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Yohannes Haile Getahun (Ph.D.)
Mekelle University
The scars of conflicts in Ethiopia run deep, leaving behind a legacy of trauma, division, and a yearning for a lasting peace. While the immediate cessation of hostilities is a crucial first step, true peacebuilding requires a more profound transformation. Transnational justice, a multifaceted approach that seeks accountability for past human rights abuses, emerges as a vital tool for peace-making and –building. At the heart of transnational justice lies the principle of accountability. When perpetrators of atrocities – state actors, rebel groups, or individuals – are held responsible for their actions, a powerful message is sent: such acts will not be tolerated. This breaks the cycle of impunity, a breeding ground for resentment and future violence. Domestic judicial proceedings, and international criminal tribunals, like the International Criminal Court (ICC), play a crucial role by prosecuting those most responsible for grave violations of international law. Additionally, truth commissions, a cornerstone of transitional justice processes, provide a platform for victims to share their experiences and expose the truth about past abuses. This process, while emotionally challenging, contributes to a sense of justice and closure for victims, fostering a foundation for reconciliation.
Transnational justice goes beyond punishment. It also aims to promote reconciliation between victims and perpetrators, as well as within fractured communities. Truth commissions, alongside other initiatives like reparations programs and community-based reconciliation efforts, facilitate healing and dialogue. By acknowledging the suffering of victims and offering a means to address past wrongs, these processes can begin to bridge the divides created by conflicts. This fostering of empathy and understanding is essential for communities to move forward and rebuild trust, a critical step towards lasting peace.
Despite Ethiopia has long history of conflicts and human rights abuses, initiatives of transnational justice are very rare. In each major regime change, the culture is more or less punishing the leaders of the preceding government. During the 1974 revolution, the Commission of Inquiry which was established by the Provisional Military Administration in July 1974, investigated and documented the wealth of some of the top-ranking leaders of the monarchical rule of Haile-Selassie, it had no mandate to exercise judicial accountability and reconciliation nor the influence to stop the forceful purge of the officials by the military with extrajudicial executions and illegal detention. After 17 years, of responding to the Derg era human rights abuses, notably the ‘red-terror’, the Transitional Government set up the Office of the Special Prosecutor to prosecute the authorities of the Derg and Workers’ Party of Ethiopia (WPE) without any system of amnesty, reconciliation, and reparation. It continued that the alteration of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) with the Prosperity Party (PP) brought the subject of transnational justice into the formal political agenda.
The political reforms introduced with the coming into power of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in April 2018 vowed to usher in the political opening of Ethiopia and to address past human rights abuses and resentments. Some legislations that had been disenchanted by domestic and international political commentators and human rights organizations for their implications of spurring human rights violations amended. This initiative was reinforced with the public acknowledgement of the abuses perpetrated by EPRDF and the establishment of the currently non-existent Reconciliation Commission, in December 2018. The Commission, within its term of three years which ended in early 2022, had the mandate to study the causes and natures of conflicts and human rights abuses that have long persisted in Ethiopia as well as to conduct truth-finding for accountability and reconciliation. Unfortunately, it was not successful in undertaking its mandates. Meanwhile, the bloody war in Tigray broke out on 4th November 2020 and, later, since June of the same year, the war expanded into the Afar and Amhara regions. The Investigation of the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and the United Nations Higher Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR), and the International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopian (ICHREE) has produced reports of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing committed by all the parties of the conflict, including the Eritrean Defence Force, with some variations as to who committed which crime and on legally categorizing the crimes.
The Tigray War ended with the Pretoria Agreement between the Federal Government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) on 2 November 2022. This agreement envisions the establishment of a transitional justice policy “a comprehensive national transitional justice policy aimed at accountability, ascertaining the truth, redress for victims, reconciliation, and healing, consistent with the Constitution of FDRE [Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia] and the African Union Transitional Justice Policy Framework.” (Pretoria Peace Agreement, Article 10, sub-article 3). It also indicates that the transitional justice policy should be framed with contributions from all stakeholders and civil societies and then pass through public consultations and “formal national policy making processes”.
In November 2022, The Ethiopian Ministry of Justice formed the Transitional Justice Working Group of Experts (TJWE) of 13 independent experts. TJWE had the responsibility to carry out public consultations to produce the draft version of the Transnational Justice Policy (TJP). On April 17 2024, the Council of Ministers adopted the Policy. The objectives of the Policy are so extensive that encompass resolving historical injustices, and human rights abuses, advancing justice, peace, and so on. The pillars of the Policy are accountability, truth-seeking and reconciliation, reparation system, reconciliation, amnesty, and reforms. On how effective they could be in entrenching durable peace, there are ongoing debates of hopes and critical doubts.
Hopes
The TJP outlines what major human rights abuses consist of. It includes systemic, large-scale, or persistent crimes which mainly include genocide, a war crime, crimes against humanity, extra-judicial killing, forced disappearance, inhuman treatment, rape, sexual violence, forced displacement, child abuse, crimes on persons with disabilities, crimes based on ethnicity, political outlook and religion, or those crimes which are classified as major human rights violations and international crimes. This list of human rights abuses together with the elastic nature of the scope of the Policy to address issues of human rights abuses since 1995 and possibly, depending on the availability of evidence, before that has the potential to go about past, recent, and ongoing major human rights abuses. It can provide a platform for acknowledging past atrocities, addressing grievances, and fostering reconciliation among ethnic and political groups, as part of promoting social cohesion. In so doing, the collaboration between the edifices of the TJP and the National Dialogue Commission is of paramount significance.
