Ethiopia: The thorny business of rose exports to Europe

Over the last seven years Karuturi Global has acquired rights to 311,700 hectares of land in Gambela and Bako region in Ethiopia for the purpose of agricultural development. But Karuturi’s practices in Ethiopia has also attracted less welcome attention from human rights activists. Investigators from New York-based Human Rights Watch paid a visit to a Karuturi lease area in Gambela in May 2011 where they found that maize, sorghum, and groundnut crops planted by local Anuak farmers had been cleared without consent and residents moved off their land.