Month: January 2024

washington — The White House sees national security concerns in a recent agreement giving Ethiopia leasing rights to the Red Sea coastline in Somalia’s breakaway Somaliland region, administration officials said Tuesday. But experts questioned Washington’s commitment and ability to quell tensions in the volatile region. 

The two parties inked the deal on January 1. At the time, Ethiopian government spokesman Redwan Hussien said the deal also “paves the way for accessing a leased military base on [the] Red Sea.” 

John Kirby, director of strategic communications for the National Security Council, told VOA that Washington was working with partners in the region — including the African Union and the eight-member Intergovernmental Authority on Development trade bloc — to push against the nonbinding memorandum of understanding, which Somalia’s government, headquartered in Mogadishu, sees as illegitimate. 

“We’re certainly troubled,” Kirby said, adding: “As we’ve said many, many times, we support Somalia’s sovereignty, their territorial integrity, and it’s got to be respected.” 

Situation could embolden militants, says official

Somaliland, the fragile nation’s breakaway province, has long claimed autonomy and governs from the city of Hargeisa. It has sought recognition since 1991, but the African Union’s official policy opposes changes to colonially drawn borders.  

The situation poses a national security concern, Kirby said, in that it could embolden Islamist al-Shabab militants that have long been the main antagonist in Somalia’s brutal civil war. 

“What we’re particularly concerned about is this [Memorandum of Understanding] inked recently between Ethiopia and Somaliland threatens to disrupt the fight that Somalis, Africans and regional international partners, including us, are waging against Al-Shabab,” he said. “Al-Shabab remains a viable terrorist threat in the region, without question. We don’t believe that the region can afford any more conflict.” 

“It’s a dangerous path,” Somalia’s former foreign minister and former ambassador to the U.S., Ahmed Isse Awad, told VOA. “The sister nations have gone to war twice in the last 50 years. 

“We thought we recovered from that conflict and bad history,” he added, speaking to VOA from the northeastern city of Garowe. “And as of late, we were working towards a great Horn of Africa cooperation and openness to each other. But now, this misguided step by Ethiopia endangers all of that and takes us back to the days of conflict and violent confrontation. It risks the whole region and the security of the region.” 

And, he said, while the U.S., “had a respected voice in the international arena,” its staunch support of Israel has changed that. 

“They don’t have the same leverage, I feel, because of the way America is conducting its foreign policy,” he said. “It’s losing some of its moral voice.” 

Ethiopia seeks to be naval power

Analysts say it’s logical that landlocked Ethiopia would seek sea access to serve the needs of its rapidly growing population. 

“The Bab al-Mandab Strait is becoming an increasingly contested chokepoint,” said Michael Walsh, a senior fellow in the Africa program at the U.S.-based Foreign Policy Research Institute. Addis Ababa, he said, clearly wants to safeguard Ethiopia’s supply chains by avoiding reliance on ports in the tiny coastal nation of Djibouti, which is affected by conflict in Yemen. 

And, he said, “the Abiy Ahmed administration has a desire to reestablish Ethiopia as a naval power. It recognizes that there is a regional naval power vacuum. This would provide a way to not only quickly project near-shore military power and influence across the region. It would provide a long-term pathway to becoming a regional naval hegemon.”  

Cameron Hudson, who researches Africa at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that may be more than Ethiopia can handle.  

“[Ethiopia] doesn’t have, I think, a full understanding of the degree that it will also be responsible for its own security and the general security, contributing to the general security, of the Red Sea,” he said. “So, it comes with a great responsibility that I’m not quite sure Ethiopia has fully thought through or appreciates.”  

He also questioned whether Washington’s actions show it “isn’t something that Washington has taken particularly seriously.” 

“Washington has done virtually nothing to try to put the pieces back together in the Horn of Africa,” said Hudson. 

“In my mind, Washington views the stakes in the Horn of Africa probably as too low and as not rising to the level of national security interest, where we would take meaningful high-level external action to avoid a worst-case scenario,” he said. “I think the quintessential example of this is we actually have a special envoy for the Horn of Africa, who has not been to the region in over a month.” 
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CAIRO — The Sudanese government suspended ties Tuesday with the East African regional bloc trying to mediate between the country’s army and a rival powerful paramilitary force, accusing the body of violating Sudan’s sovereignty by inviting the paramilitary leader to an upcoming summit.

The army, headed by General Abdel-Fattah Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces, commanded by General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, have been fighting for control of Sudan since April. Long-standing tensions erupted into street battles concentrated in the capital but also in other areas, including the western Darfur region.

In a statement, The Sudanese Foreign Ministry — which is aligned with the army — said the move is a response to the Intergovernmental Authority of Development (IGAD) for inviting Dagalo without previous consultation, which it said was a “violation of Sudan’s sovereignty.” 

The 42nd IGAD summit is set to take place in Kampala, Uganda, on Thursday.