Moreover, the truth-finding, reconciliation and justice ventures of the TJP have the potential to encourage the participation of religious and customary institutions and leaders and the community, at large. It means social trust building toward the shared understanding of the past and laying the foundation for a more just and peaceful society. Finally, by holding at least major perpetrators accountable for their actions and by promoting reforms in the Ethiopian justice and security systems, the Policy in point could be instrumental in fighting the culture of impunity and preventing the reoccurrences of major human rights abuses. However, there are frightening factors which could be more likely to deter the peace value of TJP.
Challenges Ahead
Political Capture
In the case of Ethiopia, where political tensions are high and governments have a history of human rights abuses, there is a risk that the TJP could be used to further political agendas rather than promoting genuine reconciliation and justice. In other words, TJP is susceptible to political manipulation and instrumentalization powers. Given the possibility of Prosperity Party’s legitimacy decline for various reasons, mainly for ethnic-based tensions and conflicts, the concern it could instrumentalize the judicial accountability and truth-seeking components of TJP to accuse and disenchant its political opponents, armed and non-armed, has some reasonable grounds. In that regard, the record of the short-lived Reconciliation Commission in exclusively accusing the dissenting TPLF and some other political opponents of the ruling party is a recent memory. It shows the likelihood that the government exploits TJP to assert its innocence while shifting the blame of accountability for human rights abuses to its contenders.
The reluctance/or exclusion of armed insurgents from the process of transitional justice as well as the National Dialogue Commission could exacerbate further the possibility that the ruling party could capture TJP. In this case, the potential gain of TJP to promote peace using the deterrence objective of judicial accountability becomes incomplete. Therefore, the solution lies in the commitment of the incumbent to allow enough room for the independent functioning of the mechanisms of the Policy, notably the judicial proceedings.
Public Resistance
The political context of TJP significantly determines its effectiveness in bringing about stability and peace. Even though regime transition is not the Ethiopian case, the transitional justice initiative can be considered as an element of the recent political reform. Observers, like Legide, are of the opinion that transitional justice measures in such non-regime transitional political contexts as the post-2018 Ethiopia have much problematic peace gambling and ambiguous implementations and public perceptions. The public could perceive TJP Justice as an artefact of the ruling party which is not well-suited to the expectations of fundamental political change related to the constitutional system, ethnic politics, development, democracy, and so on. This perception, accompanied by the non-participation of armed and legal oppositions, would discourage the public from inclusively and effectively participating in truth-seeking and reconciliation activities. The principle of ‘never again’ in transitional justice is fragile without grass-roots campaigns, mobilization, and participation.
In addition, in the eyes of many Ethiopians, the daring issues of poverty, unemployment, and food insecurity may take precedence over transitional justice initiatives. It follows that the participation of the stakeholders, as mentioned in the Third Part of TJP needs to be taken seriously to solicit public attention.
Reconciliation Without Justice
Retributive justice alone is not adequate to the complexity and political salience of human rights abuses committed in Ethiopia, past and present. Reconciliation is decisive to the peacebuilding worth of TJP, in addressing the sentiments of guilt and revenge. The caveat, however, lies in how much it is balanced with accountability. In this regard, there is a danger that the implementation of the Ethiopian Transnational Justice Policy could completely prioritize reconciliation and social harmony over accountability and justice for the victims of human rights abuses. The exigencies of pacifying the county urgently and the possibility of shared accountability between the government and its opponents could spawn excessive levels of amnesty and indiscriminate application of peace over justice. That brings about the troubles of reinforcing the culture of impunity in Ethiopia at the risk of the vicious circle of victimhood-vengeance-conflict. The ethnic dimensions of most of the conflicts in Ethiopia and their implications for the deeper healing of the society should not be scapegoats for individual and group-level accountabilities before the court of law. In showing the significance of fighting impunity in post-conflict transnational justice, the UN-sponsored survey indicated that more than two-thirds of the population of Bosnia appreciated that those who committed human rights violations during the civil war should face judicial prosecution.
Thus, the process of truth-finding and judicial accountability in the TJP needs to be complete, robust, and independent. The extensive outlines of what consists of major human rights abuses in the TJP make justice a matter of high stake. The jurisdiction and capacity of the Special Attorney are to be tested. The need to collaborate with an international and continental system of justice is also vital not only in prosecuting major perpetrators, within and outside the government but also, probably, to hold foreign actors involved in human rights violations accountable.
On-going conflicts
The TJP faces the challenge of unstable political and social contexts. The ceasing of ongoing conflicts such as those in Amhara and Oromia and the consolidation of the Pretoria Cessation of Hostility Agreement (2022) are typical examples on which the Policy could thrive to restore peace. Profoundly speaking, stopping active conflicts and human rights abuses should be considered as part of transitional justice unless it would become self-defeating to its very purpose of making and building peace. Amid conflicts and tensions, the security of victims, and witnesses, the process of fact-finding, and the arrest of suspected perpetrators becomes highly uncertain.
In conclusion, transnational justice offers a pathway towards breaking the cycle of violence, healing the wounds of the past, and fostering a future rooted in accountability, reconciliation, and the rule of law. The employment of aggressive retributive transitional justice in ethnically divided and polarized states similar to Ethiopia could provoke the dual challenges of interpreting justice as reprisal and as a selective victimhood among ethnic elites to mobilize their ethnic groups against accountability and reconciliation. The prudent approach of fighting impunity and reconciliation is appealing to curb the effects of victimhood and guilt on the stability of the country. Ultimately, the success of transitional justice hinges on its ability to address the root causes of conflicts, promote inclusive accountability, and bottom-up reconciliation, and uphold the rights of victims while navigating the complex political dynamics of the country.
The writer teaches at Mekelle University and could be reached at : yohajohnyoha@gmail.com
Editor’s note : Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com
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