By Abdi Biyenssa @ABiyenssa
Addis Abeba – Concerns regarding the capability of Ethiopia’s transitional justice to achieve its intended and ideal purpose continue to linger despite the transitional justice process nearing to commencement. The Ministry of Justice has been preparing a roadmap outlining legal, procedural, and content documents necessary to establish the institutions required for the effective implementation of the policy, which was unanimously approved by the Council of Ministers in April 2024.
According to the Ministry, the initial phase involves establishing independent institutions based on the policy’s framework and ensuring the operationalization of all transitional justice mechanisms, emphasizing the coordination of various approaches, focusing on sequence, coherence, sustainability, and the establishment of supporting institutions and legal frameworks.
Nonetheless, apprehensions regarding the efficacy of the transitional justice process which the Ministry of Justice stated will have “national ownership and public leadership” continue to dominate the discourse. From the policy formulation phase, experts have long been expressing concerns, characterizing the process as ‘quasi-compliance’, suggesting its primary aim may be ensuring impunity rather than genuine accountability and justice.
Kate Cronin-Furman (PhD), a professor of human rights in the Department of Political Science at University College London (UCL) defines ‘quasi-compliance’ in a transitional justice setting as “a reaction from repressive governments to international human rights pressure, in which they attempt to do just enough to escape the penalty for violating their obligations.”
In an interview with Addis Standard, Dr. Cronin-Furman, who coined the term in her book; Hypocrisy and Human Rights: Resisting Accountability for Mass Atrocities, said the creation of toothless human rights bodies or the passage of showpiece legislation that the state does not intend to enforce, constitutes ‘quasi-compliant transitional justice.
“Authoritarian states tend to use transitional justice to transcend their responsibilities for mass atrocities. They know that only a small proportion of human rights abusers will ever face real penalties, so they gamble that if they gesture in the direction of cleaning up their act that will remove them from the category of most likely targets of real censure,” she stated.
Dr Kate contends that states can also be pressured into transitional justice if they are heavily dependent on foreign aid. “But it can’t produce true accountability when the domestic incentives aren’t there,” she added.
Furthermore, the professor said a ‘quasi-compliance’ transitional justice can be initiated as an effort to hold officials of the prior regime to account following regime changes, as part of a strategy of breaking with the past and solidifying a new government’s grip on power. She describes it as “transitional justice of the victors” as opposed to the victims. One such case, according to Dr Kate is Ethiopia’s 1992 transitional justice which addressed the Red Terror crimes perpetrated during the Derg.
“By contrast, the current process does not come at a moment of regime transition and seems more responsive to external demands for justice than the government’s understanding of its own domestic political interests,” she stated, suggesting the significance of examining the purpose of a certain transitional justice initiative to determine whether it is ‘quasi-compliance’ or not.
Kjetil Tronvoll, a Peace, Conflict and Transitional Justice professor at Oslo New University College, on his part, weighed on practical impediments that Ethiopia’s current transitional justice process faces, overshadowing its efficacy and making it ‘quasi-compliance’.
“First of all, it is nonsensical to launch a transitional justice process to address violations of the past, when there are high levels of human rights violations and war crimes are conducted contemporaneously. If current human rights violations and war crimes are conducted with impunity, a transitional justice mechanism addressing past crimes will have no credibility or legitimacy,” he illustrated.
Moreover, he asserted that a credible transitional justice process necessitates a minimum of independent institutions of checks and balances to implement and oversee the process. In Ethiopia’s case, Kjetil lamented that “the absence of representative democracy, independent judiciary, and functioning institutions of checks-and-balances, all point to the fact that a transitional justice process in Ethiopia will likely be used as a political tool by the incumbent.”
“The basic premises and institutional framework for a credible transitional justice process are thus wanting,” he asserted.
An Ethiopian expert on human rights with commanding knowledge on the subject matter, who asked not to be named fearing retributions, questioned the timing of the ongoing transitional justice in Ethiopia, as a critical factor determining the outcomes of the process. “What would be critical at this point is making sure that political processes are started to prevent state collapse and hopefully lead to a transition to a more stable form of governance. Any formal transitional justice processes are simply going to have to depend on and be built on political processes that could lead to stability. Otherwise, you have a tail-wagging-the-dog situation,” they conveyed.
However, they asserted that “this does not necessarily mean you cannot or should not deal with justice-related matters. For example, in the current context, you can implement preparatory projects such as non-state-based investigations of past and present atrocities, hoping to use those if the right circumstances for transitional justice emerge. Otherwise, you would have to downgrade your expectations and use the findings for, say, universal jurisdiction cases.”
The expert expressed profound apprehensions that in the absence of enabling circumstances, the pseudo-implementation of transitional justice would empower impunity, “allowing the regime to get away with mass murder, by using what looks like a justice mechanism that is fully or mostly funded and discursively promoted by the international community.”
Tadesse Simie (PhD), a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Security Studies, concurs that the ongoing conflict in the Oromia and Amhara regions, the two largest constituent units of the federation, which continues to fuel insecurity across the country, adversely affecting the Ethiopian people poses significant challenge to the current transitional justice. “The ruling party’s political maneuvering, along with the lack of interest from key stakeholders such as opposition political groups in participating in the ongoing transitional justice process, further complicates the situation,” Tadesse stated.
“Even if and when peace is achieved, criminal actors implicated in multiple and complex international as well as organized crimes, such as corruption, who are entrenched in the political fabric of the state, may attempt to obstruct the implementation of transitional justice,” he added.
Yet, Tadesse sees potential prospects of the transitional justice initiative achieving its intended purposes. He counted on the potential and ongoing activities of civil society organizations that have significantly improved recently. “These organizations can now engage in informing the public and applying pressure on the government. Externally, the West and the United Nations are also pressuring the Ethiopian government to implement transitional justice,” he stated.
“There is a strong and growing demand for peace in Ethiopia from all relevant actors and the general population. This is reflected in public perception surveys and consultations conducted during the crafting of the transitional justice policy, as well as in the development of a roadmap for its implementation,” he asserted.
Furthermore, the potential for reform or the development of new policies and initiatives can create opportunities for Ethiopia to reform its justice system and judicial mechanisms, paving a way for the success of the transitional justice program, he said.
The expert who wished to remain anonymous however contends that Ethiopia’s transitional justice program, is primarily aimed “to secure aid from Western countries and international organizations, not for the sake of rendering genuine transitional justice and redressing those affected by boundless crime committed in the political landscape of Ethiopia.” The ongoing implementation of the program will end up propping up a human rights-violating regime by providing it with international respectability that will open up access to funding and other forms of support, they argued.
“Supporting the current transitional justice process contravenes what is usually described as the “no harm” precept since supporting ‘quasi-compliance’ transitional justice is not only supporting impunity but it is also providing legitimacy to the human rights-violating regime,” the expert argued. Concurring with the expert, professor Kjetil also stressed that the humanitarian imperative of “Do No Harm” should guide and restrict all international engagement with the transitional justice process. AS
