Terri Hathaway's blog

Terri in Uganda

This is my farewell from International Rivers, but not from the struggles for justice across Africa.

Working from Cameroon over the past four years has given me a small glimpse of the daily struggles faced by those living in Africa, which can leave one exasperated: water shortages, power outages, flimsy imports, frequent crime, and small but chronic injustices, just to name a few. I shout angrily to myself about how the state is falling far short of its responsibilities. But I have also learned that where the state fails its people, the social fabric is woven even more tightly. Family and friends fortify their relationships - should one fall, the others are there to catch him.

This community safety net has often been the only barrier to hunger for so many that I have visited during my years with International Rivers. From Kenya's Lake Turkana to Sinazongwe, Zambia to Hadejia-Nguru wetlands in northern Nigeria, my work trips gave me the chance to meet people and to join them in their struggles, not just for justice, but for prosperity, too. I have seen how dams have stunted development and left trauma in their wake. The people I met have forever changed who I am and how I see the world. I hope that I have contributed as much to their struggles for justice as they have contributed to changing me as a person and as an activist.

Bravo for the spotlight on access to modern energy - the "missing MDG" - at this week’s United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Summit in New York.

Spiked and others are calling attention to the heavy floods in Ethiopia which now threaten 270,000 people. Regional authorities and humanitarian partners including World Vision, CARE, Food for the Hungry International (FHI), Save the Children-UK, Concern, OCHA, WFP UNICEF and the Ethiopian Red Cross Society are among those involved in flood relief efforts. Supporting these humanitarian agencies supports the urgent needs of Ethiopia's flood victims in this time of crisis. 

Ethiopia's boom and bust rain cycles are notorious for their role in Ethiopia's extreme poverty. But dams are not a flood control panacea. Current flooding in Afar is attributed in part to the overflowing of the Tendaho Dam, which was completed less than two years ago. The dam's overflow has damaged 18 km of its irrigation canal and 4,000 hectares of farms and grazing lands. Overflowing of the dam and the Logia River has directly displaced more than 15,000 people.

An independent study released this month by Gabonese NGO, Brainforest, documents the devastation caused by uranium and manganese mines in southeast Gabon.

Ethiopia's Gibe 3 Dam remains the most destructive dam being built today. According to the official project website, Ethiopia plans to pay $572 million (448m Euros) from their own pockets.

In late March, I traveled with Caterina Amicucci

Caterina (CRBM) and Joshua (FoLT) crossing Lake Turkana

(Campaign to Reform the World Bank) and Joshua Angelei (Friends of Lake Turkana) to meet those whose lives would be devastated by the impact of Gibe 3 Dam on Lake Turkana. As our plane descended into Lodwar, Lake Turkana’s biggest town, the landscape was irregularly green – rain had broken the area’s three year drought. But the rains which caused celebrations amongst the communities are increasingly an exception, no longer the historic, seasonal rule. We also found that the rain's respite had not calmed the people’s opposition to Gibe 3 Dam.

Turning the spotlight on Africa's shady dam planning has been a goal of mine since joining International Rivers in July 2004. I'm proud to announce our latest "spotlight" - the 2010 African Dams Briefing, a summary of key public data on Africa's proposed large dams.

The roots of this briefing can be traced

2010 Africa Dams Briefing Map of Proposed Dams (International Rivers)

back to my first day with International Rivers almost six years ago. By the afternoon, I was settling into my new desk reading a memo left by my predecessor, Ryan Hoover. It was a list of proposed dam projects in Africa, the various concerns about each dam, and his estimation of whether or not each project would go forward.

Ryan’s list became a daily reference for sharing what International Rivers knew about any particular dam in Africa being planned behind closed doors. I started expanding the list, adding new dams and updating information. By 2006, the list had turned into a full fledged reference. We published the 18 page briefing, along with a map, to show the significance of proposed dams in Africa. Our dams briefing has been visited over 3,000 times.

Turkana residents protest Gibe 3 Dam, before authorities started cracking down. (Lucas Ng'Asike/The Standard)

The Gibe 3 Dam and Ethiopia's coming elections have something powerful in common: the silencing of dissent at any cost. Ethiopia's government has systematically developed a culture of fear that silences any dissent of the ruling party and its policies. In villages, people fear what they say or do could be reported to officials by their neighbors. 

As Gibe 3 Dam is a priority project of Prime Minister Zenawi's government, anyone seen to be critical of the dam – including project-affected people asserting their legal rights – is seen as an enemy. Up to 63 local associations in South Omo Zone have been suspended, pre-emptively shutting down forums for discussing local issues. The government has denied licenses for community radio stations, and two-way radios are considered contraband. One Ethiopian was arrested for unknowingly wearing a Gibe 3 protest shirt borrowed from a cousin across the Kenyan border. Worse, a translator was reportedly arrested for treason after helping independent researchers communicate with affected communities. Other translators have been harassed and intimidated, helping drive the government's greatest silencing tool: its culture of fear.

“There is no singing and dancing all along the Omo River now. The kids are quiet. We adults go into the shelter and sleep silently. We are too hungry. The big rains have been gone for three years, and now we come to the Omo and there is no water. Go and give this news to your elders, our people are hungry.”

Hungry Kwegu child after the Omo River failed to flood (2009) (anonymous)

These words come from a farmer one month ago on the banks of Ethiopia's Omo River. The Kwegu, Bodi, Nyangatom, Karo, Mursi, Dassanech and other tribes, an estimated 200,000 people, depend on the Omo River floods to grow maize and sorghum, and to replenish grass lands for grazing cattle herds. The river's annual flood is a lifeline for these indigenous tribespeople.

Floodwaters have been small (2007), then smaller (2008), until the Omo's annual flood disappeared altogether in late 2009. The last three years of poor rains combined with the unexplained, decreasing flood has left the people of the Omo River hungry with little or no stored grain. Many farmers have stopped planting all together. Traditional cultivation sites are being abandoned. Last November, four men and two children died of hunger.

Main road in Awassa (Oliver Benson)

It’s been more than a week since anyone has heard from three students kidnapped from the Awassa University campus in southern Ethiopia by government security forces, according to the Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA). Whereabouts of the students, Nagga Gezaw, Dhaba Girre, and Jatani Wario, is still unknown. The students were part of a local movement in southern Ethiopia which has called on their government to address river contamination, unpaid compensation and other problems caused by the Lega Dembi open pit gold mine. Several student-led demonstrations in early December brought promises to address the issues, promises now left empty by the extra-judicial kidnappings. (For more info on the demonstrations, see Addis Fortune and Voice of America.)