Border Ruling: Can Ethiopians Expect Fairness From the UNSC?
By: Rev. Tom E. Guerra, Ph.D.,
African Christian Center
Suffice reading Professor Pankhurst's comment on the Addis Tribune a few weeks ago revealing the hypocrisy of the euro-centric international community with regard to Ethiopian issues. The article went on asking if there exist two sets of justice, for the poor and weak Vs. rich and strong nations. The professor painfully articulates the failure of the international bodies in ushering unbalanced justice between fascist Italy and the poor Ethiopian State. The innate double standard and feeling of racial supremacy seems to naturally force Western powers to give a deaf ear and blind eye to the Ethiopian reality. Bias and contempt seem to control their reasoning power.
That Ethiopia, an independent black African nation that had existed long before the Roman Empire, should lose its territory to the Italian colonization is already injustice par excellence. Demanding Ethiopia to abide by a colonial, outlawed and outdated treaty of 1902, is yet another crime against the poor people of Ethiopia. With repeated Italian invasion the colonial treaty should have long been annulled irrevocably. In principle, no reference should be made to this document in the face of international law, unless it is done for some historical reference. This means that the colonial aggressor should have handed over the territories it occupied illegally and fled back to Italy. Thanks to the Ethiopian generosity or magnanimity, the aggressor effect stayed on with its long ranged divisive motive. The divided nation we find today is as a result of such a colonial creation. Its leaders say in effect say, "So what, after all African countries were created by colonialists." But my argument is that Ethiopia's territorial integrity predates European colonialism and should not be altered as a result of colonialism which it fought. If the United Nations bases its border ruling of Ethiopia and Eritrea on colonial treaties, then it will have to go back and legalize slavery and the laws of apartheid. All agreements made between slaves and slave owners all over the world will have to be resuscitated. Is it morally and ethical right? Would the United Nations Security Council afford to do this? I believe Ethio-Eritrean border dispute should be solved by some type of political and economical pragmatism, for there is no legal or moral grounds for a colonial treaty to be enforced against its victims. It is naively absurd to expect the Ethiopian people who fought colonialism 'with their teeth' would accept a colonial treaty and abide by it.
The people and Territory of Afar and Issa are Ethiopian. So are Eritrea and Eritreans, but some more Ethiopian than others. Eritreans opted to be those others by their own choice. They have a right to be "other" but not at the expense of the demise of the Ethiopians proper. They can feast on their hard-won independence and identity but leave Ethiopia behind with its natural, historical, legal and traditional access to the Red Sea. They should realize that good neighborliness is not a virtue but a win-win state that needs to be cultivated and nurtured. Imagining a poor and weak Ethiopia, depending on a port of Assab, belonging to an "other" nation is totally unacceptable to the Ethiopian people. It is in the best interest of independent Eritrea to have to an Ethiopia with its own access to the sea. Regional peace and prosperity can be guaranteed only if a fair share of the pie is secured in the hands of the political players.
It is high time the international community listen to the cries of the Ethiopian people for justice against ill-meant colonial treaties. The colonialist motive was to suffocate Ethiopia by depriving it of access to its sea ports. Land-locked Ethiopia is a poor and weak nation that would depend on the mercy and mood of its hostile neighbors. For the UNSC to implement a ruling that would deprive Ethiopia of its sea access is highly immoral. As in the past, this time also Ethiopia and Ethiopians are awaiting justice from the representatives of the international community.
Rev. Tom E. Guerra, Ph.D.,
African Christian Center
[Opinions in this article are solely that of the writer.]