ERITREA-ETHIOPIA: Chronology of key events ERITREA-ETHIOPIA: Chronology of key events in 2004
05 Jan 2005 14:26:07 GMT
Source: Integrated Regional Information Networks
NAIROBI, 5 January (IRIN) - ETHIOPIA-ERITREA
JANUARY
2 Jan: UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, says in a report to the Security Council that the peace process between Ethiopia and Eritrea "remains difficult, even precarious". He says he is "concerned that a minor miscalculation by either side could have serious consequences".
5 Jan: Eritrean President Isayas Afewerki insists Ethiopia must be "compelled" by the international community to implement a suspended border ruling. In a two-page letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, he says that is the "only way" to resolve the border dispute between his country and Ethiopia.
7 Jan: Eritrea denies arming Sudanese rebels in the Darfur region, describing Khartoum's allegations as baseless. Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail had complained to the UN Security Council, claiming Khartoum had evidence that Asmara was supporting anti-government rebels in the western Darfur region.
9 Jan: Eritrea welcomes a statement by the Council on the border situation with Ethiopia, in which members expressed "disappointment" over Ethiopia's rejection of an independent border ruling and re-affirmed the final and binding nature of the verdict. Eritrea says the Council should have "gone beyond that".
22 Jan: The UN says 1.9 million war-affected Eritreans, including internally displaced persons (IDPs) and their hosts - returning refugees and expellees - will need humanitarian assistance in the next year. Only 22 percent of the country's annual 612,000 mt of cereal requirements is available.
FEBRUARY
2 Feb: UNMEE reports that two men were killed and two others injured by landmines in the demilitarised zone separating Ethiopia and Eritrea. They were killed in two separate incidents on 25 January, the first such incident inside the 25-km temporary security zone between the two countries.
2 Feb: Former Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy is named UN special envoy to help defuse the standoff between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
24 Feb: Axworthy expresses disappointment after failing to visit Eritrea at the start of his peacekeeping mission. He describes Eritrea as the "missing voice" in his efforts to overcome the stalled three-year peace process between it and neighbouring Ethiopia. Eritrea criticises his appointment.
MAY
5 May: The Security Council expresses deep concern over the "continued lack of progress" in resolving the border dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea. It urges Eritrea to end restrictions imposed on UN peacekeepers in the region - including limits on their freedom of movement, saying the Council is concerned over deterioration in cooperation with the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea [UNMEE].
JUNE
7 June: Thousands of Eritrean refugees are moved away from the contested border with Ethiopia by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). UNHCR said refugees were arriving from Eritrea at the rate of about 250 per month, and that the new arrivals would also be sent to a safer refugee camp in Shimelba, 50 km from the border.
JULY
5 Jul: UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan urges Eritrea and Ethiopia to resolve their border dispute, saying international peacekeepers could not remain in the region indefinitely. Annan meets Eritrean President Isayas Afewerki and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and addresses the African Union.
12 Jul: Annan tells Ethiopia and Eritrea that "sober choices" must be made if they are to end their potentially dangerous stalemate. In a report to the Council on the progress of UNMEE, Annan says the four-year-old peace process is unlikely to succeed without flexibility from both sides.
29 Jul: New UNMEE force commander, Maj-Gen Rajender Singh of India, takes office from Maj-Gen Robert Gordon of the UK, pledging to uphold the highest standard of values among the peacekeepers.
AUGUST
10 Aug: UNMEE welcomes a decision by the Eritrean government to re-open a supply route to the west of the country, which had been closed since March. The Asmara-Keren-Barentu road closed following accusations by the Eritrean government that UNMEE forces were using the road to illegally monitor its troop movements.
SEPTEMBER
8 Sep: UNMEE expresses disappointment after the Eritrean government re-imposed restrictions of movement along a crucial supply route for its peacekeepers. It says it received a letter from the Eritrean authorities saying they could no longer use the Asmara-Keren-Barentu road.
15 Sep: The Council extends UNMEE's mandate for six months.
NOVEMBER
18 Nov: UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appoints Sissel Ekaas - a Norwegian national was previously the director of the Gender and Population Division in the UN Food and Agricultural Organization's (FAO's) Sustainable Development Department - as the new UNMEE deputy head.
25 Nov: Prime Minister Meles Zenawi announces a five-point plan to try and end the border stalemate with Eritrea, saying his country would accept, "in principle", the April 2002 ruling of the independent boundary commission that was intended to end hostilities between the two neighbours. He, however, insists that the ruling is still "illegal and unjust". Any attempt to implement the Hague-based decision, he adds, "might lead to a serious escalation of the tension between the two countries and thereby undermine the peace".
DECEMBER
15 Dec: Eritrea calls on Ethiopia to abide by the ruling of an independent commission that delineated their disputed border in 2002 and urges the international community to help secure peace and stability in the Horn of Africa. It demands Ethiopia's "cooperation with the Boundary Commission to ensure expeditious demarcation of the boundary" and calls for "full and unconditional respect of the Algiers Agreement".
16 Dec: The UN calls on Ethiopia and Eritrea to stop an ongoing war of words over their border dispute that sparked fighting four years ago, and instead concentrate on the search for peace.
Border stalemate continues.
ETHIOPIA
JANUARY
12 Jan: Aid workers report that violence in the Gambella region of western Ethiopia has forced about 15,000 members of the Anyuak community to flee to neighbouring Sudan. Violence in the region erupted in December when the Anyuak were blamed for an attack on a UN-plated vehicle carrying government officials. Eight people in the vehicle were killed. Reprisals against the alleged attackers saw hundreds of Anyuak homes burned to the ground and dozens killed over a number of days.
