Abstract:
In order to accommodate and protect various rights of NNPs of Ethiopia, the FDRE constitution
established ethnic federalism since 1995. Among others, land resource become the common property of
NNPs of Ethiopia and the state. Ethiopian rural peasants have constitutional rights to access arable land
without fees and guaranteed from arbitrary eviction without indigenous and non-indigenous dichotomy.
For the realization of this constitutional rights, the central government entrusted to enact land governing
laws which serve as a guiding framework for the federation units when they administer their respective
region’s land resource. However, following ethnic based structure of federation units, regional states
classify peoples as indigenous-non-indigenous/owner-non-owner to the region based membership to
primordially identified NNPs of Ethiopian ethnic groups and limit constitutionally recognized land rights
of non-indigenous peasants. Therefore, this study aims to investigate how access to land rights of nonindigenous
peasants is defined and understood in BGRS and to explore the indigenous-non-indigenous
peasant’s dichotomy in relation to access to land and nature of land rights based on the existing land policy.
Besides, the study investigates the impacts of the dichotomy on tenure security of non-indigenous peasants
and the rationale behind for the creation of indigenous-non-indigenous dichotomy. Moreover, the study
explore the legal and practical remedies available for arbitrarily evicted non-indigenous peasants from
their land rights in both levels of government. In doing so, the study employed socio-legal research which
is carried out through qualitative case study research approach by investigating land governing laws via
the power of reasoning and its impact within the dichotomized indigenous-nonindigenous peoples. After
exploration of the issues raised above, the writer has, eventually, reached to the following findings.
Following the establishment of ethnic federal arrangement, BGRS revised constitution classifies ethnic
groups as indigenous-non-indigenous to the region. Subsequently, the existing land resource of the region
belonging to indigenous nationalities. Hence, the land rights of non-indigenous peasants are limited and
face decentralized despotism that arise from ambiguous nature of land policy and pitfalls of ethnic
federalism. Further, non-indigenous peasants are exposed for systematic marginalization and their land
rights become unsecure due to unfavorable environmental conditions. There is also tenancy-landlordism
relationship. When non-indigenous peasants arbitrarily excluded from their land rights in both levels of
government, they have no legal mechanism to avert the problem. Therefore, the land rights of nonindigenous
peasants are not protected and excluded from the ambits of common property of land resource
in the region.