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The issues that children in Ethiopia face are some of the most challenging in the world. Even in an “average” year, the education, health and economic situation for millions of Ethiopian children can only be described as a crisis.

Frequent food shortages and periodic famine-like conditions continue to put children at risk. With inadequate health care services, many children die before reaching the age of five. Of those that survive, only 36 percent of children attend primary or secondary school. In addition, the HIV/AIDS crisis is devastating families at a rate that is destabilizing entire communities, leaving many children orphaned and at risk for exploitation.

- 6 percent of births are attended by a skilled health professional;
- many women die in pregnancy or childbirth;
- 4 million children are orphaned, nearly 1 million by AIDS;
- Only 18 percent of children reach grade five.

The major diseases affecting children under-five, such as acute respiratory infection, diarrhoeal diseases, measles, malaria and malnutrition are responsible for 70 per cent of childhood morbidity and mortality.

Diarrhoeal disease that could be treated with simple solution accounts to about 46 per cent and acute respiratory infections to 24 per cent of under-five mortality.

Measles is one of the major childhood illnesses. Measles-related cases fatality rates range from 3-5 per cent in normal circumstances and 15-20 per cent during outbreaks.

Malaria prevalent in 75 per cent of the country represents another important threat to children’s rights to survival and health. It accounts for seven per cent of diagnoses for under-ones visiting outpatient departments. It is also estimated that only 20 per cent of under-fives who experience malaria episodes come into contact with the existing clinics. Malnutrition is associated with poverty, household food and water insecurity and inadequate care of children.

Malnutrition weakens children’s ability to resist attacks of the infectious diseases. It also has a negative impact on children’s cognitive development. Fifty two per cent of children in Ethiopia are stunted, 11 per cent suffers from wasting, and 47 per cent suffer from severe and moderate underweight. 15 per cent of infants are with low birth weight. Low birth weight closely associated with maternal nutrition.

The early life of children in Ethiopia is mostly rural-based. Only 16 per cent of the population live in urban area.

ABOUT ETHIOPIA

Officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast. Its size is 1,100,000 km² with an estimated population of over 78,000,000. Its capital is Addis Ababa.

Ethiopia is one of the oldest countries in the world and Africa’s second-most populous nation. Ethiopia has yielded some of humanity’s oldest traces, making the area a primary factor in the origin and developmental history of humanity, with recent studies claiming the vicinity of present-day Addis Ababa as the point from which human beings migrated around the world. Ethiopian dynastic history traditionally began with the reign of Emperor Menelik I in 1000 BC.

The roots of the Ethiopian state are similarly deep, dating with unbroken continuity to at least the Aksumite Empire (which officially used the name “Ethiopia” in the 4th century) and its predecessor state, D`mt (with early 1st millennium BC roots). After a period of decentralized power in the 18th and early 19th centuries known as the Zemene Mesafint (”Era of the Judges/Princes”), the country was reunited in 1855 by Kassa Hailu, who became Emperor Tewodros II, beginning Ethiopia’s modern history.

Ethiopia’s borders underwent significant territorial expansion to its modern borders for the rest of the century due to several migrations and commercial integration as well as conquests, especially by Emperor Menelik II and Ras Gobena, culminating in its victory over the Italians at the Battle of Adwa in 1896 with the military leadership of Ras Makonnen, and ensuring its sovereignty and freedom from colonization. It was brutally occupied by Benito Mussolini’s Italy from 1936 to 1941, ending with its liberation by British Commonwealth and Ethiopian patriot forces..

The country is famous for its 1984 devastating famine as well as for its famous Olympic distance athletes, rock-hewn churches and as the origin of the Coffee bean. Having converted during the fourth century AD, it is also the second-oldest country to have become officially Christian, after Armenia. Ethiopia also has a considerable Muslim minority since the earliest days of Islam - being the site of the first Hijra in Islam history, the earliest 9th century Sultanates, the oldest Muslim settlement in Africa at Negash and home to the fourth holiest Muslim city of Harar - but the country has been secular since 1974. Historically a relatively isolated mountain country, Ethiopia by the mid 20th century became a crossroads of global international cooperation under the leadership of Emperor Haile Selassie I.

