Ethiopia begins relocating 2.2 million to fertile lands

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia -- Ethiopia has begun relocating hundreds of thousands of people from drought-prone areas to fertile lands to alleviate food shortages, a government spokesman said Wednesday.

But international aid groups say resettlement areas are rife with disease and lack schools and health clinics, raising concerns that officials have not fully prepared for the relocations.

Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, said 69 people at one remote relocation area died of diseases that could easily have been treated if health facilities had been nearer.

"There will be problems and challenges, and what we are trying to do is overcome them and ensure our people have enough to eat," Zemedkun Teckle, a spokesman for the government said.

In phase one, which began late last year, 150,000 families were being moved to underpopulated farmland. The $220 million plan calls for moving 2.2 million people over the next three years, he said.

Ethiopia remains chronically short of food, and droughts over the past two years have led to an estimated 30,000 starvation deaths in the country of 70 million people.

"Criticism is not helpful for the government or the country," Teckle said.

Last year, international donors led by the United States sent 1.7 million tons of food to the country. Some 13 million people in Ethiopia were dependent on food aid from abroad.

The United Nations now estimates that some 7 million Ethiopians need food aid, and international organizations say the relocations are only creating new problems.

"Both the scale and the pace of the program should be carefully considered to take account of the humanitarian, economic and environmental risks posed," the European Union said in a statement.

In Ethiopia's remote northwestern Humera district, near its border with Sudan, 69 people have died from diseases like malaria and diarrhea since late last year, when 2,000 people were resettled there. Medecins Sans Frontieres said the diseases could have been treated but that there aren't enough health clinics nearby.

Zemedkun did not say how many families have already been moved, but explained that only families that volunteer were being resettled and all were being moved within their own regions to avoid any ethnic conflict with their new neighbors.

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