BDU IR

Amnesty Under the Ethiopian Law: Legal and Practical Challenges

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dc.contributor.author Anteneh, Adu
dc.date.accessioned 2021-08-03T07:16:14Z
dc.date.available 2021-08-03T07:16:14Z
dc.date.issued 2021-08-03
dc.identifier.uri http://ir.bdu.edu.et/handle/123456789/12294
dc.description.abstract The thesis aimed to study the Ethiopian amnesty law as an object through examining its legal foundation, the scope and its impact on victims’ right to remedy. It intended to cover only the challenges on legal fissures and limitations in the application of amnesty law, due to that qualitative research methodology and doctrinal type of legal research is applied. Observing the findings of the study; before the 1931 constitution custom was the legal source and the Monarchs of Ethiopia, as the highest organ of a state were adept the power to grant amnesty as an act of individual clemency of theocratic origin. Nonetheless the constitutional history of the country changed the legal source from custom to the constitution. Contrary to the former constitutions, the FDRE constitution is silent about the power to grant amnesty, thus currently such function become freckled practice that exercised by the president of the republic and the legislative organ. Therefore through inspecting the Ethiopian amnesty I recommend the Ethiopian government clearly to provide the power to grant amnesty to the legislative organ, if the constitution is amended in the near future. Concerning to the scope of the amnesty, the Ethiopian amnesty provided by proclamation no.1096/2018, lacks clear criteria to determine amnesty eligible crimes and offenders, such absence makes the amnesty law to fail to assure the exclusion of constitutionally band crimes (i.e. international crimes and gross violations of human rights) from its domain. Besides, the absence of clear amnesty eligible criteria makes the amnesty law to provided blanket amnesty to all anti-terrorism proclamation crimes and to all state of emergency crimes and failed to cover unjustly similarly footed or comparable crimes which are regulated under the criminal code and different proclamations. Such inequitable regulations of crimes under the domain of amnesty law clearly violate perpetrators constitutional rights of equality. Thus where amnesty is granted, I recommend the legislative to set clear amnesty eligible criteria to determine amnesty eligible crimes and perpetrators under the ambit of amnesty. Further, through examining the impact of the amnesty on victims right to remedy the thesis investigates that the Ethiopian amnesty flouted victims’ right to remedy thru ignoring victims in the amnesty process. Thus in the feature where amnesty is in need, depending on the purpose of amnesty, I recommend that the amnesty law to integrate provisions which guarantee victims participation in the amnesty process through reconciliation commission or any other administrative organ with the task to assuring the right of remedy of victim en_US
dc.language.iso en en_US
dc.subject Law en_US
dc.title Amnesty Under the Ethiopian Law: Legal and Practical Challenges en_US
dc.type Thesis en_US


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