Sugar Cane And Indigenous People - Sucre Ethique

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32the development of the human “civilization”. In reality, most of the recent studies showedthat it is the most profitable way to exploit a semi-desert environment from an economicpoint of view.Destroying this capability is just the opposite of the declared aim to guarantee the selfsufficiencyin food for Ethiopia and to prevent malnutrition and famine. The benefits ofthe production of cotton at the beginning, and sugar and ethanol in the present projects,don’t reach Afar people, which are obliged to leave their territory or to sedentarizearound the new towns created by the “development” projects without any hope ofdevelopment, after having lost their livestock.Afar cannot find any attraction for projects which are growing without their approval oreven their opinion. They don’t have the capitals to make the investment in the industrialagriculture productive, and they pay also the suspicion and the hostility of the rulingHighlanders 9 towards them. Many evidences and also a personal experience during aMSF (Médécins Sans Frontières) mission, showed that they are discriminated in manycontexts, even in the healthcare. Despite the official claims, and the aim to sedentarize thenomadic pastoralists, there is even little effort to really employ them as workers in thesugar plantations or factory: they have not the habits to farm, they have no experience ofworking in a factory, whereas there is plenty of jobless Highlanders waiting to beemployed, even in a place that they don’t like, like the Afar Region. Highlanders are notcomfortable in Afar, for climate, completely different from the nice green mountains andhills of their land, and for people, that they consider as “primitive”, “wild” anddangerous. The fracture between Highlanders and Afar is ancient, and the cohabitation isnever quiet.Nevertheless, thousands of Highlanders are coming to the Afar Region to work in thegovernment’s projects. At Tendaho, a new town is growingand it is not Afar, even if it is in Afar region. The highconcentration of single male workers, as it already happened inthe upper Awash Valley, will attract dozens of girls fromAddis Ababa and other Highland towns in search for survivalby selling sex, and the new life style imported from outsidewill endanger the Afar traditional way of life, with changeswhich it could be hard to define as “progress” and“development”. At Dubti, recent studies already showed adramatic increase of HIV+ cases in a society, like that Afar,which was relatively spared from this problem until now.Afar feel this immigration as a foreign occupation and therelation between them and the Highlanders as an internalcolonization. They are not comfortable with it and the majorityof them tries to resist it.9 The Amhara and Tigray people. Fundamentally agriculturalists and in majority Christians, they representhistorically the ruling class of the country.EthiclIndigenous People-ETHICAL-SUGAR
33As it happened in the upper valley, the Afar pastoralists who still have some livestockwill be obliged to move northwards, and inevitably they willenter into territories owned by other Afar clans. The risk of Amina. Galaha, 2004.internal fighting is high in a context in which the resources,water and pasture, are scarce, and the good years, with good and well distributed rain, aremore and more rare.EthiclIndigenous People-ETHICAL-SUGAR
Page 1 and 2: Ethical-SugarSugar Cane and Indigen
Page 3 and 4: 3About the contributorsSimone Rettb
Page 6 and 7: 6In the clash between agroindustry
Page 8 and 9: 8In the second half of the 20th cen
Page 10 and 11: 10Photo 2: Afar women collecting wa
Page 12 and 13: 12At first sight, the objectives of
Page 14 and 15: 14February. The young people have a
Page 16 and 17: 16poverty levels of the populations
Page 18 and 19: 18Source: Violation of the rights o
Page 20 and 21: 20sugarcane cultivation in indigeno
Page 22 and 23: 22ReferencesBondestam, L. (1974)
Page 24 and 25: 24Appendix 1Tana river project and
Page 26 and 27: 26Appendix 3Survival complain: Shel
Page 28 and 29: 28Appendix 5Nowhere to go - by Fran
Page 30 and 31: 30At a lower level, the basic unit
Page 34: 34Ethical-Sugarwww.sucre-ethique.or

Sugar Cane And Indigenous People - Sucre Ethique

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