US House Bill Requires Accountability From Ethiopia (Press Release)

January 28, 2014

US House Appropriation Bill Requires Increased Accountability from Ethiopia as Prerequisite for Funding

PRESS RELEASE

Solidarity Movement for New Ethiopia

Washington, DC – Is United States policy towards Ethiopia shifting? For years Ethiopians, social justice groups, human rights organizations and civic groups have been calling on donor countries to demand greater accountability from the Government of Ethiopia for funds received, citing the lack of political space, endemic injustice, the repression of basic freedoms and widespread human rights crimes; however, now, the people of Ethiopia have reason to expect that the climate of impunity is changing.

The United States House Appropriations Committee has included stringent new requirements of accountability from the Government of Ethiopia in a section of the new 2014 bill that directly addresses Ethiopia. (Please refer to the sub-section of the bill below.)

Kenyatta at the ICC: Is Justice Deferred, Justice Denied?

January 27, 2014

by Alemayehu G. Mariam*

I am getting a little jittery over the repeated delays, postponements and all the backpedalling talk about “false evidence” and “lying witnesses”  in the Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta International Criminal court trial. I don’t want to say I smell a rat but I feel like I am getting a whiff. Is the stage being set to let Kenyatta off the ICC hook?

There has been feverish efforts to defer, delay and dismiss Kenyatta’s prosecution as a sitting head of state since  January 2012 when the International Criminal Court’s  (ICC) Pre-Trial Chamber confirmed charges against him.  In May 2013, Kenya’s Ambassador to the U.N. Macharia Kamau filed a 13-page “Confidential” letter with the President of the UN Security Council seeking to take the Kenyatta case out of ICC hands and directing it to relinquish  jurisdiction to Kenyan courts. In the same month, Hailemariam