19 Jan: The Ethiopian government is criticised for banning the country's sole independent journalists' association and urging its members to appoint a new leadership. The government said it banned the association because it had failed to meet its legal obligation to register, as required by the law.
29 Jan: Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the Tigray Regional Health Bureau launch the first programme of free anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs for the treatment of HIV/AIDS patients in Ethiopia.
FEBRUARY
2 Feb: Human Rights Watch (HRW) criticises Ethiopia for human rights abuses and condemns foreign donors for failing to help prevent them. In its 2004 World Report, the New York-based group says foreign donors who were pouring about US $1 billion into Ethiopia each year are focused on other issues. Its report cites restrictions on the country's media, attacks on political parties, and serious abuses by the police, including torture and mass arrests. The government denies the claims.
6 Feb: Ethnic violence leaves at least 18 people dead and several hundred homes burnt down in eastern Ethiopia. The Ethiopian Human Rights Council (ERCHO) says fighting had erupted between members of the Somali and Oromo ethnic groups competing for political power in West Harerge. Details of the killings in West Harerge came to light just days after the HRW report.
MARCH
29 Mar: Parliament votes for an independent investigation into reports of violence between different ethnic groups in the western Gambella region. The European Union (EU) expresses concern over "sporadic but persistent" fighting in the region. Earlier, the government had apologised to local ethnic communities for its inadequate response to prevent a massacre in early December that led to the violence.
APRIL
1 Apr: A National Partnership Forum Against HIV/AIDS is launched to coordinate a multi-sectoral response, highlight the government's commitment and bring together a wide range of partners to avoid duplication of efforts.
JULY
2 Jul: UNHCR closes down a camp in eastern Ethiopia where an estimated 250,000 Somali refugees once lived, after the last 719 inhabitants left the settlement to return home to the self-declared autonomous republic of Somaliland.
AUGUST
17 Aug: The government disaster commission warns that the number of Ethiopians in need of food aid has risen to more than 7.6 million as a result of crop failure and lack of pasture following poor rains earlier this year. More than 6.6 million people were already dependent on food aid following a prolonged drought that hit the region in 2002 and 2003. Areas hardest hit by the crop failures include the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region, North and South Wollo zones in the Amhara Region and East and West Haraghe zones in the Oromiya region.
OCTOBER
19 Oct: A UN assessment warns of a full-blown humanitarian emergency developing in the Somali Region following a prolonged drought that has caused the deaths of large numbers of livestock, the main source of livelihood in the area. It found that milk was not available or had become too expensive in many of the seven zones visited. Cases of diarrhoeal illnesses were on the rise, water had become extremely scarce and pasture was completely depleted.
NOVEMBER
22 Nov: An emergency polio vaccination campaign is launched amid new fears the disease may have spread from neighbouring Sudan.
22 Nov: A national hand washing campaign is launched targeting rural communities using television and radio, health centres and schools through information sheets in local languages.
24 Nov: American actor Danny Glover visits and criticises the deadly legacy of landmines.
ERITREA
FEBRUARY
16 Feb: The UN reports that internally displaced Eritreans continue to suffer the consequences of war and drought, resulting in inadequate fulfilment of basic needs such as food, water, health care, shelter and education. It says Eritrea has 58,953 IDPs living in and outside camps and unable to return to their places of origin plus about 16,845 rural expellees in the camps and other settlement areas.
MARCH
17 Mar: UN warns that despite a marginal improvement in Eritrea's humanitarian situation, the country still faces very serious problems. Years of sustained drought and the effects of war, it says, have exhausted people's coping mechanisms to the extent that a slight improvement would have no tangible benefits.
APRIL
26 Apr: Rains that normally fall along Eritrea's eastern and coastal areas from November to February are reported to have failed, raising fears of another drought.
MAY
5 May: Reporters Without Frontiers warns that 14 journalists are being held behind bars in Eritrea, making the country the worst in Africa to work in as a journalist. "Nothing has shifted in Eritrea - still Africa's biggest prison for journalists and one of the last countries in the world without an independent, privately owned press," it says. "Pressure from the international community, including the European Union, proved ineffective."
JUNE
21 Jun: Relief agencies report that a harsh drought has led to critical drinking-water shortages in several Eritrean regions, including Anseba, Southern Red Sea and Northern Red Sea. Around 30,000 people are being provided with emergency water by trucking.
JULY
20 Jul: UNICEF reports that hundreds of thousands of children are living in extreme poverty due to prolonged drought, the aftermath of a border conflict with neighbouring Ethiopia and its impact on the country's economy. It says an estimated 425,000 children under 14 years of age are affected, most living in families largely dependent on and headed by women. Malnutrition rates are high, with all regions reporting over 10 percent of children under five experiencing acute malnutrition.
SEPTEMBER
16 Sep: The government rejects a claim by the US Department of State that it violates religious rights and severely restricts freedom of worship for all but four government-sanctioned religions: Orthodox Christians, Muslims, Catholics, and the Evangelical Church of Eritrea. The International Religious Freedom Report for 2004 had said the Eritrean government's "poor respect for religious freedom for minority religious groups" had continued to decline and 200 members of religious groups were reportedly detained.
21 Sep: Ten media watchdogs call on the government to free 17 detained journalists.
NOVEMBER
24 Nov: Relief agencies appeal for nearly $157.2 million to fund humanitarian activities in Eritrea in 2005, saying the country has continued to endure the aftermath of war, five years after the 1998 to 2000 border conflict with Ethiopia. The consequences of war included destroyed homes, mined villages, shattered livelihoods, hunger and malnutrition, the agencies say.