It became a member of the League of Nations in 1923, signed the Declaration by United Nations in 1942, and was one of the fifty-one original members of the United Nations (UN). The headquarters of United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) is in Addis Ababa, as is the headquarters of the African Union (formerly the Organisation of African Unity), of which Ethiopia was the principal founder. There are about forty-five Ethiopian embassies and consulates around the world.

It is not certain how old the name Ethiopia is; its earliest attested use is in the Iliad, where it appears twice, and in the Odyssey, where it appears three times. The earliest attested use in the region is as a Christianized name for the Kingdom of Aksum in the 4th century, in stone inscriptions of King Ezana. The Ge’ez name ʾĪtyōṗṗyā and its English cognate are thought by some recent scholars to be derived from the Greek word Αἰθιοπία Aithiopia, from Αἰθίοψ Aithiops ‘an Ethiopian’, derived in turn from Greek words meaning “of burned face”.

However, the Book of Aksum, a Ge’ez chronicle compiled in the 15th century, states that the name is derived from “‘Ityopp’is” — a son (unmentioned in the Bible) of Cush, son of Ham, who according to legend founded the city of Axum. Pliny the Elder similarly states the tradition that the nation took its name from someone named Aethiops. A third etymology, suggested by the late Ethiopian scholar and poet laureate Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin, traces the name to the “old black Egyptian” (sic) words Et (Truth or Peace) Op (high or upper) and Bia (land, country), or “land of higher peace”.

In English and generally outside of Ethiopia, the country was also once historically known as Abyssinia, derived from Habesh, an early Arabic form of the Ethiosemitic name “Ḥabaśāt” (unvocalized “ḤBŚT”), modern Habesha, the native name for the country’s inhabitants (while the country was called “Ityopp’ya”). In a few languages, Ethiopia is still called by names cognate with “Abyssinia,” e.g., and modern Arabic Al Habeshah, meaning land of the Habesha people.

The term Habesha, strictly speaking, refers only to the Amhara and Tigray-Tigrinya people who have historically dominated the country politically, and which combined comprise about 36% of Ethiopia’s population. Sometimes, the term is used to label the nearly 45% of Ethiopian population who used Semetic languages since ancient times like the Amharic (30.1% of Ethiopian population), Tigray (6.2%), Gurage (4.3%) and other smaller Semetic speaking communities like the Harari people in South east Ethiopia.

Though since Amharic become the official language of the country, most of the population of the SNNPR and a significant portion of the Oromia and Benishangul-Gumuz regions use it as a second language. In contrast, in contemporary Ethiopia, the word Habesha is often used to describe all Ethiopians and Eritreans. Abyssinia can strictly refer to just the North-Western Ethiopian provinces of Amhara and Tigray as well as central Eritrea, while it was historically used as another name for Ethiopia.

Early history

Human settlement in Ethiopia dates back to prehistoric times. Fossilized remains of the earliest ancestors to the human species, discovered in Ethiopia, have been assigned dates as long ago as 5.9 million years. Together with Eritrea and the southeastern part of the Red Sea coast of Sudan (Beja lands), it is considered the most likely location of the land known to the ancient Egyptians as Punt (or “Ta Netjeru,” meaning land of the Gods), whose first mention dates to the twenty-fifth century BC.

Around the eighth century BC, a kingdom known as Dʿmt was established in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea, with its capital at Yeha in northern Ethiopia. Most modern historians consider this civilization to be a native African one, although Sabaean-influenced due to the latter’s hegemony of the Red Sea, while others view Dʿmt as the result of a mixture of Sabaeans and indigenous peoples. However, Ge’ez, the ancient Semitic language of Ethiopia, is now thought not to have derived from Sabaean (also South Semitic).

