15-Mar-2020: Egypt fears the project
Formerly known as the Millennium Dam and sometimes referred to as Hidase Dam is a gravity dam whose construction began in 2011 on the Blue Nile tributary in the northern Ethiopia highlands, from where 85% of the Nile’s waters flow. When complete, the Grand Renaissance Dam will be Africa’s biggest hydroelectric power plant.
At the centre of the dispute are plans to fill up the mega-dam as Egypt fears the project will allow Ethiopia to control the flow of Africa’s longest river. Hydroelectric power stations do not consume water, but the speed with which Ethiopia fills up the dam’s reservoir will affect the flow downstream.
Egypt relies on the Nile for 90% of its water. It has historically asserted that having a stable flow of the Nile waters is a matter of survival in a country where water is scarce. Egypt also fears that the dam could restrict its already scarce supply of the Nile waters, which is almost the only water source for its people. It could also affect transport on the Nile in Egypt if the water level is too low and affect the livelihood of farmers who depend on the water for irrigation.
A 1929 treaty (and a subsequent one in 1959) gave Egypt and Sudan rights to nearly all of the Nile waters. The colonial-era document also gave Egypt veto powers over any projects by upstream countries that would affect its share of the waters.
Under the 1959 Nile Waters Agreement, the two downstream riparian states Egypt and Sudan, respectively, were allocated 55.5 billion cubic metres and 18.5 billion cubic metres of Nile water annually. That settlement reduced Cairo’s control of the waters, compared to the virtual veto over utilisation it was granted under the 1929 treaty.
Egypt accuses Ethiopia of not factoring in the risk of drought conditions such as those that affected the Nile Basin in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Ethiopia was outside the purview of the 1959 treaty, as also other upstream states including Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda. Ethiopia has said it should not be bound by the decades-old treaty and went ahead and started building its dam at the start of the Arab Spring in March 2011 without consulting Egypt.
The dam is at the heart of Ethiopia’s manufacturing and industrial dreams. When completed, it is expected to be able to generate a massive 6,000 megawatts of electricity. Ethiopia has an acute shortage of electricity, with 65% of its population not connected to the grid. The energy generated will be enough to have its citizens connected and sell the surplus power to neighbouring countries. Ethiopia also sees the dam as a matter of national sovereignty. The dam project does not rely on external funding and relies on government bonds and private funds to pay for the project. The country has been critical of what it considers foreign interference in the matter.
Neighboring countries including Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya, Djibouti and Eritrea are likely to benefit from the power generated by the dam.
4-Feb-2020: What Brexit means for the EU and its partners
As against the fears of a no-deal exit, the EU and the U.K. negotiated a Withdrawal Agreement, which enabled both parties to secure an orderly exit of Britain. This will help minimize disruption in the lives of citizens, businesses, public administrations, as well as the international partners of the two parties.
As per the Withdrawal Agreement, the EU and the U.K. have agreed on a transition period of 11 months, during which the U.K. will continue to participate in the EU’s Customs Union and in the Single Market, apply EU law, and continue to abide by the international agreements of the EU even though it is no longer the Member State of EU. Due to the provision of the transition period, there is a degree of continuity.
Post the Brexit, there is a need to start a new chapter in the relations between the U.K. and the European Union. The negotiations between the two parties will be beginning soon to chart a future source of cooperation.
The EU and the U.K. are bound by history, geography, culture, shared values and principles and a strong belief in rules-based multilateralism. The cooperation needs to go beyond trade and they need to keep working together on security and defence, areas where the U.K. has experiences and assets that are best used as part of a common effort.
The world faces big challenges and changes in the form of climate change, extremism, cybercrime, rising inequality, and trade protectionism. The more the U.K. and the EU are able to work together, the greater the chances of addressing these challenges effectively. Consultation and Co-operation between the two bilaterally and in key regional and global fora, such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or the G20 will benefit both the parties.
EU, with 27 Member States constitutes a single market of 450 million citizens and more than 20 million businesses. It remains the largest trading bloc in the world and the world’s largest development aid donor.
1-Feb-2020: Brexit brings a new dawn for U.K
Britain had previously resisted many EU projects over the years. It had refused to join the single currency or the Schengen free travel area arrangements. The 2016 referendum vote had voted in favour of Brexit, triggering deep bitterness and division within Britain.
It led to political chaos in London, paralyzing parliament and renewed calls for independence from Scotland.
