Approaching Reparation to Victims of Gross Human Rights Violation as a Transitional Justice Measure: The Case of Ethiopia

Abstract

Ethiopia under the EPRDF 27 years of dictatorial regime has faced massive and systematic human rights violations including extrajudicial executions, arbitrary detention, and torture, and cruel inhuman or degrading treatments or punishments in different parts of the country in a different time frame. The coming to power of Prime Ministry Dr. Abiy Ahmed on April 2, 2018, signifies a start of a new area in Ethiopia’s political sphere by removing EPRDF to clear the road for the establishment of the Prosperity party. To this end, countries emerging from a legacy of massive human right violation commonly deal with their abusive past through transitional justice initiatives. However, there is no-one-size fits transitional justice approach to every nation around the globe. In Ethiopia, there were some efforts to come to terms with the past through transitional justice initiatives. Despite efforts to deal with past human rights abuse through different transitional justice initiatives Ethiopia including criminal prosecution and Ethiopian reconciliation commission, has never addressed the need and priorities of victims of human rights violations through a holistic and comprehensive reparative approach. Thus this thesis is formulated with the objective of charting, evaluating, and addressing the need and priorities of victims in the Ethiopian context by proposing context-specific transitional justice reparative programs to victims of gross human rights violations. With this underpinning, the thesis discloses transitional justice reparative measures through the analysis of the primary and secondary sources. The study aims at providing a means to come to terms to the last 27 years of EPRDF rule abuses through transitional justice reparative program. Therefore responding to the atrocities committed under EPRDF through transitional justice reparative program that can envisage a broader legal perspective; retrospective and prospective legal lens will ensure a simultaneous response to the past injustice by providing a material and symbolic relief measure to victims of gross human rights violation and in parallel, it will have the means to curb a future reoccurrence of the abusive pattern especially by drawing institutional reform to institutions that are source and cause of the abusive practice in Ethiopia.