Addis Ababa

Ethiopian children are being sold for as little as $1,20 (about R7,90) to work as domestic workers or prostitutes, the International Organisation for Migration said on Wednesday. Up to 20 000 children, some 10 years old, are sold each year by their parents and trafficked by unscrupulous brokers to work in cities across Ethiopia.

The European Parliament on Friday called for an end to harrassment of opposition groups in Ethiopia and warned of possible aid cuts to the impoverished Horn of Africa nation if it did not stop. The Strasbourg-based legislature deplored the government’s treatment of the opposition since disputed May elections that European Union observers said failed to meet international standards.

Authorities in north-eastern Ethiopia have advised 50 000 people to evacuate from a remote region following a series of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, an official said on Wednesday. A thick layer of volcanic ash has spewed from the volcano has covered grazing grounds.

About 50 000 nomads in Ethiopia’s Afar region were displaced as a result of last week’s eruption of a volcano, officials there said on Monday. Mount Arteale, about 1 000km north-east of Addis Ababa, erupted on September 26 after an earthquake measuring 5,5 on the Richter scale.

Ethiopia’s main opposition parties said on Monday that preliminary talks with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi aimed at defusing tensions in the wake of controversial elections were cordial and fruitful. The talks focused on the opposition’s differences with the government over charges that the ruling EPRDF Party fraudulently won the country’s mid-May elections.

Côte d’Ivoire rebels holding the north of the country said on Friday they want a ”bold decision” from a West African regional summit in Nigeria to end the mandate of embattled President Laurent Gbagbo. They accused Gbagbo of failing to implement measures called for in the three-year-old, French-brokered peace deal.

Ethiopian police have arrested 43 opposition supporters for allegedly plotting violent subversion ahead of a weekend demonstration called to protest disputed May elections, the official Ethiopian News Agency reported on Monday. An opposition spokesperson, however, rejected the accusations as false.

Indian drug firm Kadila Pharmaceutical is building a factory in a suburb of the Ethiopian capital at a cost of 75-million birr (,65-million) that is expected to be operational early next year, its Vice President Ajai Agrawal disclosed on Monday. The factory, under construction at Akaki, 20km south-east of Addis Ababa, is expected to produce drugs mainly for tuberculosis and malaria.

Members of Ethiopia’s Jewish community in Addis Ababa complained on Friday that police had prevented them from continuing a hunger strike to press their demand that they be taken to Israel. Members of the Bete Israel community, the so-called Falashas or Ethiopian Jews, had been on hunger strike for three days.

About 350 members of Ethiopia’s Bete Israel community went on hunger strike in Addis Ababa on Tuesday in protest over what they described as Israel’s ”unfulfilled promise” to take them to the Holy Land. The three-day hunger strike was intended to publicise Israel’s failure to keep the ”promise” which the community says it made eight years ago.

Lions have killed 20 people and 750 head of livestock in southern Ethiopia, local administrators said on Tuesday. The lions, which mauled their prey in daylight attacks while herdsmen were grazing their stock, have forced more than 1 000 to flee Soro district, about 370km south of the capital Addis Ababa.

African countries are making progress in primary schooling for boys and girls alike — but other targets are unlikely to be attained, according to a United Nations report on Wednesday. The UN Economic Commission for Africa report details how African countries are faring in meeting the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.

Around 2 000 Eritrean refugees have fled alleged repression into neighbouring Ethiopia since January, bringing their population in camps there to nearly 10 000, the UN food agency said on Tuesday. Most of the refugees are aged between 18 and 30 and are fleeing compulsory national service, political repression and economic problems.

The African Union (AU) has urged the last active rebel group in Burundi to join the peace process aimed at ending more than a decade of devastating fighting in the impoverished central African nation. In addition, AU said the international community should sustain its support in order to consolidate achievements in Burundi’s democratisation process.

The party that overthrew a horrific junta in Ethiopia retained power through the ballot, but only after months of violence and allegations of vote-rigging that raised concerns about the future of democracy in the country. The Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front was on Monday declared the official winner of May 15 elections.

At least 12 people across Ethiopia have died in storms that have also destroyed harvests in some areas, the local media reported on Friday. Seven female farm labourers were killed by lightning on Wednesday in Tigrai state in northern Ethiopia, where flooding caused by heavy rains also destroyed 175ha of barley and wheat crops.

Globalisation threatens to ”exploit, denigrate and humiliate” Africa like slavery and colonialism once did, outgoing Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa said on Wednesday. Mkapa also criticised African leaders for paying lip service to the trade crisis — the continent’s global share is just 2% — without taking any real action.

In a report also harshly critical of weekend polls in Ethiopia’s remote Somali state, the European Union said on Thursday that Ethiopia’s disputed May 15 elections did not meet international standards in several key respects, including post-vote investigations into fraud.

At least 73 people have been killed, 45 wounded and tens of thousands displaced in clashes so far this year between Ethiopia’s rival Oromo and Somali ethnic groups, according to a local human rights watchdog. In the deadliest single incident in March, 14 people were killed, 10 wounded and 1 600 forced from their homes when a group of rustlers attacked a cattle herder.

About 7 000 people have been left homeless by raging flood waters in southern Ethiopia after heavy rain caused rivers to burst their banks in the Horn of Africa’s Oromia state, official media reported on Monday. At least one person was swept away and killed by the water along with 23 livestock on Monday.

Three Ethiopian political parties on Tuesday threatened to boycott upcoming parliamentary elections in the remote eastern Somali state, citing a litany of complaints about ruling party conduct. Fierce disputes that sparked deadly violence in the capital in June persist over alleged fraud in the May 15 elections for which final results show a ruling party victory.

The African Union on Wednesday lauded the conduct of Ethiopia’s disputed May polls and urged calm in the aftermath of the long-delayed release of results showing a ruling-party victory after deadly violence in June. The opposition, which claims the election was stolen through massive fraud, immediately rejected the returns.

Ethiopia’s ruling party has won an absolute majority in Parliament in disputed May elections, according to final results released on Tuesday. When combined with victories by allied parties, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front will control 318 seats in the 547-member Parliament.

An Ethiopian court has sentenced one newspaper editor to a month in prison and fined another for refusing to reveal the name of a source who criticised a legal ruling on May’s disputed election, officials said on Tuesday. The Supreme Court found both men guilty of contempt of court and imposed the penalties on Friday.

Ethiopia will hold rerun voting in 14 additional constituencies where fraud and irregularities occurred in disputed May elections, bringing to 29 out of 523 the number of precincts where repeat polls will be held. The National Electoral Board of Ethiopia said on Friday the decision was made after reviewing fraud complaints from 69 of 74 constituencies where results have yet to be released.

For decades, Ethiopia has been plagued by cyclical drought and chronic hunger with children worst hit. Preventable diseases and malnutrition on average kill up to half a million Ethiopian children a year, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund.

At least five people have been killed and 31 injured in a series of hand-grenade attacks in eastern Ethiopia that may have been politically motivated, police and diplomats said on Monday. The attacks took place in Somali state, where parliamentary elections are to be held next month, they said.

The African Union Commission recommended on Monday lifting United Nations economic sanctions against Liberia to help finance reconstruction, despite widespread government corruption. AU Commission chairperson Alpha Oumar Konare says in the report that new thinking on the sanctions is needed.