EFSSR to hold conference on Ethiopian dam’s impacts on Egypt

CAIRO - 14 October 2019: The Egyptian Foundation for Strategic Studies and Reseach (EFSSR) will hold a conference on October 15 to discuss all aspects of the controversial Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam’s (GERD) impacts on downstream countries ([Egypt and Sudan]), the EFSSR said in a statement on Sunday.

The conference will be held in light of the foundation’s ongoing efforts to highlight Egypt’s historic rights to the Nile water after Egypt and Ethiopia announced that the tripartite negotiations concerning the dam’s operation and filling its reservoir stumbled, the statement saidadded.

issue after the latest round of negotiations stalled in Khartoum. The conference will be held at Cairo Marriott Hotel and will be attended by a group of experts and researchers in water affairs and another group of legal experts, the statement continued.

The one-day conference comes under the title “Renaissance Dam: The imposition of the fait accompli and the requirements of the Egyptian National Security."

The conference includes three sessions; former Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Mohamed Nasr Allam will speak in the first session about the Egyptian vision of the Renaissance Dam crisis and its repercussions, while the fellow at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies Hanie Raslan will talk about Ethiopia’s vision towards of the Renaissance Dam crisis.

In the first session, Dr. Mohamed Salman Taya, Vicevice-Dean dean of the Faculty of Economics and Political Science for Community Service and Environmental Development, will discuss the future implications of the dam.

The second session will focus on how the state is dealing with the disagreement between both countries on the dam. The panelists are member of the EFSSR Advisory Committee Maj.or Gen. eral Mohamed Ibrahim Alal-Duwairi, Chairman of the State Information Service (SIS) Diaa Rashwan, and Gamal Abdel Gawad, head of the Public Policy Unit at the EFSSR.

Meanwhile, Professor professor of International Law at Cairo University Mohamed Sameh Amr will speak in the third session on legal alternatives that could be taken to solve the difference. Former assistant of Foreign Minister Mohamed Hegazy will speak on the role of international mediation in the tripartite talks.

Egypt and Ethiopia are at loggerheads over the controversial the $4-billion dam, as Cairo voiced its concern over its share after Ethiopia started building the dam on the Blue Nile in May 2011.

A series of tripartite talks between the two countries along with Sudan has begun in 2014. One year later, the three countries reached an agreement, per which the downstream countries [Egypt and Sudan] should not be negatively affected by the construction of the dam. However, Cairo and Addis Ababa have recently blamed each other for hindering a final agreement concerning a technical problem.

President Abdel Fattah Elal-Sisi on Saturday affirmed on Oct. 12 Egypt’s water rights in the River Nile as Renaissance Dam negotiations reached a dead end as a result of the Ethiopian side's rejection to all proposals that take into account Egypt's water rights and interests.

“I have followed closely on the results of the tripartite meeting between irrigation ministers of Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia to discuss the file of the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which has not resulted in any positive developmentprogress,” President Sisi said on his official Facebook page.