Enforcement of the Recommendations of Ethiopian Human Rights Commission: Accomplishments and Challenges
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Date
2018-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This thesis is aimed at assessing recommendation enforcement practice of EHRC and challenges
that the Commission has faced in its endeavor to ensure implementation of its recommendations.
It seeks to discover what enforcement tools the Commission employed to enforce its
recommendations, how these tools are effective to ensure compliance with recommendations and
to provide effective remedies for victims of human rights violations and what challenges
hindered adequate enforcement of its recommendations. To achieve this purpose qualitative
research approach was employed and both primary and secondary data sources were used. The
primary data include data from interviews, FGD, reviews of annual reports of the Commission
and investigation files and recommendations and reports of the Commissions submitted to HOPR
on recommendation enforcement challenges. It also include data from analysis of relevant
provisions of establishing laws of EHRC,EIO, some NHRIs of other countries, Investigations
and Mediation Directives of EHRC, FDRE Constitution, PPs, and federal supreme court
cassation division decision, Proclamation No.454/2005. The secondary data used in the study
include reviews of relevant books, thesis and other documents related to the research problem.
The thesis has finally found that despite its failure to exercise its formal enforcement power, the
Commission has employed different non-confrontational enforcement tools to ensure
implementation of its recommendations. These include reporting to the HOPR, roundtable
discussions, and field missions, summoning respondents to the office of the Commission and
warning letter. These enforcement tools are proved ineffective to ensure compliance with
recommendations when the cooperation of respondents is lacking. As a result, majority of the
recommendations were left unenforced. The main challenges that hinder adequate enforcement
of recommendations were resistance by respondents on different grounds such as citing legal
bases for their actions, failures of the Commission to exercise its formal enforcement power
which is a direct consequence of its failure to fulfill the necessary preconditions to use such
power and legal gaps pertaining to the Commission’s enforcement power. As result of these
findings, the thesis recommends that the Commission should conduct exhaustive investigation
and forward persuasive and strong recommendations; it should commence the use of its formal
enforcement power upon fulfilling necessary preconditions and pending that, it should make a
proposal for the amendment of its proclamation to empower it to take appropriate legal action
which directly aimed at enforcing its non-complied recommendations.
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Keywords
Enforcement of the Recommendations, Ethiopian Human Rights Commission