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Internal Migration, Ethnic Federalism and Differentiated Citizenship in an African Federation: The Case of Ethiopia
Abstract
This chapter discusses a ‘tension’ between internal migration and the self-rule rights of ethnic communities in Ethiopia. Making ethnicity the basis for the political and administrative organisation of the Ethiopian federation has set the stage for the emergence of tacit group-differentiated rights that are coming into conflict with the protection of the individual rights of internal migrants. This chapter argues, in turn, that differentiated citizenship is necessary but insufficient to deal with the increasingly complex dynamics of ethnic diversity within the context of multiethnic (and multinational) federations; the enshrinement of rights in these settings must ensure that the empowerment of ethnic communities does not unreasonably restrict the rights of individuals who are not members of the community.
... It argued that effective representation of the electorate requires the candidate to be proficient in the language of the state parliament. The decision of the HoF to solve the case on pragmatic grounds meant that the decision has little contribution to the jurisprudence on mobility rights or self-government rights and, therefore, can and should be reconciled (Fessha & Dessalegn, 2020). The resolution of the dispute on pragmatic grounds was unfortunate as the House missed an opportunity to elaborate on how the commitment of the constitution for the equal enforcement of both individual and group rights can be realized and how both rights can be implemented in a mutually inclusive way. ...
When federalism was introduced in Ethiopia in the early 1990s, it did not receive a warm reception. Although the militarily victorious, ethnic-based liberation movements presented federalism as the only viable path to democratization and stability, many others saw it as a ploy to disintegrate the country. The relevance of federalism as the appropriate response to the challenges that the country is facing continues to dominate constitutional and political debates, but the nature of the debate has notably evolved through the years. Today, it is hard to find a political formation that, at least, openly challenges or campaigns against the relevance of federalism. The nature of the debate has shifted from the relevance of federalism per se to the nature and character of the federal arrangement and more specifically to the ethnic-based nature of the current arrangement that is blamed for the exacerbated ethnic divisions, conflictual intergovernmental relations and the rendering of some as second-class citizens in a territory they consider home.KeywordsEthiopiaEthnic federalismMobilityIntergovernmental relations
... It argued that effective representation of the electorate requires the candidate to be proficient in the language of the state parliament. The decision of the HoF to solve the case on pragmatic grounds meant that the decision has little contribution to the jurisprudence on mobility rights or self-government rights and, therefore, can and should be reconciled (Fessha & Dessalegn, 2020). The resolution of the dispute on pragmatic grounds was unfortunate as the House missed an opportunity to elaborate on how the commitment of the constitution for the equal enforcement of both individual and group rights can be realized and how both rights can be implemented in a mutually inclusive way. ...
This chapter examines the evolution of Spain and the United Kingdom (UK) as federal political systems. Neither Spain nor the UK qualifies as a full-fledged federation, but an identifiable process of federalization has taken root in both cases. Unpacking the experience of political decentralization, the chapter examines the efficacy of current arrangements vis-à-vis the politics of accommodation, with specific reference to elements of symbolic recognition, self-rule and shared rule, and identifies ongoing challenges to the development of federalism in Spain and the UK. In discussing the origins, evolution and challenges of the territorial models in both cases, the analysis highlights the evolving practice of territorial reform in these political systems, notwithstanding the absence of a conscious federal teleology. The analysis shows that federalism—as an enhanced model of territorial accommodation—has much to offer both Spain and the UK, but hitherto remains a marginalized option for constitutional reform.
... Where many are undocumented, initial enrolment to a database will almost always depend on witness testimony at local level. In Nigeria and Ethiopia the role of local authorities in certifying citizenship is highly institutionalised, if without legal authority (Odinkalu 2015;Fourchard 2015;Ehrhardt 2017;Mang and Ehrhardt 2018;Fessha and Beken 2013;Fessha and Dessalegn 2020). The use of 'vetting committees' for the issue of national identity cards and passports is pervasive, whether longstanding, as in Kenya (Balaton-Chrimes 2014; Lochery 2012; Weitzberg 2017), or brand new, as in South Sudan (Markó 2015). ...
