The 18th Ordinary Meeting of the Nile Council of Ministers conducted
The 18th ordinary meeting of the Nile Council of Ministers (Nile-COM), in charge of Water Affairs from the nine Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) member countries, was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 26th to 27th June under the theme "Working together for a better future". The meeting was successfully concluded.
The purpose of the meeting was to review the progress report on the implementation of the just ending budget year activities of the NBI and approve the work plan and budget for the financial year 2010/2011. The Meeting was attended by Nile-COM Members from Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Burundi was represented by its Embassy in Ethiopia; D R Congo was represented by the Chief of Cabinet of the Ministry of Environment, Nature Conservation and Tourism. The Nile-TAC Members, other senior government officers, Management and Staff of the NBI, as well as Representatives of Development Partners, attended the meeting.
The meeting was officially opened by Ambassador Teshome Toga, Speaker of the House of Peoples Representatives’ of Ethiopia, who welcomed participants to Addis Ababa and wished the Nile-COM fruitful deliberations. The Speaker noted that Ethiopia had been an active supporter and promoter of global and regional cooperation and as such was a founding member of the UN and OAU/AU, among others, and also continued to strongly support regional cooperation including the NBI process. He further noted that through the sub-basin programmes and projects targeting poverty eradication, reversal of environmental degradation and promotion of socio-economic development, the NBI had realized many gains within a short time, and stressed that there would be further gains if we continued to cooperate.
Ato Asfaw Dingamo, Minister of Water Resources of Ethiopia and incoming chair of Nile-COM, Dr. Mohamed Nasr El Din Allam, Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation of Egypt, and outgoing Nile-COM Chair, Dr. Barbara Miller, Nile Programme Coordinator at the World Bank, and Ms Henriette Ndombe, Executive Director of the NBI Secretariat, made their respective statements.
The meeting was preceded by the 31st Nile Technical Advisory Committee (Nile-TAC) meeting, which was officially opened, on 24th June by Mr. Abdoulahi Hassan Mohamed, Special Advisor to the Minister of Water Resources of Ethiopia. The Nile-TAC, having reviewed the progress report on the activities of the NBI and deliberating on its plan and budget for the financial year 2010/2011, which was submitted by the NBI Secretariat, prepared a report and submitted it to the 18th Nile-COM meeting for consideration and approval.
The Nile-COM, accordingly, considered the report submitted to it during its meeting from 26th to 27th June, and adopted the plan and budget of the NBI for the financial year 2010/2011 totalling USD 11,271,862. Based on the tradition of rotation within the NBI in alphabetic order, the chairmanship of the Nile-COM was transferred from Egypt to Ethiopia. Accordingly, Ato Asfaw Dingamo, Minister of Water resources of Ethiopia assumed office for a period of one year. Likewise, upon presentation by Egypt, Dr. Wael Khairy was appointed Executive Director of the NBI Secretariat for a period of two years effective 1st September, 2010 replacing the current Executive Director, Ms Henriette Ndombe who is from Democratic Republic of Congo.
Immediately before the adoption of the agenda of both the 31 Nile-TAC and the 18th Nile-COM meetings, Egypt and Sudan expressed their positions that “the signature by five States of the draft CFA has resulted in serious legal and institutional implications that threaten the very existence of the process of the NBI and its subsidiary action programme centres”. Egypt and Sudan thus objected to the adoption of the agenda and to the discussion and approval of the budget and the action plan for the year 2010/2011, and insisted that addressing the legal and institutional implications of the signing of the CFA by certain States should be the only item of the agenda.
In response to the alleged legal and institutional implications of signing the CFA by five countries, Tanzania, supported by Burundi, D. R. Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda noted that while it was the sovereign right of the signatories of the CFA to do so and that the agreement had not yet been ratified to enter into force and create legal rights and obligations, it was not the appropriate forum for discussing CFA matters. The Nile-COM accordingly noted the objection of Egypt and Sudan and went ahead and adopted the agenda and approved the items as included in the various sections of that agenda.
In addressing the requests of Egypt and Sudan to deal with the legal and institutional implications of the signing the CFA by five countries, the five countries stressed that there is no way for them to go back to renegotiating the text of the CFA, which had already been concluded, and that the signed agreement could not be unsigned. However, the seven upper riparian countries agreed to hold an extra-ordinary meeting of the Nile-Com at a time and place to be decided in due course, to discuss what Egypt and Sudan called the legal and institutional implications of signing of the CFA.