There is evidence of a Semitic-speaking presence in Ethiopia and Eritrea at least as early as 2000 BC. Sabaean influence is now thought to have been minor, limited to a few localities, and disappearing after a few decades or a century, perhaps representing a trading or military colony in some sort of symbiosis or military alliance with the Ethiopian civilization of Dʿmt or some other proto-Aksumite state.

The Twenty-fifth dynasty of Egypt (roughly 743-656 BC) was actually an Ethiopian dynasty. During this period Ethiopia ruled Egypt. Their most accomplished pharaoh during this time was Taharqa who wore two snakes on his crown signifying sovereignty of both Egypt and Ethiopia.

After the fall of Dʿmt in the fourth century BC, the plateau came to be dominated by smaller successor kingdoms, until the rise of one of these kingdoms during the first century BC, the Aksumite Kingdom, ancestor of medieval and modern Ethiopia, which was able to reunite the area. They established bases on the northern highlands of the Ethiopian Plateau and from there expanded southward. The Persian religious figure Mani listed Aksum with Rome, Persia, and China as one of the four great powers of his time.

In 316 AD, a Christian philosopher from Tyre, Meropius, embarked on a voyage of exploration along the coast of Africa. He was accompanied by, among others, two Syro-Greeks, Frumentius and his brother Aedesius. The vessel was stranded on the coast, and the natives killed all the travelers except the two brothers, who were taken to the court and given positions of trust by the monarch. They both practiced the Christian faith in private, and soon converted the queen and several other members of the royal court. Upon the king’s death, Frumentius was appointed regent of the realm by the queen, and instructor of her young son, Prince Ezana.

A few years later, upon Ezana’s coming of age, Aedesius and Frumentius left the kingdom, the former returning to Tyre where he was ordained, and the latter journeying to Alexandria. Here, he consulted Athanasius, who ordained him and appointed him Bishop of Aksum. He returned to the court and baptized the King Ezana, together with many of his subjects, and in short order Christianity was proclaimed the official state religion again. For this accomplishment, he received the title “Abba Selama” (”Father of peace”).

At various times, including a fifty-year period in the sixth century, Aksum controlled most of modern-day Yemen and some of southern Saudi Arabia just across the Red Sea, as well as controlling southern Egypt, northern Sudan, northern Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and northern Somalia.

Islam in Ethiopia dates back to the founding of the religion; in 615, when a group of Muslims were counseled by Muhammad to escape persecution in Mecca and travel to Ethiopia via modern day Eritrea, which was ruled by Ashama ibn Abjar, a pious Christian king. Moreover, Bilal, the first muezzin, the person chosen to call the faithful to prayer, and one of the foremost companions of Muhammad, was from Abyssinia (Eritrea, Ethiopia etc).

The line of rulers descended from the Aksumite kings was broken several times: first by the Jewish Queen Gudit around 950 (or possibly around 850, as in Ethiopian histories). It was then interrupted by the Zagwe dynasty; it was during this dynasty that the famous rock-hewn churches of Lalibela were carved under King Lalibela, allowed by a long period of peace and stability.

Restored contact with Europe

In the early fifteenth century Ethiopia sought to make diplomatic contact with European kingdoms for the first time since Aksumite times. A letter from King Henry IV of England to the Emperor of Abyssinia survives. In 1428, the Emperor Yeshaq sent two emissaries to Alfonso VI of Aragon, who sent return emissaries that failed to complete the return trip. The first continuous relations with a European country began in 1508 with Portugal under Emperor Lebna Dengel, who had just inherited the throne from his father.

This proved to be an important development, for when the Empire was subjected to the attacks of the Adal General and Imam, Ahmad ibn Ibrihim al-Ghazi (called “Grañ”, or “the Left-handed”), Portugal responded to Lebna Dengel’s plea for help with an army of four hundred men, who helped his son Gelawdewos defeat Ahmad and re-establish his rule. However, when Emperor Susenyos converted to Roman Catholicism in 1624, years of revolt and civil unrest followed resulting in thousands of deaths. The Jesuit missionaries had offended the Orthodox faith of the local Ethiopians, and on 25 June 1632 Susenyos’ son, Emperor Fasilides, declared the state religion to again be Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, and expelled the Jesuit missionaries and other Europeans.

