The website of the Ethiopian Ministry
of Foreign Affairs maintains that Ethiopia has 39 missions (embassies and
consular offices) in Europe, North America, Asia, and Africa. These missions
officially represent Ethiopia and poise to serve the Ethiopian Diaspora and
Ethiopian-origin nationals. They also intend to encourage and facilitate the
transfer of capital, technology, and science to Ethiopia. Since recent times, missions
seem to aggressively work on 1) winning the hearts and minds of foreign
investors particularly from the Arab world, India, and China, and 2) collecting
funds for the construction of the “Grand Renaissance Dam”.
To what extent Ethiopian missions
accomplish their missions? This is not for sure easy to answer mainly because
information about the operations of the missions is not made readily available.
But from media reports and mission-organized events, one could identify several
areas where missions seem to perform inadequately.
In this paper, I highlight
some of the weaknesses and limitations of Ethiopian missions, with a goal of
inviting further discussions and then possible improvements in the way they do
their jobs. Although missions might be somehow different in terms of their organizational
capacity and readiness to change, it is argued that they do have several common
traits as outlined below.
On Modern Slavery
Due to a whole set of
socio-economic and political complications at home, Ethiopians are leaving
their country in droves and for slavery. Thousands cross the Red Sea and the
Sahara illegally and under life-threatening conditions. Several failed to make
it to their destinies- they perished along the way. Several are stolen of their
internal organs; several are raped, tortured, and indefinitely detained. Those who
luckily reached their destinations are equally vulnerable to mistreatments of
all sorts. They are forced to work under inhuman and hard-to-believe
conditions. In a way, one could argue that Ethiopia is a witness to the revival
of medieval period slave trade.
Several Ethiopian activists
and some international organizations have started exposing such atrocities. What
is surprising and worrisome is the silence of Ethiopian missions in relation to
this titanic-big problem. Although everyone has that natural right to live
anywhere in the world, it should be a moral responsibility to our missions to ‘cry’
for those challenged people. Missions were/are expected to make clear
statements to the government in Ethiopia and even to other governments and
international organizations. Moreover, they were/are expected to well support
those Ethiopian victims, especially those in the Middle East and Africa.
Rather, there are several
missions that sort of facilitate the immigration of Ethiopian teenage girls to
the Arab world. To me, this must be one of the most embarrassing failures of 21st
century diplomatic missions. If embassies and consulates do not care about
suffering Ethiopians, who else is supposed to be responsible? One could argue
that our missions do not have the organizational and resource capacity to do
that. To me, this holds no water; if they do not have the resource base to
accomplish tasks like this, it is easy to mobilize the Ethiopian Diaspora and
other organizations. Resource is not and should not be a problem but motivation
and readiness and belief is. Media are working a lot to mitigate modern-day
slavery whereas missions are busy sustaining and scaling it up. Missions do not
adequately support and galvanize even legally residing Diaspora Ethiopians, too.
On the Ethiopian Diaspora
As the websites of nearly all
Ethiopian missions maintain, they have that responsibility to serve the
Diaspora regardless of their backgrounds. Unfortunately, our missions
intentionally exclude the majority. Mission-organized fund raising events such
as those related to the “Grand Renaissance Dam” and even cultural festivities are
reserved for government sympathizers and members. Partly because of this, the
Diaspora are relentlessly disrupting those events.
This happened in South
Africa, Europe, and North America. The latest and perhaps the most embarrassing
one (to mission officials) happened in Norway (in Oslo and Stavanger) and San
Diego where the opposition forced the cancellations of the fund-raising events.
From video releases, it is easy to see how painful those happenings were to mission
officials. If missions do not change tactics and strategies, their very
existence is less justifiable- let alone contributing to the construction of the
grand dam. Stated simply, our missions failed to accommodate the needs and
expectations of the Diaspora. Expectations are clear and simple: to first dam
injustices of all sorts. Excluding, by design or accident, the Diaspora has serious
implications when it comes to political civility, development back home, and
national image.
On National Image
Our missions, along with
other duties, are supposed to create and maintain a good image of Ethiopia. But
due to their failure to accommodate the now powerful Diaspora, the events they
organize usually turned unsuccessful. Because of the opposition, they are
forced to interrupt their meetings. The hotels where they rent meeting halls
and the guests thereof see the tag of wars between the Diaspora opposition and
mission officials. Such people see the
wide gap between the missions and the Diaspora. This will surely create a bad
impression of Ethiopian politics and Ethiopia generally.
On Knowledge Transfer
Ethiopia is one of the few African
countries that is most affected by brain drain. Best educated and experienced
Ethiopians are working in western institutions and in international
organizations. Thanks to advances in information and communications
technologies, it was/is quite possible to employ such precious brains to the
development of Ethiopia. Our diplomatic missions have the possibility and moral
mandate to mobilize the educated Diaspora. Unfortunately, only a limited number
of the Diaspora are given the chance to serve their country while residing
abroad. Several experts had applied to freely serve their people back home but
their applications did/do not succeed for unexplained reasons. Instead,
expatriates (from India and Nigeria) are flooding Ethiopian higher education institutions
and are paid three times higher than the salaries of Ethiopian professionals.
One could argue that the
educated Diaspora do not support the regime back home. My take is that one does not have to support a
given government/party to serve his/her own people in his/her profession. It is
indeed their natural right even to oppose the governing party. The government is our missions must adhere to
genuine democratic governance and the rule of law. If these are fulfilled, many
highly educated Ethiopian Diaspora would not hesitate to serve their people.
Final Notes
Ethiopian missions could, in
addition to their consular/visa-related services, embark on ambitious and more
significant projects. They do have all the opportunities to exploit the talent
and resource of the Ethiopian Diaspora. They could learn from foreign
countries’ democratic ideals and practices. In a way, they could be change
agents when it comes to Ethiopian politics and economics.
This is possible if and only
if they start to be dictated by logic, reason, evidence and principles of human
rights versus party affiliation and mere indoctrination. Missions need not
limit their missions to the service of governing parties: they are supposed to
represent Ethiopia as a nation. They should also consult the government on such
key strategic issues as the rule of law, democratic governance, and generally
freedom of all sorts. But before that, they have to make sure that they
themselves believe in and advance democratic cultures and alternative voices. Reducing
ambassadorial role to 1) the collection of small funds from a limited number of
the Diaspora, and 2) the invitation of foreigners to cheaply invest in Ethiopia
is nothing but a miscalculation and misrepresentation of national interest.
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