The existing literature on the grant of citizenship by naturalization largely focuses on the experience of Europe and the immigrant-founded states of the Americas and Australasia. This article considers the African experience. It sets out the comparative law on naturalization, and the limited information that exists on the implementation of these rules in practice, noting that formal naturalization is rare in all countries in the continent. The article argues that amendments to the rules on naturalization are mainly performative, rather than aiming at any broader public policy outcome. Although there have been some important initiatives by some states to reach out to particular groups excluded from citizenship, these are rare. Yet public attitudes to acquisition of citizenship by foreigners are more open than the practice. Historically, integration of foreigners into the citizen body has happened largely through local processes of certification of identity. New efforts to strengthen identification systems in Africa may well make these processes more closed, and also make the difficulty of formal naturalization more visible.
Both the Federal and Regional State Constitutions of Ethiopia provide provisions for self-determination and secession. Article 39(4) of the Federal Constitution allows secession to take effect as a last resort if all the preconditions are met. Likewise, regional state constitutions take identity, preservation, and promotion of heritage, language, culture, self-rule, and equitable representation into consideration. Despite the assertions of the defenders of self-determination, the purpose of this study is to show how the outer dimension of self-determination and secession is impractical in the Ethiopian case, and how self-determination is used to discriminate against non-indigenous communities in the name of self-rule. The study recommends that systematic discrimination against non-indigenous individuals be abolished and that free movement and the right to live anywhere on the country's territory be granted.
There is a common perception that Ethiopia is unusual in Africa in having a relatively uniform system of state land ownership. While highly influential, state ownership is not the only body of law with implications for land administration. This article argues that the institutionalization of ethnic federalism and the persistence of neo-customary tenure result in considerable ambiguity, particularly regarding the land rights of nonindigenous minorities. The analysis highlights tensions between these three sets of land tenure institutions-state ownership, ethnic federalism and neo-customary tenure-and their implications for minority land rights. A case study of land-based conflict in Oromiya region, based on fieldwork conducted in 2009 and 2010, demonstrates the continuing relevance of these land tenure institutions and associated ideas in land debates in Ethiopia, both in terms of the use of these ideas by protagonists as means of justifying land claims, and the ambiguous state response to the conflict, which goes well beyond the provisions of the land policy. As such, while there are certainly particular characteristics of the Ethiopian case, many of the key issues regarding ethnicity and land mirror debates taking place across the continent. © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal African Society. All rights reserved.
Territorial autonomy for ethnic groups is an important component of Ethiopian federalism designed to deal with the challenges of ethnic diversity. The constitutional decision to use ethnicity as a basis for the organisation of the state represents a recognition of the political relevance of ethnicity. However, the decision that each major ethnic group should be dominant in one and only subnational unit has elevated ethnic identity to a primary political identity. This approach overlooks other historically and politically relevant territorial identities. The constitution thus misses an opportunity to respond to ethnic concerns without freezing ethnicity as an exclusive political identity.
In the last three decades, the politics of indigeneity have led to discrimination against and marginalization of non-indigenes as well as numerous violent conflicts between indigenes and non-indigenes in Nigeria. This discrimination, which is based on a localized place of belonging, has today become bureaucratized: local governments produce ‘certificates of indigene’ to identify the origin of their holders. This article looks at the bureaucratic machinery of issuing certificates of origin in two local governments of Oyo State (in the south-west) and the everyday encounters between users and bureaucrats that cannot be reduced to practices of corruption. It looks at the complicated and ambivalent process of identifying a ‘true indigene’; this process is supposed to strengthen local citizenship but it also contributes to the daily functioning of the state and is largely accepted by the majority as part of the state's ‘insidious gentleness’. The article also seeks to understand why official discrimination against non-indigenes is poorly contested locally by assessing the role of these documents in accessing public employment, university places and basic services, and examining whether areas inhabited by non-indigenes are perceived as being neglected or abandoned by the state. Currently, discrimination policies are implemented unequally and in many instances client-patron relationships help sidestep these policies.
