Stop the Addis Ababa Master Plan

We, the Oromo people around the world, in strong terms, express our resistance and opposition to the Master Plan to incorporate Oromo towns and villages into the capital, Addis Ababa. In April 2014, the current Ethiopian government announced the so-called "Addis Ababa Integrated Regional Development Plan" (the "Master Plan"), which proposes to incorporate 17 weredas (counties) and 36 towns of Oromia Reginal State surrounding Addis Ababa (aka Finfinne) into the capital, where Oromo culture and language have been ridiculed and disparaged for centuries.

This decision has been a deliberate infringement on the constitutional rights of the people of Oromia since it denies them the right for self-governance by unjustly taking away their land, houses, and businesses on which their livelihood depends.

According to the country’s constitution, the Ethiopian state is a federal state in structure (Article 1 and 50-52) which means that the country is a 'nation of nations' that should respect the sovereignty of its reginal states (Article 8). Article 39: 2 reads “Every nation, nationality and people in Ethiopia has the right to speak, to write and to develop its language; to express and to promote its culture; and to preserve its history.” Moreover, according to Article 39:3, “Every nation, nationality and people in Ethiopia has the right to a full measure of self-government which includes the right to establish institutions of government in the territory that it inhabits and to equitable representation of regional and national governments. The constitution also has a provision for the right to self-determination (Article 39: 1). As sovereign entities, the regional states are the foundations that have equal share in the founding of the country.

Despite these clear provisions for self-governance, the TPLF government officials have been motivated by their insatiable greed to displace millions of Oromo families from their ancestral lands in order to lease them to foreign investors.

This process has already been in progress in the capital where Oromo businesses and households have been recklessly demolished in day light in the name of the Master Plan. Having sold or leased all available land in the capital, the government is now on the verge of wholly executing the Master Plan which grabs Oromo lands and incorporates them into the capital. The majority of Oromo people oppose and condemn this outrageous misuse of power to enrich a small group of government officials while the former live in abject poverty— a significant portion of whom are still languishing in prison cells for resisting these and other kinds of injustices.

This politically motivated and constitutionally ill-advised decision provoked an immediate and furious reaction from college and high school Oromo students across the state of Oromia, which in turn resulted in the brutal and cruel killings of over a hundred innocent students by the federal and state military forces. The trend obviously is to destroy Oromo livelihood by grabbing their land and controlling their way of life.

While the ruling TPLF top officials were plotting to execute this plan, the vast majority of the Oromo people have been left out in the cold, desperately seeking answers on what these new developments mean for their children and grandchildren. The incorporation of the towns of Oromia into the capital means that 1) the Oromia state loses political control on its own region; 2) the region gives away economic benefits from its own territories; 3) Oromo families will be displaced from their lands, and 4) Oromo culture and language will be inhibited due to forced assimilation.

More recently, the TPLF officials have been trying to downplay their colossal mistake in orchestrating the master plan without engaging the Oromo people. Regardless of what they say, the essence of the master plan remains the same, namely to illegally incorporate Oromo towns and villages into the capital thereby obliterating the Oromo culture, language, and identity.

The United Nations General Assembly resolution of 2011 (66/142: Rights of Indigenous People) recognized “…the value and the diversity of the cultures and the form of the social organization of indigenous peoples and their holistic traditional scientific knowledge of their lands, natural resources and environment.” The organization also expressed its concern about “…the extreme disadvantages that indigenous peoples have typically faced across a range of social and economic indicators and about the impediments to their full enjoyment of their rights.” Obviously, the current Ethiopian government has virtually ignored this resolution which it signed along with the majority of 144 nations.