Significance Of Cooperation Framework Agreement For Ethiopia

kenty9x | December 17, 2020 | 0

In May 2010, five upstream states signed an agreement to seek more water from the Nile, a step that was firmly rejected by Egypt and Sudan. [5] The Framework Cooperation Agreement (CFA) negotiated for years under the NBI was to be signed for a period of one year. [19] Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania signed the agreement; Ethiopia ratified it in 2013. [20] The DRC should also be signed, while Egypt and Sudan are not supposed to. An Egyptian government spokesman said in May 2010: “Egypt will not accede to an agreement or sign any agreement on its share.” [5] The signing of the agreement was already scheduled at a ministerial meeting in 2007, but it had been delayed at Egypt`s request. [21] The upstream countries then decided at another ministerial meeting in Kinshasa in May 2009 to sign the agreement without all countries signing at the same time. However, the signing was delayed and, at the next ministerial meeting held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in April 2010, it was again asked to postpone the signature. The water safety article (Article 14 ter) raised particular objections from Egypt and Sudan. The article states that Member States will cooperate to “ensure that the water security of another country in the Nile basin is not significantly affected.” Egypt and Sudan want the article “Water security and the current uses and rights of other countries in the Nile basin” without qualification to be “significant”. [21] Egypt`s former Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation, Mahmoud Abu-Zeid, sees the framework agreement as a positive start: “All have approved more than 95 per cent of the articles.” [22] An article on the protection and conservation of the basin and its ecosystem – such as the Sudd in Sudan – and an article requiring “prior consent” before the construction of new dams had also been unanimous in previous negotiations.

[21] Representatives of the upstream countries said they were “tired of first obtaining Egypt`s permission before using Nile-river water for any development project such as irrigation,” as required by a first-time contract between Egypt and Great Britain in 1929. [23] The agreement does not contain fixed amounts of water for each riparian country. The agreement, once effective, will transform the NBI into a permanent commission for the Nile Basin. The NBI`s institutional framework is made up of three key institutions:[8] Nearly two decades after its creation, the transition mechanism of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) has been assigned to the transition mechanism of the Nile Basin Initiative, which has fulfilled several components of its institutional project – and created an atmosphere of trust and dialogue between the neighbouring countries. Nevertheless, the negotiations under the aegis of the NBI have not fulfilled one of the Organization`s most fundamental tasks: the establishment of a permanent legal framework and an “acceptable” institution for all States throughout the basin.