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Ethiopia's Zone9 Bloggers Face the Limits of International Law

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The international human rights system is broken – or perhaps it never worked at all. In case after case, citizens’ human rights are violated under the national laws of their respective countries, despite the existence of international human rights commitments in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration, and by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Organization of American States, the African Commission, and others. The International Criminal Court has little say concerning any but the most egregious of international human rights violations, and member states have wide latitude to dispense justice as they see fit. For those who live in countries that fail to provide or enforce their own laws protecting freedom of expression, international principles have rarely provided actual recourse. Today, this is the case with the independent Ethiopian blogger collective known as Zone9. In April of this year, the government of Ethiopia arrested six members of Zone9

Ethiopia sees record coffee exports after Brazil's drought

( Reuters ) - Ethiopia expects coffee exports for its 2014/15 crop to hit a record high because of drought and disease stifling crops in Latin America, the head of its exporters association said on Wednesday. An unprecedented drought early this year reduced the 2014/15 crop in the world's biggest coffee producer Brazil. The International Coffee Organization forecast in September that global coffee production will fall short of demand. In the four months from July this year, Ethiopia - Africa's biggest producer of the bean - exported 54,000 tonnes of coffee worth $231.9 million, compared with the $172.5 million it earned from 51,000 tonnes over the same period last year. Hussein Agraw, chairperson of the Ethiopian Coffee Exporters' Association, said he expected the amount of coffee exported to rise to 235,000 tonnes by the end of 2014/2015, generating $862 million in revenue. Ethiopia exported around 190,000 tonnes in 2013/14, earning $841 million, he said. Exports

Ethiopia issues unfamiliar investor warning over war and famine

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High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. Every country tapping the global sovereign bond market details the dangers investors face in its prospectus, often in a boilerplate section enumerating possible problems – such as fiscal deficits or taxation issues – that is largely ignored. But the document sent by Ethiopia to international investors ahead of its  foray into the global sovereign bond market  is somewhat different. Far from a boilerplate, it includes a list of unfamiliar hazards, such as famine, political tension and war. There is also the risk of famine, the “high level of poverty” and strained public finances, as well as the possible, if unlikely, blocking of the country’s only access to the sea through neighbouring Djibouti should relations between the two countries sour.The document, seen by the Financial Times, is a sobering reminder of the risk of investing in

The Luwa System of the Garbiččo Subtribe of the Sidama

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Culture and Psychological Responses to Environmental Shocks: Cultural Ecology of Sidama Impulsivity and Niche Construction in SW Ethiopia

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Abstract Sidama people occupy a subsistence niche partitioned between traditional enset agropastoralism and transitional maize farming. Enset production is low-risk and requires multiple years for cultivation and processing. Maize farming is high-risk, high-yield requiring only one growing season from planting to harvest. Contrasting enset and maize farming we examine effects of crop loss and social shocks on Sidama impulsivity. We argue that impulsivity is a psychological process that is differentially activated by environmental shocks in the stable, traditional enset regime and unstable, transitional maize regime. Using a robust psychometric model derived from Barratt Impulsivity Scale (BIS) items we demonstrate two dimensions of Sidama impulsivity: Careful-Control [CC] and Acts Without Thinking [AWT]. Both dimensions are associated with environmental shocks, but the associations are moderated by social ecological regimes. In the enset regime, effects of shocks on impulsivity ar