China wants bureaucrats to shut up - latimes.com

Less is more, top officials say, as they try to crack down on civil servants notorious for longwinded speeches. Reporting from Beijing — By John M. Glionna Chinese officials say they want to clean up a pollution scourge fouling the capital and government centers nationwide: bureaucratic gasbags. The problem, Communist Party functionaries say, is that civil servants talk too much — at meetings, in speeches and when speaking off-the-cuff in public. It's the official Chinese version of yada-yada-yada, blah-blah-blah. To set an example for his peers, Li Yuanchao, a top member of a key Central Committee department, told the state-run New China News Agency that he is keeping his speeches short during meetings. In one recent video-conference, he kept his remarks to just 10 minutes, officials said. Vice President Xi Jinping scolded underlings at a recent Central Party orientation meeting, declaring that bureaucratic long-windedness lengthened meetings and cut productivity. So there's a new unwritten policy among bureaucrats: when it comes to speechifying, less is more. Scholars say long speeches by Chinese officials are legendary, often making a U.S. congressional filibuster seem like a haiku in comparison...More story

Some see worsening rights situation in aid donor 'darling' Ethiopia - Los Angeles Times

Some see worsening rights situation in aid donor 'darling' Ethiopia The U.S. gives about $1 billion annually to Ethiopia. But even as U.S. and other international aid has surged in the last decade, activists charge that the government has become more authoritarian. August 12, 2010|By Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times Reporting from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia — Like many in the West, former U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia David Shinn watched the country's recent elections for signs that democracy was finally taking root. When the results of the May vote were announced, all but two of 547 parliamentary seats went to the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, the coalition that has been in power here for nearly 20 years, or its allied parties. "How do you win 99% of the vote?" Shinn said. "That's un-American." And yet, he said, "Ethiopia remains a darling of the donor community." The U.S. gives about $1 billion annually to Ethiopia, more than to any other country in sub-Saharan Africa except Sudan. But even as U.S. and other international aid to Ethiopia has surged in the last decade, activists charge that the government has become more authoritarian. "There's been an inverse ratio of rising donor aid and a worsening human rights record," said Leslie Lefkow, a researcher with Human Rights Watch. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's government has won a degree of favor from the West for sending troops to fight radical Islamists in neighboring Somalia, but reports of rights abuses and a string of draconian laws that have constricted political space have put donor countries in an awkward position. "It's a dilemma for the international donor community, which doesn't want to walk away from Ethiopia because the needs are so great," said Jennifer Cooke, the director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Recent allegations of aid corruption have caused further unease among donor countries. A March report by Human Rights Watch alleged a countrywide pattern of local government leaders denying aid to opposition supporters. Eligibility for many major aid programs is determined by local government officials — almost all of whom belong to the ruling coalition or its affiliates. One former Ethiopian aid worker, who didn't want to be named out of fear of government retribution, told The Times that aid is leveraged by local leaders to consolidate power. "Aid is a tool for development," the aid worker said. "It is also a tool for politics." Ethiopian officials deny such claims. Communications Minister Bereket Simon said Human Rights Watch was "engaged in the continuous fabrication of allegations" and said Ethiopia "has put in place a transparent mechanism for the distribution of food aid."...More story

UN welcomes Ethiopian policy to allow Eritrean refugees to live outside camps

UN welcomes Ethiopian policy to allow Eritrean refugees to live outside camps Young Eritrean refugees Ethiopia has recently decided to take a new approach to Eritrean refugees by allowing them to live outside camps, a move welcomed by the United Nations refugee agency. Under the so-called ‘out-of-camp’ scheme announced last week, Eritreans who can sustain themselves financially or have relatives or friends who commit to supporting them no longer have to stay in camps. The policy shift is due to discussions between the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Ethiopian Government. “Given the fact that Eritrea and Ethiopia were a single political entity before the 1993 referendum, the new policy is also a response to refugees’ wishes and needs for strengthened people-to-people relations between the two countries,” UNHCR spokesperson Andrej Mahecic told reporters in Geneva.More than 60,000 Eritrean refugees have crossed the border into Ethiopia since the border conflict in the late 1990s between the two countries. More than 60,000 Eritrean refugees have crossed the border into Ethiopia since the border conflict in the late 1990s between the two countries. The new scheme now allows Eritrean refugees to live in urban areas, improves their access to services and helps build stronger ties with host communities. UNHCR said that once the policy has fully been implemented, the costs of looking after the refugees will be significantly lowered since those benefiting from the programme will be sustaining themselves. “It is our hope that this decision will eventually expand to include refugees from other countries as well,” Mr. Mahecic said. Refugees from Somalia and other countries – numbering 138,000 in all – already live in Ethiopian towns and cities, while more than 36,000 Eritrean refugees reside in three camps and two community centres that are set to be converted into camps. Any Eritrean refugee living in an Ethiopian camp who does not have a criminal record is eligible to take part in the new programme, which also involves skills training and educational opportunities. At present, many Eritreans in Ethiopia work in the informal sector and this is normally tolerated by the Government, the agency noted. UNHCR’s Addis Ababa office has found that a “good number” of Eritrean refugees plan to take advantage of the new policy, Mr. Mahecic said.