IGAD did not immediately respond to the Foreign Ministry announcement. Dagalo confirmed last week on social media that he received an invitation from IGAD.

The eight-member bloc is part of mediation efforts to end the conflict, along with Saudi Arabia and the United States, which facilitated rounds of unsuccessful, indirect talks between the warring parties as recently as early November. The two military leaders are yet to meet in person since the war broke out.

Tuesday’s announcement comes one week after Dagalo finished a tour of Africa, where he met with government officials in Uganda, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa and Rwanda.

Over the past two months, the RSF has appeared to take the upper hand in the conflict, with its fighters making advances eastward and northward across Sudan’s central belt.

The United Nations says at least 12,000 have been killed in the conflict. Rights groups have accused both sides of war crimes.

The countries that make up IGAD include Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda.
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COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Denmark’s only overseas adoption agency said Tuesday that it is “winding down” its facilitation of international adoptions after a government agency raised concerns over fabricated documents and procedures that obscured children’s biological origins abroad. 

The privately run Danish International Adoption mediated adoptions in the Philippines, India, South Africa, Thailand, Taiwan and the Czech Republic. Last month, an appeals board suspended DIA’s work in South Africa because of questions about the agency’s adherence to legal standards. 

The Danish agency announced it was getting out of the international adoption business on the same day Norway’s top regulatory body recommended stopping all overseas adoptions for two years pending an investigation into several allegedly illegal cases. 

For years, some families in Europe, the United States and Australia with children who were adopted abroad have raised alarms about fraud, including babies who were falsely registered as abandoned orphans when they had living relatives in their native countries. 

Some adoptees have cited paperwork that was falsified to expedite their transfer to a foreign country or prepared in a way that concealed their backgrounds or made them difficult to trace. International laws, including Denmark’s, typically encourage keeping children in their countries of origin when possible. 

The Danish Social Affairs Ministry called the winding down of DIA, which also had worked with partner agencies in South Korea, Colombia and other countries, “the most serious crisis in the area of adoption in the past decade.” 

“When we help a child to a new family on the other side of the globe, there must be the necessary assurance that the adoption is carried out properly in relation to the biological parents,” Social Affairs Minister Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil said. 

Over the past decade, international adoption in Denmark has dwindled. There were about 400 to 500 children per year in the 1970s and 20-40 adoptions in the past three years, DIA said. 

In Norway, Kjersti Toppe, minister for children and families, said she believes there is a need for further investigation and has asked the Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affairs for that. 

“Adoptions must be safe, sound and in the best interest of the child,” Hege Nilssen, head of the directorate, said in a statement. “Our assessment is that the risk of illegalities is real.” 

The directorate said that families in the early stages of an adoption will be allowed to complete the process, but only after an assessment by the agency. Couples who have been matched with a child from South Korea also will be permitted to proceed. 

Most of the children adopted in Norway come from South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines and Colombia, according to national statistics. 

Earlier this month, the directorate said an examination of the adoption system was needed following media reports of allegedly illegal adoptions. Norway’s VG newspaper reported that some children in the Philippines were sold and given false birth certificates. 

In November, the directorate also stopped adoptions from Madagascar, citing a lack of security to ensure they would “be carried out in accordance with international principles for adoption.” 

Norway has three private adoption agencies. Verdens Barn handles adoptions from Thailand, South Korea and South Africa; InorAdopt arranges adoptions of children from Hungary, Taiwan, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic; and Adoptionsforum facilitates adoptions of children from the Philippines, Colombia and Peru. 

Sweden’s only adoption agency said in November that it was halting adoptions from South Korea following claims of falsified papers on children’s origins. 
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Harare, Zimbabwe — The U.N.’s Children’s Fund commended Zimbabwe Monday for raising the age of sexual consent to 18 years, a move that children’s rights groups hope will deter pedophiles.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa used a statutory instrument to raise the age of consent from 16 to 18 years in the Southern African nation. Violators could spend 10 years in jail.

UNICEF’s Zimbabwe representative, Dr. Tajudeen Oyewale, welcomed the change.

“This legislation has come to complement the amendment to the Marriages Act that prohibits the marriage of anyone less than age of 18,” he said. “We as UNICEF see these two legislations as critical legal instruments that will come toward ensuring that our children, especially the adolescent girls, are safe and protected.”

Ekenia Chifamba, a director of the girls’ rights group Shamwari Yemwanasikana, said she hopes the change will deter pedophiles.

“We were disgruntled in instances where we would see perpetrators’ penalties that were not favorable — some of them being given community service — while the girl would have to deal with key issues that mattered, which included their health,” Chifamba said.

Some girls would go for “backyard abortions,” she said, while others struggled with their mental health.

Some girls have to drop out of school after becoming pregnant, as most learning institutions in Zimbabwe do not accept expecting mothers as students.
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