and help my family. Then if my partner has a degree too
then I will marry him,” she says.
“So what job do you want to do?” I asked.
“Prime minister,” she replied without hesitation. Look out Meles Zenawi!
Abay has joined a girls’ club known as Berhane Hewan – Amharic for “Light for
Eve”.
She has learnt about issues which have prepared her to resist early marriage;
personal health, HIV/Aids, and the medical complications associated with giving
birth at a young age, like fistula.
The Elders heard from girlshoping to avoid early marriage and some who had left school to marry
Female circumcision is also discussed and in the 36 villages where the clubs
have been set up, I am told fewer girls are now getting cut.
Beside the road several boys are playing table football. They seem to welcome
the idea of delaying marriage.
“You can’t afford to run a family when you’re too young,” said 20-year-old
Tazab, who has no plans to wed any time soon.
“Also it’s bad for a girl’s health to have children too early,” he
says.
‘Undervalued’
In a rectangular mud-walled building which serves as a meeting hall and
classroom for the Berhane Hewan participants, I met 15-year-old Serkaddis
Assefa.
“Start Quote
I still feel bad when I think about my friends who now have
jobs and have reached different positions”
End Quote Enguday Assefa
Married at 15
“Because of the Berhane Hewan programme I know about the
issue of early marriage. If I hadn’t joined, I might have been married off
already,” she said.
Sitting alongside was her mother, Enguday Assefa, whose forth child was fast
asleep on her back.
Around Ms Enguday’s neck was part of her dowry payment; a coin bearing the
face of Ethiopia’s last emperor, Haile Selassie, and another of Queen Taitu,
wife of the monarch Menelik II who died in 1913.
“I still feel bad when I think about my friends who now have jobs and have
reached different positions,” said Ms Enguday, who was forced to quit school and
was already married with a child by the age of 15.
For the Elders, the behavioural change which has only happened in the last
five years is worth celebrating.
“When Nelson Mandela brought us together at our first planning meeting he did
say to us: ‘Be bold, talk to those whom others won’t talk to, be on the side of
the most deprived, the most isolated, the most undervalued in society,’” recalls
Mrs Robinson.
“And in many ways those young girls, brides and mothers are very undervalued
by their community and have very little sense of self-worth so the issue of
child marriage, as far as I’m concerned, is a very good way of having an entry
point into the effect of poverty.
“The effect of a lack of equality within communities, the effect of harmful
traditional practices on the community – the effect of all the things that the
Elders should be championing.”
Berhane Hewan started off with 700 girls and at its peak reached around
12,000 – just a small fraction of the vulnerable population.
While considered to be a successful initiative, the programme will need to be
scaled up significantly to make a major difference in Ethiopia.
For the first time the girls here are starting to shape their own
destinies.
The hope among the Elders is that lessons from Ethiopia’s Amhara Region can
be applied to other parts of the world where child marriage is common, like
India.
The new food plate
The Atlantic reports that the food industry took issue with the original foodpyramid because it established food hierarchies, while many nutritionists complained that it encouraged people to eat too many grains.
The 2005 pyramid, which was meant to address those issues, also received its fair share of criticism. The Atlantic says it was just too difficult for people to understand, describing it as “hopelessly complicated” and “impossible to teach.”
But thus far, the buzz for the new plate image has been far more positive.
“With the old pyramids, it was very hard to translate the recommendations into what you should eat,” said Dr. Margo Wootan of the Center for Science In The Public Interest. “This is very straightforward. It takes a lot of the guesswork out.”
Toby Smithson, R.D., a national spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association agrees.
“It’s such a recognizable image,” she said. “Everybody has seen a plate, used a plate. It’s much easier to visualize when it’s something we use on a daily basis.”
Smithson added that the plate is an improvement because it’s easy for non-readers to understand, which means young kids can learn the message early on and carry it with them throughout their lives. She also likes that the new image and accompanying Choose My Plate campaign put an emphasis on the positive.