The success of a federal arrangement in accommodating ethnic diversity cannot be measured solely on the basis of its language rights regime. However, it is generally agreed that a well-designed language rights regime goes a long way in contributing either to the effective reconciliation, unity and diversity or to the eventual polarisation of cultural communities. This article focuses on the challenges of adopting an inclusive language policy in multi-lingual states. Using two case studies, South Africa and Ethiopia, it examines the different policy alternatives for accommodating linguistic communities.
One of the core principles instituted by the post-1991 government in Ethiopia that took power after a successful armed struggle was ethnic-based federalism, informed by a neo-Leninist political model called revolutionary democracy. In this model, devised by the reigning Tigray People's Liberation Front (later EPRDF), ethnic identity was to be the basis of politics. Identities of previously non-dominant groups were constitutionally recognized and the idea of pan-Ethiopian identity de-emphasized. This article examines the general features and effects of this new political model, often dubbed an “experiment”, with regard to ideas of federal democracy, socio-economic inclusiveness, and ethno-cultural and political rights. After 20 years of TPLF/EPRDF rule, the dominant rhetorical figure in Ethiopian politics is that of ethnicity, which has permeated daily life and overtaken democratic decision-making and shared issue-politics. The federal state, despite according nominal decentralized power to regional and local authorities, is stronger than any previous Ethiopian state and has developed structures of central control and top-down rule that preclude local initiative and autonomy. Ethnic and cultural rights were indeed accorded, and a new economic dynamics is visible. Political liberties, respect for human rights and economic equality are however neglected, and ethnic divisions are on the increase, although repressed. Ethiopia's recent political record thus shows mixed results, with positive elements but also an increasingly authoritarian governance model recalling the features of the country's traditional hierarchical and autocratic political culture. This may produce more debate on the need for “adjusting the experiment”.
Constitutionally prohibited grounds of differentiation should be allowed to command the deserved heightened degree of deference before they are set aside in the implementation of the equality guarantee which underpins the remainder of the 'Bill of Rights.' So, too, emphasis should be placed on the imperatives of walking the tight rope in reconciling and balancing competing interests that have a legitimate claim to equal attention in order that the equality guarantee is translated into practice. Nevertheless, the obiter dicta of the House of the Federation in the Benishagul Gumuz decision too easily dispensed with explicit constitutional prohibition of distinctions based on attributes such as language and ethnic origin and legitimated the use of the working language of a regional state as a criterion for candidacy in future elections. The driving motive is to promote (the right to) the use of indigenous languages of each regional state as the official working language, a right that has been denied to the great majority of the nations, nationalities and peoples of the country. This paper sets out to explore the conceptual and normative underpinnings of the right to equality, in the light of which it argues that the House of the Federation has erroneously responded to one threat with another. The crux of the contention is that instead of devising ways that uphold every citizen's right to the use of one's language anywhere in the country, it took away the same rights from the non-indigenes of the various regional states, thereby consigning them to the fate either of forced assimilation or permanent exclusion from elections in the path towards public office.
J. Abbink focuses on some problems and prospects of ethno-regional federalism in Ethiopia. The issue of land and access to land is currently playing a major role in the Ethiopian conflict dynamic. Land is the most important resource, and historically it had major existential and identity aspects for people. Some contradictions as to the delineation of units and the powers of federal versus regional authorities are not resolved. The majority of conflicts in rural Ethiopia emerged from disputes on land and on boundaries of districts and zones between the newly defined ethnic or linguistic groups. Perceived cultural-historical differences, ethnic ranking, perceptions of disadvantages and grievances are there, and are resuscitated under the leadership of aspiring local ethnic elites. Reportedly, federal police or army forces even let some conflicts rage without interfering decisively because of this perception of their being suppressed 'traditional' or 'age-old' rivalries.
