Paris-Geneva, July 19, 2024 - The recent forced dissolution of numerous civil society organisations highlights an intensification in the restriction of civic space in Ethiopia, and constitutes a major violation of the rights to freedom of association and expression, which has harmful consequences on civil society as a whole. The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (FIDH-OMCT) urges the Ethiopian authorities to put an immediate end to this escalating crackdown on civic space and independent domestic human rights organisations.
In recent weeks the Ethiopian Authority for Civil Society Organizations (ACSO) has reportedly shut down at least 1,504 Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) for failing to submit their annual reports. The ACSO, which is responsible for overseeing and ensuring the compliance of CSOs with the law, enacted these dissolutions under the revised Civil Society Organizations Proclamation of 2011. This law mandates that CSOs submit an annual report detailing their main activities within three months of the fiscal year’s end. Failure to comply with this requirement results in a public summons by the authority, and the subsequent dissolution of the organisation.
The CSOs have been struggling to comply with the obligations of the ASCOs to produce these reports. These difficulties are closely tied to their underfunding, as they do not have the material capacities to fulfil the heavy administrative requirements imposed on them, which is adding to their struggle to manage and fund their activities.
These systematic closures severely impact civil society, creating a climate of fear, isolation, and stigmatisation among the affected CSOs as well as other civil society actors in Ethiopia. This radical measure is effectively silencing civil society organisations and actors, and appears to be a punitive response for their legitimate activities.
This unprecedented crackdown is part of an ongoing general repression against civic space and human rights defenders. In recent months, prominent human rights organisations in the country have been subjected to an increase of acts of intimidation, harassment, and threats by the authorities, including the ACSO, and several human rights defenders and journalists have been arbitrarily detained. A report from the Ethiopian Press Freedom Defenders, a collective of Ethiopian media professionals, found that around 200 journalists have been arrested by the Ethiopian government since 2019. The arbitrary closure of CSOs is yet another attempt to suppress civil society, as it seems the authorities use this measure as a tool going alongside with other forms of harassment in retaliation for their work. Over the past years several human rights defenders including journalists, academics, CSOs leaders have been forced to live in exile fearing reprisals.
The Observatory urges the Ethiopian authorities to abide by their human rights obligations under the Ethiopian Constitution, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to respect, protect, promote, and fulfil the rights to freedom of expression, association, and freedom of peaceful assembly. The Observatory calls on the Ethiopian authorities to immediately overturn the decisions to close down the CSOs and to allow them to continue their legitimate activities without fear of reprisal.
The Observatory further calls on Ethiopia’s international and regional partners to engage in direct diplomatic communication with the Ethiopian authorities, through international advocacy or the potential imposition of targeted sanctions, to encourage them to repeal the closure decisions and protect civil society and human rights defenders.
The Observatory also recommends to Ethiopia’s international and regional partners to increase the scrutiny on this escalating situation, by denouncing publicly the repression facing civil society and human rights defenders in Ethiopia, and by cooperating with CSOs to document human rights violation, while providing financial and technical assistance to support their activities, essentials for all.