“I like that message and that word choice,” she said. “It’s about choosing the right things, not so much about avoiding.”
The new food plate image reflects the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which promote measures like switching to fat-free or low-fat milk and opting for water over sugary drinks. The guidelines also recommend making sure that half your plate is filled with fruits and veggies — a recommendation that Wootan said is one of the major points highlighted by the new graphic.
She cautioned, however, that people should be aware of the size of their plates when trying to model their meals after the image.
“You can’t fill up a platter,” she said. “People should be paying attention to the different food groups, but they should also be watching their serving sizes. They should eat off an eight or nine-inch plate, like people did in the old days, before we had such an obesity problem.”
Bring the last Fugitive to justice-A Call to Human rights now
by Getachew Teklu
Mengistu Haile Mariam is (as in still alive) a politician who presided over Ethiopia from 1974 to 1991. The way he got into power was by smothering the previous president Haile Selassie although he has denied those rumors. His biggest claim to fame is the Ethiopian Red Terror which was a campaign of repression led by the Derg (communist militia in Ethiopia). In his introductory speech Mengitsu yelled, “Death to counter revolutionaries! Death to the EPRP!” Then he took three bottles filled with blood and threw them to the ground. It was an auspicious beginning to say the least. Thousands were killed and found dead on the streets in the years that followed. Much of the murdering can be attributed to the friendly neighborhood watch their known as “Kebeles”. As if killing innocents wasn’t enough they would then charge the family a tax to return the dead body to them. The tax was aptly named “the wasted bullet”! Are you serious Mengitsu? However there was an even more gruesome fate of being left on the street where wild hyenas would fight over the dead. The campaign has been described as one of the worst mass murders ever in Africa in the 21st century.
Mengistu Haile Mariam, a former Lieutenant Colonel in the Ethiopian Army, led a coup which ousted Emperor Haile Selassie from power in 1974. Mengistu took control of the government and served as its Communist head of state in Ethiopia from 1977 to 1991. He formally assumed power as chair of the Worker’s Party, head of state and Derg (military junta) chairman in 1977. In fact Mengistu had wielded behind-the-scenes power since the coup of 1974.
Opposition against Mengistu’s regime emerged with a rebellion against the new government between 1977 and 1978. The government suppressed the rebellion and in the process generated thousands of casualties, estimated at 100,000 killed or disappeared. In response the anti-Mengistu Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP) launched a guerilla struggle that would last until the overthrow of Mengistu’s regime in 1991.
On September 10, 1987, Mengistu became a civilian president under a new constitution, and the country was renamed the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Mengistu’s government was faced with enormous difficulties throughout the 1980s in the form of droughts, widespread famine (notably the Ethiopian famine of 1984-1985), and insurrections, particularly in the northern regions of Tigre and Eritrea. In 1989, the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front merged with other ethnically based opposition movements to form the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). In May 1991, EPRDF forces advanced on Addis Ababa. The EPRDF forces successful toppling of the Mengistu government coincided with the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union. The new Russian government ended aid to Ethiopia.
Mengistu fled the country with 50 family and Derg members and was granted asylum in Zimbabwe as an official “guest” of Robert Mugabe, the president of that country. Mengistu left behind almost the entire membership of the original Derg and the Workers Party of Ethiopia (WPE) leadership, which was promptly arrested and put on trial upon the assumption of power by the EPRDF. Mengistu still
resides in Zimbabwe, despite attempts by Ethiopia to extradite him to face trial. Several former members of the Derg have been sentenced to death in absentia by the new regime. The trial against Mengistu started in 1994, and in January 2007 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide. He remains in exile in Zimbabwe. This war criminal military junta killed more than half a million Ethiopians. Bring him to justice to close this case. Here is a partial list of Ethiopians who sacrifices their life, and murdered by this criminal military junta: http://www.dergu.shutterfly.com/
