Ethiopia: Why is it Ranked Number 19 for State Failure?

Ethiopia is ranked number 19 on the Fund for Peace’s list of Failed States found on foreignpolicy.com. To understand why it is considered such a critical state I used several resources including: the World Factbook, the Wall Street Journal and the Economist. The World Factbook provided me with the knowledge that Ethiopia has a population of 93,877,025, which is extremely large for a landlocked state. Ethiopia was under a socialist regime, ruled by Emperor Haile Selassie until 1991 when taken down by rebel forces. In 1995 Ethiopia had its first multiparty elections, electing President Negasso Gidada. Currently Ethiopia's leader is President Girma Woldegiorgis. Ethiopia militarizes the Eritrea border to protect land that was supposed to be handed over to Eritrea after the peace treaty from their long withstanding war. Ethiopia is a landlocked country with Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea and Dijbouti as its bordering states. This immediately made me think of Collier and his chapter on landlocked states with bad neighbors. Somalia and Sudan are ranked on the top three on the Failed States Index and as stated, conflicts exist with Eritrea. This further inhibits economic growth and increases state weakness. I also found that Ethiopia has environmental issues such as overgrazing and water shortages in addition to health concerns such as mass death due to AIDS.

Ehtiopia scored an 8.6 on human rights and an 8.2 on external intervention and I wondered why. I found an article on The Wall Street Journal that pertained to both of these issues titled “Kerry’s Ethiopia Opportunity.” It was written recently in May of this year. The article discussed how the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to Ethiopia to send a message to the government about his disagreement with their horrible human rights record and lack of freedoms. The article gave the example of the imprisonment of journalist Eskinder Nega, who was sentenced to 18 years for speaking out on the issues in the country.  Thus this article encompasses both the issue of human rights and external intervention as the U.S. senator felt compelled to intervene.

I also found an article that showed more of a hopeful side on The Economist. The article was titled: “Free to Protest, Just a Bit.” On June 2^nd, what the author of the article describes as RARE, a political protest engaged in the streets – reported as the biggest in Ethiopia since 2005. My hope however turned sour as I read on learning that the leaders of the political protest had been imprisoned or exiled and the media coverage removed. They were protesting unemployment and inflation – representing the group grievance category in which Ethiopia received an 8.1. Group Grievance as Professor Burch defines in this weeks PowerPoint is “when groups organize in the country to articulate great anger at the state or government.”