BY WEGAYEHU MULUNEH
The process of transitional justice is a complex multiphase task involving great many actors and that needs to be carried out prudently throughout the phases. According International Center for Transitional Justice to transitional justice asks some of the most difficult questions in law, politics, and the social sciences and grapples with innumerable dilemmas. It is of course is an important and critical phase for communities coming out from conflicts, atrocities and ensuing violations. It fundamentally relies on the assumption that a political transition from authoritarian rule would lead to democratization that guarantees stability and human rights protection. In Ethiopia, a country of diverse ethnicity, culture and religion, the transitional justice process need to be credible and participatory and attain its most desired target of bringing lasting peace. Nevertheless, all actors involved in the process need to understand the intricate and long multilevel nature of the processes.
These processes, according to UN Office of High Commission for Human Rights (OHCHR), can involve judicial and non-judicial mechanisms, including truth-seeking, prosecution initiatives, reparations, and various measures to prevent the recurrence of new violations. The various measures in turn involve constitutional, legal and institutional reform, the strengthening of civil society, memorialization efforts, cultural initiatives, the preservation of archives, and the reform of history education. These processes hence are not easy to implement, however, and can take years.
As Ethiopia, a country that has come across various authoritarian regimes over the decades and also recent three-year devastating conflicts in the northern part of the country as well as other conflicts, there have been grievances among different publics regarding human rights violations and more.
Above all, the numerous social and political conflicts, as well as the history of human rights violations, are the main causes of polarization and violence in Ethiopia, according to reports. As such, the country’s National Dialogue Commission (ENDC) could be a mechanism for building lasting peace and unifying the people of the nation and shaping a national consensus, while continuing the political transition that has been going on since the election of Abiy Ahmed as Prime Minister in April 2019.
The ENDC is now required to do things differently. Instead of separately addressing the human rights violations, it must put such violations in a historical, political, social and economic context and examine their root causes.
Using this specific application of transitional justice in Ethiopia, national ownership can be achieved by listening to the victims and documenting the history of social and political conflicts in the country as precisely as possible. This is in addition to pulling Ethiopia out of the quandary of the ongoing political infighting that is dragging the country towards deadly internal conflicts, since each party to the conflict believes that some of its rights have been violated and the perpetrators of such violations were not held accountable, according to recommendations of international institutions working on the subject.
A member of Ethiopia’s Transitional Justice, Misganaw Mulugeta told EBC World that in order implement Transitional Justice in Ethiopia it is compulsory to take lessons from countries which passed through this process. In order to crack down past recurring conflicts, unaddressed violations, grievances and other injustices there must be a proper either judicial or non judicial mechanisms, proper tools, proper reconciliation, proper evidences to address the past injustices, to make perpetrators accountable. Doing so will create a chance of a better future, a future with democracy, rule of law, and justice.
The expert said members of transitional justice group are grasping knowledge and experiences from different countries with better experiences so that the members can draft a sound comprehensive policy to heal Ethiopia's past and present grievances.
While addressing the role of transitional justice in healing historical grievances in Ethiopia, Misganaw said there are a lot of unaddressed past violations that are still the cause of ongoing violations, ongoing grievances and conflicts in Ethiopia.
He said "I think Ethiopia will definitely benefit from the process like Transitional Justice that will help us to address the past, but also create a future based on those principles of justice, reconciliation, and truth."
Currently members of the transitional justice group are on pre-policy consultation stage to find appropriate mechanism for the aspired justice by designing a policy based on Ethiopian past experience, global evidence and public consultation.
The transitional justice working member group of Ethiopia identified some challenges they might face while implementing the processes from the contexts of other countries that have gone through similar processes.
One of the most common challenges on Transitional Justice processes is complementarity between the different components of Transitional Justice, according to the expert.
The transitional justice processes encompass prosecution, truth-seeking, reconciliation, reparation, institutional reform, and these different instruments in some countries have not been applied sufficiently in a complementary way. One gives trust to the other, and that has been the case for a long time.
Many countries have failed to attain a successful transitional justice due to lack of political will and commitment. In general, the context of a given country undertaking these processes of reparation, reconciliation, and accountability has posed some challenges.
Hopefully, Misganaw said, "in the Ethiopian context, the idea is to learn from what other countries have said, and to try to design a transitional justice process that can overcome these challenges. We still provide the very needed objectives of addressing the past, accountability and the trust-taking, and that could lay the foundation for a context whereby, in the future, we don't have a recurrence of this violation and crisis. So, we can only learn from the challenges that other countries have faced."
Rating the ongoing process and stage of transitional justice process, the expert said members of the working group are currently consulting on policy options before drafting the policy. According to him the agenda of drafting policy for transitional justice is something different from drafting other policies. It is a different agenda and process that demands warrants, even before drafting a policy, it warrants some discussion, some consensus among the public.
Hence, the working group has been consulting with the broader community, stakeholders and other bodies to grasp inputs to draft the policy. On this stage the public express their views on how to go about it, what type of options should follow under each component of Transitional Justice, and what type of institutional arrangements are more appropriate.
The next phase will be taking the input and looking at international experience. Members of working group have seen that the government and other technical expertise, are trying to draft some draft policy documents that could be discussed by government and other stakeholders. The expert disclosed that the group have finalized the pre-policy consultation stage.
Finally, there must be a report on the voices of the public and pre-policy consultations will be announced. Then the group will proceed to the next step which is policy preparation. Finally, once the policy is adopted, the appropriate institutions will proceed to implementing it. So, I think that must be very clear.
To wrap to heal the grievances and pains of Ethiopians, Ethiopia is on the verge developing a comprehensive policy that is a precursor for implementing a successful transitional justice process in Ethiopia.
True, transitional justice is a time-consuming, intricate multilayered process involving a large number of actors. More than anything it is largely about working victims. And the case in Ethiopia requires huge effort to tracing back causes of grievances before several decades, perhaps more. Major actors involved in the processes, including the victims, therefore, need to act cautiously, transparently, patiently, and collaboratively as well as so that the search for an ultimate healing and lasting peace will be a reality.