The Commissioner met the Canadian Ambassador to Ethiopia!
Commissioner H.E. Ambassador Teshome Toga, met Mr. Joshua Tabah, Ambassador of Canada to Ethiopia and Mrs. Juliana Lopez Fajardo, Director for Humanitarian and Planning at the Embassy, on Wednesday 25th October, 2023. In their discussion, H.E. Ambassador Teshome Toga stressed the challenges of the delayed fund for the DDR program.
Further, H.E. Ambassador Teshome Toga added to the program’s sensitivity, complexity, urgency, and its being one of the pillars of the peace process, that needs concern by partners and donors among many stakeholders to pay a tribute to the peace dividend.
H.E. Ambassador Teshome Toga also underlined the mounting pressure over time by former combatants between their expectations and boring feelings, their need to go back to their community and family, which would otherwise have both political and security implications.
H.E. Ambassador Teshome Toga explained not only his engagement with many stakeholders for the past many months to tackle the resource challenge. And the commission’s delay in delivering its major tasks as planned was because of the mere fact of the resource challenge, but also noted the trade – off between the Federal Government development program and crisis management.
He let H.E. Ambassador Joshua Tabah get the faintest idea of the DDR program activities from the registration to reintegration, the Federal Government budgetary support, the project document that claims more than 800 million dollars and the basket fund, the need to be flexible to make use of, the bilateral engagement in the resource mobilization, the dialogue with the World Bank for its engagement even before the reintegration process, the Commission need and readiness for transparency and accountability over the use of the basket fund, the transitional justice and the national dialogue commission complementarity with the DDR program, the current internal affairs in settling some conflicts, as well as alignment among the Commission, the National Rehabilitation Council, the Federal Government and Regional States.
Ambassador Joshua Tabah, on his part, raised his concern over the challenges and urgency of the DDR program and recognized the strategic importance of the DDR program. He also felt the relative development of stability in Ethiopia.
H.E. Ambassador Joshua Tabah explained that Canada has been a longstanding support of Ethiopia’s development effort for decades, working on government priorities with different ministries.
He as well underlined Canada’s policy of no direct budgeting but its interest in engaging in supporting the DDR program (especially for women and gender-related activities as a priority interest) through the basket fund coordinated by UNDP.
Ambassador Joshua Taban stressed the embassy’s concern over the operation of the transitional justice. He also affirmed that as the project document is signed and distributed to stakeholders, the Embassy will contact the Commission there after some time in a couple of months.