Britain is set to end its 47-year-long membership of the European Union, which had ensured its integration with Europe. Britain becomes the first country to leave the 28-member bloc.
Notably, a 11-month transition period has been negotiated as part of an EU-U.K. exit deal. Britons will be able to work in and trade freely with EU nations until December 31, 2020, and vice versa, although the U.K. will no longer be represented in the EU institutions.
While the exit terms have been agreed, Britain must still strike a deal on future relations with the EU, its largest trading partner. Britain’s departure would also mean a “sea-change” for the bloc.
17-Oct-2019: Britain, European Union reach Brexit deal
Britain and the European Union have struck an outline Brexit deal after days of intense see-saw negotiations — though it must still be formally approved by the bloc and ratified by the European and UK Parliaments.
Immediately complicating matters was Johnson's Northern Irish government allies which didn't waste a minute to say they could not back the outline deal because of provisions for the Irish border.
Johnson needs all the support he can get to push any deal past a deeply divided Parliament and will surely temper jubilation at the EU summit. The UK parliament already rejected a previous deal three times.
Technical negotiators struggled longest to finetune customs and sales tax regulations that will have to manage trade in goods between the Northern Ireland and Ireland — where the UK and the EU share their only land border.
Both the customs and consent arrangements are key to guaranteeing an open border between the UK's Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland — the main obstacle to a Brexit deal.
14-Mar-2017: Scotland seeks split from UK over Brexit
Scotland’s leader announced that she will seek authority to hold a new independence referendum in the next two years because Britain is dragging Scotland out of the EU against its will.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said that she would move quickly to give voters a new chance to leave the United Kingdom because Scotland was being forced into Brexit that it didn’t vote for. Britons decided in a referendum to leave the EU, but Scots voted to remain.
The move drew a quick rebuke from Prime Minister Theresa May who said a second referendum would be hugely disruptive and is not justified because evidence shows most Scottish voters oppose a second referendum.
Ms. Sturgeon said she would ask the Scottish Parliament next week to start the process of calling a referendum, to be held between the fall of 2018 and the spring of 2019. By then, details of Britain’s post-Brexit deal with the EU would be clear and Scottish voters would be able to make an informed choice.
22-Nov-2019: Bougainville may become world’s newest country
Approximately 30 years after a decade-long brutal civil war in Bougainville, a tiny island in the Pacific, is going to the polls to vote on its independence from Papua New Guinea. If Bougainville’s people vote for its independence in the historic referendum, the world will get its newest and possibly smallest nation.
Between 1988-1998, political factions in Bougainville were involved in an armed conflict with the government of Papua New Guinea, in an attempt to force Papua New Guinea to divest control of the resource-rich island.
This historic referendum is a result of one of the three provisions of the Bougainville Peace Agreement, signed in 2001 and enacted through an amendment of the Papua New Guinea Constitution, the other two provisions being weapons disposal and autonomy. The peace agreement of 2001 brought an end to the violent conflict between the people of Bougainville and the government of Papua New Guinea.
Voters in Bougainville get to choose between ‘greater autonomy’—a greater degree of autonomy than current arrangements within the framework of the Papua New Guinea Constitution—or independence for Bougainville from Papua New Guinea control. However, the referendum is not binding and would still have to be passed by the Government and the Parliament of Papua New Guinea, in consultation with the Autonomous Bougainville Government, before a final decision is made.
To understand Bougainville’s links with Papua New Guinea, some historical context is required. Although the island’s indigenous population had inhabited it for centuries, it got its name after French colonizer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, a scientist who undertook sea voyages, particularly to the Pacific in 1776, to colonise new territory for France. Interestingly, despite having the island named after him, Bougainville never actually set foot upon it. According to some resources that deal with Bougainville’s history, the nomenclature for the tropical flower Bougainvillea can also be attributed to Louis-Antoine de Bougainville.
In 1885, during Germany’s period of colonisation, the island of Bougainville came under the German protectorate of German New Guinea. The outbreak of WWI changed the power structure in the Pacific and in 1914, Bougainville and other islands nearby, including what is now Papua New Guinea, fell under the control of Australian forces. The League of Nations controlled the island till 1942 when during WWII, American, Australian, New Zealand and Japanese military forces battled for its control. The battle resulted in the Japanese withdrawing from the island and Australia taking over its administration.
