United Nations agencies and Ethiopian health officials have developed a comprehensive two-year work plan to boost maternal and newborn health and survival in the Horn of Africa nation, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has announced.

Medhine is an Ethiopian Asylum seeker; she spent more than a year in the Egyptian Prison for illegal entry to Egypt. During her one year of detention, she lost her young daughter, who was suffering from severe diarrhea and vomiting. EFRR handled this case and tried to release her through submitting several cases to the office of the High General Prosecutor and National Council for Human Rights asking for her release.

The World Bank, the IMF and the Ethiopian regime annual development reports have highlighted on Ethiopia’s higher GDP growth rate over the past 10 years, yet the UN development index and other indices [Misery Index] that measure the well-being of people have declined both absolutely and relative to many other African countries. The paradox of acute poverty and declining well-being of Ethiopians is found in various parts of the country and is pervasive across demographic groups.

On the one-year anniversary of her imprisonment by Ethiopia’s Zenawi government, Alemayehu G. Mariam pays tribute to political leader Birtukan Midekksa, ‘an ordinary woman irrevocably committed to the rule of law, freedom, democracy and human rights’. ‘The dictators are not afraid of Birtukan,’ writes Mariam, ‘but they are terrified of what she represents: Ethiopia's bright future.’

Sharing the faith and optimism of the imprisoned political prisoner Birtukan Midekssa, Alemayehu G. Mariam stresses that Ethiopia's future is in the 'hands, hearts and minds of its people, not in the tea leaves read by the experts'. The battle for Ethiopia's future will be one between 'future-makers' and 'future-takers' Mariam contends, victory in which in the makers will defeat the takers' efforts to oversee a continuation of the past.

Ethiopian authorities have released former opposition politicians, jailed for causing mayhem after the 2005 general elections, but the fate of an influential former party leader, Birtukan Mideksa, remains unclear.

Following the forced closure of the Addis Neger newspaper, Alemayehu G. Mariam condemns the concerted assault on Ethiopia's free press perpetrated by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's government. Saluting the commitment and success of the publication's staff and those working in the country's independent media as a whole, Mariam stresses that Ethiopians owe their compatriots in the free press a debt of eternal gratitude.

The safe house for victims of gender-based violence hides behind tall, grey walls in a nondescript neighbourhood of the capital. Run by Tsotawi Tekat Tekelakay Mahiber (TTTM) – the Organization Against Gender-based Violence -- is known only to the police.

Some 4.8 million Ethiopians will require emergency food and related aid costing $270 million for the first six months of 2010 in a country already plagued by prolonged drought and crop failure, according to newly released United Nations estimates.

Opposition parties are troubled by what they say is government’s strategy to keep them out of the general elections in May 2010. They accuse the ruling Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) of harassment. This includes arrests, obstruction of public meetings, and even murder.

Three editors of independent Amharic-language weekly Addis Neger have fled Ethiopia, saying that the government intends to prosecute them under Anti-Terrorism Proclamation No. 652/2009, promulgated on 28 August 2009. The last edition of the newspaper, which has been closed down, appeared on Saturday, 28 November.

The Ethiopian government has re-opened the trial of four major newspaper publishers in connection with the 2005 post-election violence in the East African nation. The ruling Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Front (EPRDF) has successfully lodged an appeal against the Ethiopian Supreme Court's decision to pardon the four publishers, Siday, Zekarias, Fasil and Serkalem, in connection with the 2005 elections.

As the Oromo Liberation Front has repeatedly stressed, the current Ethiopian regime has, since it came to power in 1991, dispossessed, displaced, and disenfranchised tens of thousands of the Oromo people. TPLF’s policies of dispossession and marginalization of the Oromo nation have remained at the root of today’s underdevelopment and the spectacle of mass starvation that has been witnessed throughout Oromia in recent years.

Following last week's Great Ethiopian Run, Alemayehu G. Mariam discusses an event that is more an act of mass civil disobedience than a running race. Drawing inspiration from Nelson Mandela's success in embarking on a continuous 'long walk to freedom' in South Africa, Mariam stresses that through undertaking its own marathon, Ethiopia will one day complete a route towards freedom, democracy and human rights.

In recent years, powerful and rich middle-east and Asian countries have been on a quest for the ultimate ‘breadbasket’ of grains to feed their growing population and to combat rising food prices. These powerful and rich Asian countries have gone to poor African countries, such as Ethiopia, with corrupt governments to grab farmland for the purpose of growing grains there, and then exporting them to feed their own people.

In the wake of the May 2005 Ethiopian parliamentary elections, paramilitary forces under the command of Meles Zenawi orchestrated the massacre of 193 innocent men, women and children and wounded a further 763 people involved in civil protest, writes Alemayehu G. Mariam. Ignoring the efforts of the country's regime to besmirch their memory, Ethiopians must honour these victims of oppression as patriots, Mariam stresses, and recognise their sacrifices as profound inspiration for future generations.

Looking back on the historical and political significance of the Ethiopian flag, Etyopian Simbiro considers the role and use of the 'tri-colour' in developments in the country. The flag has proven a double-edged sword in its ability to both divide and unify, Simbiro contends, but should ultimately prove the inspiration for a new Ethiopia based on tolerance, trust and respect for the rule of law.

The African Union Panel of the Wise held its seventh meeting at the African Union Commission in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 9 and 10 November 2009 under the chairmanship of Ahmed Ben Bella.

Western governments continue to support Meles Zenawi’s dictatorship because they believe that there is ‘no alternative in the opposition’, Alemayehu G. Mariam writes in this week’s Pambazuka News. But not only could this diplomatic mindset have ‘devastating consequences on Ethiopia’ by providing the moral justification for totalitarianism and a police state, it also makes the West complicit in the sufferings of the Ethiopians under Zenawi’s government, Mariam argues.

Ethiopia plans to offer 3 million hectares of land over the next two years for investors to develop large-scale commercial farms, a government official has said. Countries in Asia and the Gulf — such as China, India and Saudi Arabia — have rushed to buy farmland abroad to grow crops for their own people after food price inflation last year highlighted the need for greater food security.