20 Amendments of Emilio MENÉNDEZ del VALLE related to 2012/2026(INI)
Amendment 2 #
Motion for a resolution
Citation 1 a (new)
Citation 1 a (new)
– having regard to the final report of the European Union Electoral Observation Mission on the Ethiopian elections of 23 May 2010,
Amendment 27 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B a (new)
Recital B a (new)
Ba. whereas two events of great significant for the region took place on 20 August 2012: firstly, the death of the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi, and, secondly, the establishment of the first formal parliament in Somalia in more than two decades;
Amendment 55 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital D a (new)
Recital D a (new)
Da. whereas upon coming to power, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) promised to lead the country to democracy, yet no real democratisation has taken place, and all public institutions remain under government control;
Amendment 61 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital D b (new)
Recital D b (new)
Db. whereas at the general elections of May 2010, the EPRDF won 545 of the 547 seats available, prompting the EU Electoral Observation Mission to declare that the elections did not meet international standards;
Amendment 65 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital D c (new)
Recital D c (new)
Dc. whereas Ethiopia receives more foreign aid from the USA and the European Union than any other country in Africa;
Amendment 67 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital D d (new)
Recital D d (new)
Dd. whereas irrationality and political extremism take root in situations of poverty or famine; whereas fourteen months after United Nations officially declared the first famine of the 21st century, in the Horn of Africa, the humanitarian situation has improved relatively, but remains critical;
Amendment 69 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital D e (new)
Recital D e (new)
De. whereas in March 2012 FAO estimated that more than eight million people were in need of assistance in the Horn of Africa, of whom 3.2 million lived in Ethiopia, 2.5 million in Somalia, 2.2 million in Kenya and 180 000 in Djibouti; whereas in 2011, the region suffered its worst drought in 60 years, which affected over 13 million people, forcing hundreds of thousands of people from their homes and killing tens of thousands more;
Amendment 71 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital D f (new)
Recital D f (new)
Df. whereas to continue its humanitarian work and to invest in recovery efforts in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia, UNICEF needs USD 273 million for 2012, of which, as of the end of July 2012, it had received only 33%;
Amendment 120 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6 a (new)
Paragraph 6 a (new)
6a. Calls on the European institutions to remain vigilant and active in response to the political transition under way in Ethiopia and the first steps towards democracy in Somalia;
Amendment 124 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6 b (new)
Paragraph 6 b (new)
6b. Takes the view that, despite the serious difficulties caused by the involvement of powerful clans, the European Union must make an effective contribution to strengthening Ethiopia’s institutions, which were for decades under the thumb of the late prime minister;
Amendment 125 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6 c (new)
Paragraph 6 c (new)
6c. Stresses, similarly, that the Union should play, in close cooperation with the United States and the African Union, an important role in the future of Somalia;
Amendment 152 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
9. Takes the view that Ethiopia in particular has a strong democratic potential and a long-standing tradition of civil society engagemen, although its leaders have not done enough to make the most of it; andds that renewed efforts should be made to promote dialogue with the Ethiopian authorities on further democratic reforms; stresses the importance of continuous assistance to South Sudan with a view to creating and sustaining an effective civil society; strongly believes that the new instrument for the promotion of democracy and human rights should include ad hoc financing lines for the Horn of Africa;
Amendment 154 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9 a (new)
Paragraph 9 a (new)
9a. Notes that Ethiopia currently has neither an independent judiciary nor an independent media as a result of a concerted campaign to undermine and obstruct its judges, control its media, intimidate its opposition and silence human rights organisations;
Amendment 155 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9 b (new)
Paragraph 9 b (new)
9b. Points out that many journalists have been prosecuted under the anti-terrorism law of 2009; deplores the recent campaign of legal harassment that has culminated in the Federal Supreme Court sentencing blogger Elias Kifle in absentia to life imprisonment, and Wubishet Taye, deputy editor of a local newspaper, and columnist Reeyot Alemn, to 14 years in prison; welcomes, however, the resent pardoning of the Swedish journalists Martin Schibbye and Johan Persson after the death of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi; urges the new government to extend the same clemency to all victims of arbitrary justice;
Amendment 156 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9 c (new)
Paragraph 9 c (new)
9c. Calls on the international community to put pressure on the Ethiopian Government to abandon its policy of expelling, deporting and forcibly displacing populations from different parts of the country in order to sell their legally held ancestral lands to multinational corporations;
Amendment 157 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9 d (new)
Paragraph 9 d (new)
9d. Deplores the attitude of the Indian agri-food company Karuturi, which opened a plantation in the Western Ethiopian region of Gambella after the native population was forcibly displaced; congratulates UNICEF on its detailed and thorough report on this situation published in 2006; stresses in this connection that the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Article 7(1)(d)) defines deportation or forcible transfer of population as a crime against humanity;
Amendment 158 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9 e (new)
Paragraph 9 e (new)
9e. Calls on the USA and the European institutions, as Ethiopia’s principal donors of foreign aid, to urge its government to carry out the process of democratisation it promised in 1991;
Amendment 200 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13 a (new)
Paragraph 13 a (new)
13a. Takes the view, given both the faltering resources of the World Food Programme – whose funding has been cut in the past two years – and the inability of the UN and NGOs to address major disasters, that the United Nations Human Rights Council should make a formal statement with a view to encouraging reflection and mobilising political will at the highest level;
Amendment 205 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13 b (new)
Paragraph 13 b (new)
13b. Stresses that, while the food crisis in the Horn of Africa (as in the Sahel) is attributable to repeated droughts, crop failures and rising prices, other very significant factors, aside from these cyclical elements (although drought can now be considered to be structural), should also be taken into account, such as the breakdown of communities and the headlong rush to promote the export of agricultural products, to the detriment of food sovereignty and of production for domestic consumption and sale;
Amendment 208 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13 c (new)
Paragraph 13 c (new)
13c. Deplores the ineffectiveness of the international community’s efforts to address the humanitarian emergency in the Horn of Africa; points out that early- warning systems had forecast a probable crisis in August 2010, but that a large- scale response was not forthcoming until July 2011; calls, therefore, on the EU Member States to undertake to review their food crisis response models and address the underlying causes of starvation;