Background

This chapter is a case study of how resettlement was planned in Ethiopia in relation to the Guji-Oromo of the Nech Sar National Park. In 1994 the Federal government signed an agreement with the European Union for a project to rehabilitate three National Parks in Southern Ethiopia: Nech Sar, Mago and Omo, in order to (a) improve the long-term security and integrity of the country's wildlife resources and protected areas; (b) optimize benefits from the exploitation of natural resources by way of sustainable development and management initiatives; and (c) improve the longterm wellbeing of the local people through their participation in these initiatives.

The Southern Ethiopia National Parks Rehabilitation Project (SENPRP) was a five-year project, originally envisaged in two phases. A two-year preliminary phase was to pave the way for substantial assistance by the European Union to rehabilitate the parks as protected areas with emphasis on development for tourism. Implementation of the main phase of the project was to depend on a number of preconditions to be fulfilled on the Ethiopian side, among them: (a) the finalization of a wildlife conservation policy, which the Federal government should formally adopt and promulgate; (b) the early gazetting of the three project National Parks; and (c) the resettlement of the people living in and around the parks.