Examining Minority Rights Protection under the Ethiopian Federal System
Abstract :
This research investigates minority rights protection under the Ethiopian
federal state structure, its legal instruments and institutional setups.
Ethiopia is a land of a diverse society having more than eighty distinct ethnic
groups, but the federal system conferred only seven ethnic groups, their own
regions subsuming the rest within them. The territorial autonomy of ethno-
national groups in Ethiopian federal context – in which the constituent
units themselves are diverse – imposes a rigid conception of territory.
The constituent unit that empowers autonomy for a particular group – the
titular ethno-national group – claims exclusive control over territory and
dominance within the constituent unit. Thus, the interests of minorities
who are lumped with relatively dominant ethnic groups are not addressed
and these minorities have neither been given self-determination nor are
recognised as distinct nationalities of the country.