April 25, 2019
Anxiety is particularly acute among Oromia residents, where authorities began targeting informal housing earlier this year
SULULTA, Ethiopia (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Last month, local officials strolled through a neighborhood on the fringes of Sululta, several kilometers north of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. Flanked by policemen, they daubed red crosses on homes and pinned notices on doors.
The notices – a copy of which was obtained by the Thomson Reuters Foundation – ordered residents whose houses had been built without official permits to demolish them within seven days.
Those who refused would be taken to court, the notice said. There would be no compensation.
The news sparked worry and anger among residents, many of whom had arrived in the boomtown in Ethiopia’s Oromia region a decade or so ago, but never formally registered the homes they built.
As a shortage of land and affordable housing has led to an explosion of settlements on the edges of major towns, anxiety is particularly acute among Oromia residents, where authorities began targeting informal housing earlier this year.
“If they demolish the house, I cannot imagine what I’ll do – I can’t afford to build another,” said Sululta resident and mother-of-five Tigust Mekuria.
“It would be better to kill us than to displace us,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in the living room of her family home, her severely disabled daughter lying on her lap.
According to Tigust’s neighbor, Tsegaw Asfaw, a group of more than 200 Sululta residents tried traveling to Addis Ababa two days after the eviction notices went up to complain to regional authorities, but were stopped by police en route.
Since then, they say, they have heard no word from the government and have no idea when demolitions will begin.
“We are still waiting,” Tsegaw said. “We are in a situation of fear and uncertainty.”
Regional government spokesman Admassu Damtew said in a phone interview that “the (Oromia) regional government is clamping down as part of efforts to ensure the rule of law in towns where illegal settlement is very high.”
In Sululta, the city’s authorities have said the illegal settlements encroach on planned green areas, market places, forests and land earmarked for investors.
The city’s mayor, Rosa Umar, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that a team of experts was assessing which houses would be torn down, adding that though she did not yet know the total, it could be as many as 30,000.
“If the houses are illegal, they have to be demolished,” she said in a phone interview.
She said evictions would begin after the assessment had been concluded, and that there would be a public information campaign to explain the reasons behind the program.
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