This arrangement lasted till 1975, ending with Papua New Guinea gaining independence. There have been previous attempts to declare Bougainville independent—when Papua New Guinea became an independent country in 1975, and again in 1990.
In the late 1970s, a decentralised system of provincial government was introduced in Bougainville and the current autonomy arrangements were implemented following the constitutional enactment of the Bougainville Peace Agreement in 2001.
There has subsequently been dissatisfaction among Bougainvilleans over implementation of the agreed arrangements for Bougainville autonomy, particularly in regard to the constitutionally guaranteed financial grants to which the Autonomy Bougainville Government (ABG) is legally entitled, but which the (Papua New Guinea) National Government has not provided in accordance with the ABG’s calculations.
The conflict in Bougainville and the desire of Bougainvillean people for independence is rooted in the historic plunder of the resource-rich island that has large deposits of copper and the unequal distribution of wealth that followed. After the discovery of copper during the 1960s deep in the Crown Prince Ranges in the center of the island, mining conglomerate Rio Tinto’s Australia subsidiary, Conzinc Rio Tinto, set up the Panguna mine, also known as the Bougainville Copper Mine, that holds some of the world’s largest reserves of copper and is the world’s largest open cut copper mine. Extraction of the resource in the Panguna mine began in 1972 under the management of the Bougainville Copper Limited, controlled by Conzinc Rio Tinto that lasted till 1989. The Bougainville Copper Limited was partly owned by Conzinc Rio Tinto that controlled 56 per cent of stake while the Papua New Guinea government owned 20 per cent, till Conzinc Rio Tinto divested its control in 1989.
According to various data sources, the export of copper extracted from the Panguna mine contributed significantly to Papua New Guinea’s economy, with some figures estimating its contribution upto 45 per cent of the country’s export revenue.
Researchers say the protests that later inflated into a civil war were started by a local leader named Francis Ona who had witnessed foreign interests engage in wide-scale plunder of indigenous lands. Ona went on to become the leader of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army, a secessionist group that waged war against the Papuan New Guinea Defence Forces during the civil war. The mine created job opportunities for people from Papua New Guinea and Australia seeking their own fortunes, leading to conflicts with Bougainvillean locals who also reported discrimination and racism at the hands of foreigner mine workers. Mining activities over the years also caused environmental degradation of Bougainville’s lands and water.
The bloody civil war that followed, resulted in the deaths of thousands of people along with displacement, disease and starvation. In the aftermath of the civil war, the Panguna mine was closed in May 1989, with the total withdrawal of Bougainville Copper Limited employees by the following year.
The long-drawn civil war in Bougainville was brought to a halt only due to the Bougainville Peace Agreement. In short, the referendum was not prompted by (dis)satisfaction with current autonomy arrangements, though the choices on offer in the referendum and the way that Bougainvilleans vote have obviously been influenced by experience of current autonomy arrangements.
Papua Guinea has much to lose if Bougainville gains independence, especially in terms of access to Bougainville’s natural resources. However, a lesser known consequences of Bougainville gaining independence would be the impact it may have on Papua New Guinea’s territories. Another sensitive issue is the implications that the eventual outcome of the referendum process might have for other provinces in Papua New Guinea—particularly, but not only, in the Islands Region—where support for greater autonomy, in particular, and possible a separate independence is quite strong.
The current National Government is committed to holding the referendum. Prime Minister James Marape has said publicly that he believes that Papua New Guinea will be stronger if Bougainville remains part of Papua New Guinea.
Due to shifting powers, diplomacy and developing military and economic interests in the Asia-Pacific, the Bougainville referendum is going to have consequences not just for immediate neighbours. The stability of the region of which Bougainville is part is clearly important to Australia – and by virtue of the relationship with other ANZUS members (Australia, New Zealand), with the USA. There are certainly prominent Bougainvilleans who see a great deal of unrealised potential in developing relations with China.
The voting in the Bougainville referendum that begins on November 23 will proceed over the next two weeks, due to the challenging nature of the terrain. The result of the referendum, likely to become known later in December, will either give the world its newest nation or will present a new challenge for Bougainvillea’s leaders who will have to ensure that their homeland doesn’t fall prey to conflict once more. It isn’t immediately clear whether the results of the referendum will lead to the reopening of the Panguna copper mine that started it all. It would be however, in the best interests of Bougainvilleans, if this time around, they get to have a say in their own future.