This study examines and analyses the expropriation laws and practices in Ethiopia. The objective of the thesis is to analyze and describe the land rights and expropriation laws in Ethiopia and to c ...
The study focuses on territorial autonomy, which is often used in different conflict-resolution and minority situations. Four typical elements are identified on the basis of the historical example of the Memel Territory and the so-called Memel case of the PCIJ: distribution of powers, participation through elections and referendums, executive power of territorial autonomy, and international relations. These elements are used for a comparative analysis of the constitutional law that regulates the position of six currently existing special jurisdictions, the Åland Islands in Finland, Scotland in the United Kingdom, Puerto Rico in the United States of America, Hong Kong in China, Aceh in Indonesia, and Zanzibar in Tanzania. The current sub-state entities examined can be arranged in relation to Memel in a manner that indicates that Hong Kong and the Åland Islands conform to the typical territorial autonomy, while Puerto Rico and Aceh should probably not be understood as territorial autonomies proper. At the same time, the territorial autonomies can be distinguished from federally organized sub-state entities.
Why do the natives of Sabah oppose the internal migration of natives from the rest of Malaysia? Why is being "native" not enough? The hostility is in direct contrast to what most scholars know about Malaysia: a multiethnic country with successful preferential policies for its natives-the "sons of the soil." In a plural state like Malaysia, there are competing native claims on citizenship. Here, regional natives (Kadazandusun from Sabah) contest claims by federal natives (Malays). The conflicts over culture, economy, and political power fracture a national citizenship into its regional and federal parts, pitting native against native. In particular, regional natives empower the notion of a regional citizenship by supporting restrictions on the internal migration of fellow citizens. As a consequence, Malaysia's goal of a "national" citizenry fashioned on native Malay norms is undermined. Malaysia offers important insight into the enduring dilemma of modern plural states: how to create a common national citizenship.
The problem of representational equity in Nigeria started with the problem of an unequal North-South duality, as if that was not problematic enough, the smaller southern component was split into two to create a deleterious Southern duality and an equally debilitating national trinity. The attempt to redress North-South regional imbalance resulted in the creation of states but it resulted in weakening the South against the North. This then became the justification for other methods albeit the Federal Character Principle for the promotion of a sense of belonging in the country by eliminating or at least minimizing domination resulting from imbalance in appointments. The purpose of the principle of federal character is laudable, unfortunately the application and operation of the principle tended to differentiate rather than integrate Nigeria.
The transformation and centralisation of the Nigerian federation by ‘soldiers and oil’ has produced contentious and contradictory outcomes. Many influential commentators describe the current centralised system of federalism as a veritable source of, rather than a credible solvent for, the country's multifaceted crises of unity, democracy, and development. A more balanced perspective would distinguish between the system's remarkable achievements in alleviating inter-group political inequality and insecurity, and its conspicuous failures to advance good democratic and economic governance. Ultimately, focused reforms, especially electoral and anti-corruption reforms, will be required to consolidate Nigeria's real successes in mitigating potentially disintegrative ethno-political conflicts and to assuage current agitations for the wholesale restructuring or dismantling of the federal system.
In the contemporary world, state restructuring has become a global phenomenon. In almost all corners of the world, there are currently efforts that aim at redesigning structures of states in response to demands of communities for increased participation in the politico-economic realm. In this context, federalism has become attractive to multiethnic countries as a way of maintaining balance between such lofty ideas as ‘self-rule’ and ‘shared-rule’. But federalism may either reduce or exacerbate conflicts. This depends on the contextual factors. Using comparative and empirical approaches, this study analyses the impacts of federalism on ethnic conflicts in Ethiopia in general and in the Somali and Benishangul-Gumuz regions in particular.
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