Zemene Mesafint

All of this contributed to Ethiopia’s isolation from 1755 to 1855, called the Zemene Mesafint or “Age of Princes”. The Emperors became figureheads, controlled by warlords like Ras Mikael Sehul of Tigray, and by the Oromo Yejju dynasty, which later led to 17th century Oromo rule of Gondar, changing the language of the court from Amharic to Afaan Oromo. Ethiopian isolationism ended following a British mission that concluded an alliance between the two nations; however, it was not until 1855 that Ethiopia was completely united and the power in the Emperor restored, beginning with the reign of Emperor Tewodros II. Upon his ascent, despite still large centrifugal forces, he began modernizing Ethiopia and recentralizing power in the Emperor, and Ethiopia began to take part in world affairs once again.

By the 1880s, Sahle Selassie, as king of Shewa, and later as Emperor Menilik II, with the help of Ras Gobena’s Shewan Oromo militia, began expanding his kingdom to the South and East, expanding into areas that hadn’t been held since the invasion of Ahmed Gragn, and other areas that had never been under his rule, resulting in the borders of Ethiopia of today.

European Scramble for Africa

The 1880s were marked by the Scramble for Africa and modernization in Ethiopia, when the Italians began to vie with the British for influence in bordering regions. Asseb, a port near the southern entrance of the Red Sea, was bought in March 1870 from the local Afar sultan, vassal to the Ethiopian Emperor, by an Italian company, which by 1890 led to the Italian colony of Eritrea. Conflicts between the two countries resulted in the Battle of Adwa in 1896, whereby the Ethiopians defeated Italy and remained independent, under the rule of Menelik II. Italy and Ethiopia signed a provisional treaty of peace on 26 October 1896.

Selassie years

Haile Selassie’s reign as emperor of Ethiopia is the best known and perhaps most influential in the nation’s history. He is seen by Rastafarians as Jah incarnate.

The early twentieth century was marked by the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie I, who came to power after Iyasu V was deposed. It was he who undertook the modernization of Ethiopia, from 1916, when he was made a Ras and Regent (Inderase) for Zewditu I and became the de facto ruler of the Ethiopian Empire. Following Zewditu’s death he was made Emperor on 2 November 1930.

Being born from parents of the three main Ethiopian ethnicities of Oromo, Amhara and Gurage, and after having played a leading role in the formation of the African Union, Haile Selassie was known as a uniting figure both inside Ethiopia and around Africa.

The independence of Ethiopia was interrupted by the Second Italo-Abyssinian War and Italian occupation (1936–1941). During this time of attack, Haile Selassie appealed to the League of Nations in 1935, delivering an address that made him a worldwide figure, and the 1935 Time magazine Man of the Year. Some of Ethiopia’s infrastructure (roads most importantly) was built by the fascist Italian occupation troops (not by corvee) between 1937 and 1940.

Following the entry of Italy into World War II, the British Empire forces together with patriot Ethiopian fighters liberated Ethiopia in the course of the East African Campaign (World War II) in 1941, which was followed by sovereignty on 31 January 1941 and British recognition of full sovereignty (i.e. without any special British privileges) with the signing of the Anglo-Ethiopian Agreement in December 1944. During 1942 and 1943 there was an Italian guerrilla war in Ethiopia. On 26 August 1942 Haile Selassie I issued a proclamation outlawing slavery.

In 1952 Haile Selassie orchestrated the federation with Eritrea which he dissolved in 1962. This annexation sparked the Eritrean War of Independence. Although Haile Selassie was seen as a national hero, opinion within Ethiopia turned against him due to the worldwide oil crisis of 1973, food shortages, uncertainty regarding the succession, border wars, and discontent in the middle class created through modernization.

Haile Selassie’s reign came to an end in 1974, when a Soviet-backed Marxist-Leninist military junta, the “Derg” led by Mengistu Haile Mariam, deposed him, and established a one-party communist state.

Communism

The ensuing regime suffered several coups, uprisings, wide-scale drought, and a massive refugee problem. In 1977, there was the Ogaden War, when Somalia captured the whole of the Ogaden region, but Ethiopia was able to recapture the Ogaden after serious problems, due to a massive influx of Soviet military hardware and a Cuban military presence coupled with East Germany and South Yemen the following year.

Hundreds of thousands were killed due to the red terror, forced deportations, or from the use of hunger as a weapon under Mengistu’s rule. The Red Terror was carried in response to what the government termed “White Terror”, supposedly a chain of violent events, assassinations and killings carried by the opposition. In 2006, after a long trial, Mengistu was found guilty of genocide.

In the beginning of 1980s, a series of famine hit Ethiopia that affected around 8 million people, leaving 1 million dead. Insurrections against Communist rule sprang up particularly in the northern regions of Tigray and Eritrea. In 1989, the Tigrayan Peoples’ Liberation Front (TPLF) merged with other ethnically-based opposition movements to form the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).

Concurrently the Soviet Union began to retreat from building World Communism under Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika policies, marking a dramatic reduction in aid to Ethiopia from Socialist bloc countries. This resulted in even more economic hardship and the collapse of the military in the face of determined onslaughts by guerrilla forces in the north. The Collapse of Communism in general, and in Eastern Europe during the Revolutions of 1989, coincided with the Soviet Union stopping aid to Ethiopia altogether in 1990. The strategic outlook for Mengistu quickly deteriorated.

In May 1991, EPRDF forces advanced on Addis Ababa and the Soviet Union did not intervene to save the government side. Mengistu fled the country to asylum in Zimbabwe, where he still resides. The Transitional Government of Ethiopia, composed of an 87-member Council of Representatives and guided by a national charter that functioned as a transitional constitution, was set up. In June 1992, the Oromo Liberation Front withdrew from the government; in March 1993, members of the Southern Ethiopia Peoples’ Democratic Coalition also left the government. In 1994, a new constitution was written that formed a bicameral legislature and a judicial system.

The first free and democratic election took place in May 1995 in which Meles Zenawi was elected the Prime Minister and Negasso Gidada was elected President. Though it is widely suspected that Meles Zenawi rigged the election. This suspicion is supported by Zenawi’s very low approval rating in Ethiopia.

Recent

In 1993 a referendum was held and supervised by the UN mission UNOVER, with universal suffrage and conducted both in and outside Eritrea (among Eritrean communities in the diaspora), on whether Eritreans wanted independence or unity with Ethiopia. Over 99% of the Eritrean people voted for independence which was declared on May 24, 1993.

In 1994, a constitution was adopted that led to Ethiopia’s first multi-party elections in the following year. In May 1998, a border dispute with Eritrea led to the Eritrean-Ethiopian War that lasted until June 2000. This has hurt the nation’s economy, but strengthened the ruling coalition. On 15 May 2005, Ethiopia held another multiparty election, which was a highly disputed one with some opposition groups claiming fraud. Though the Carter Center approved the preelection conditions, it has expressed its dissatisfaction with postelection matters.

The 2005 EU election observers continued to accuse the ruling party of vote rigging. Many from the international community are divided about the issue with Irish officials accusing the 2005 EU election observers of corruption for the “inaccurate leaks from the 2005 EU election monitoring body which led the opposition to wrongly believe they had been cheated of victory.”

In general, the opposition parties gained more than 200 parliament seats compared to the just 12 in the 2000 elections. Despite most opposition representatives joining the parliament, some leaders of the CUD party were wrongly imprisoned following the post-election violence. Amnesty International considered them “prisoners of conscience” and they were consequently released.