Assessment of Legal Aid in Ethiopia A Re

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ASSESSMENT OF LEGAL AID IN ETHIOPIA:

A Research Report & Proceeding of the National
Workshop of Legal Aid Providers
Editor
Kokebe Wolde
Center for Human Rights

Addis Ababa University
December 2013
Copyright © 2013: Center for Human Rights, Addis Ababa University
Information from this publication may be freely reproduced but not for sale or for commercial purpose
use. At all times the title, its publisher and the authors must be cited when content is extracted from
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Disclaimer
The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and the
discussants at the Workshop and do not necessarily reflect the position of
Addis Ababa University, the Center for Human Rights or that of the
Norwegian Embassy.
Table of Contents
Preface...........................................................................................................................vv
viii
Acronyms....................................................................................................................vii
Assessment of Legal Aid in Ethiopia: A Research Report...........................................11
Workshop Report: National Workshop of Legal Aid providers...............................117

117
Directory of Legal Aid Providers in Ethiopia...........................................................145

145
Preface
The Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia recognizes
the right of every one to have access to justice. This is in line with various
international human rights instruments ratified by Ethiopia that recognize this right
as one of the fundamental rights to which every human being is entitled to by virtue
of being human. These legal instruments also establish rules and principles that aim
at making this right practicable, setting forth the grounds when it becomes operative,
and specifying the conditions that ensure that it is fairly and equitably enjoyed. The
singular importance of this right cannot, indeed, be understated as the right to access
to justice is both a fundamental right in itself as well as a key means to defend and
protect other rights.
Translating the high ideals of Ethiopian and international human rights law in
this regard still leaves much to be desired as the full realization of the right to access
to justice is impeded by structural, attitudinal and capacity constraints. Although
gradual and incremental progress is being registered in removing them, there are
several factors that hinder the realization of the right to access to justice. Ensuring
that every citizen has an effective, expedient and affordable mechanism to exercise
the right to access to justice is a challenge even in developed countries and legal
systems. As a developing country with a yet developing legal system, making the
right to access to justice a reality for everyone in Ethiopia cannot be expected to be
immune from serious constraints in the availability of the necessary human and
material resources. Related to this, and no less challenging, however, are the
prevailing high illiteracy rate in general and the low level of awareness about legal
rights and procedures in particular, that prevents many from having recourse to the
justice system in the first place, or from optimally navigating through its mazes
where they do take up this recourse. The relatively diminutive size of the legal
profession and its concentration, in a geographic sense, in major urban areas,
especially in Addis Ababa, and in terms of practice, in more lucrative fields catering
for a clientele that has the resources to hire professional services, seriously curtails
the realization of the right to access to justice for those who cannot hire their own
v
vi Assessment of Legal Aid in Ethiopia
lawyers ” something that is true for the vast majority of our population. The
traditional markers of exclusion and marginalization, especially gender and
disability, also operate here. It is indeed a sad fact that despite progresses made in
ensuring the equal rights of women in the legal and policy arenas, women still
continue to be disproportionately adversely affected in their participation in and
benefitting from the justice system and the services of the legal profession
These are just some of the factors, perhaps major ones, but by no means
exclusive ones, that hinder the effective realization of the right of access to justice. In
the absence of rights advice and legal information provision, and in so long as legal
services are inaccessible, those who do not have the financial and economic
wherewithal and those that belong to especially and traditionally excluded or
marginalized social groups in our society will continue to be unable to use the law
and its mechanisms to enforce their rights and to redress the wrongs they suffer. Our
Constitutional commitment, as well as the obligations that we assume under
international human rights law, thus make it imperative that there be a vibrant system
for free legal aid and legal information provision that involve the concerted effort of
all stakeholders to seek ways and means so that those who cannot afford the paid
service of the lawyer can have a meaningful and functioning opportunity to have a
resort to avail their right of access to justice. This is, indeed, a responsibility that has
to be borne not only by state agencies at all the federal, regional and local levels, but
also by civil society organizations, including professional and mass associations,
academic institutions such as universities, legal professionals including lawyers and
law students, as well as all those who are interested in seeing to it that all Ethiopians
enjoy their rights and that the Ethiopian legal system operates fairly and equitably,
As of present there are flickering attempts by some governmental and non-
governmental institutions at providing legal aid services in the country. Although the
impact of the services provided by these institutions is not yet systematically studied,
casual observation reveals that the activities of these legal aid service providers lacks
the necessary resource and capacity, and is little publicized. While the initiation of
the services is commendable in itself, it is still very limited both in terms of the
vi
Preface vii
geography and demography covered, and in terms of the services that are being
rendered. There is also a feeling that the service may benefit from a more enhanced
coordination among the service providers. Quite evidently, there is a big assignment
ahead to make the legal aid system robust and more relevant to the justice system.
This is by no means to belittle the efforts and contributions of the various legal aid
providers to the justice system so far made. It is just to emphasize that collaborative
work by the actors and stakeholders in legal aid provision is crucial to uplift the state
of legal aid provision in Ethiopia.
With this view in mind the Center for Human Rights of Addis Ababa
University hosted a National Workshop of Legal Aid Providers in Ethiopia from May
9- 10, 2013. The Workshop was intended to create a forum for the different actors
that are engaged in legal aid provision to discuss the state of legal aid in Ethiopia,
share their experiences, and map the way forward to improve the state of legal aid.
At the Workshop a research report on assessment of legal aid in Ethiopia
commissioned by the center for Human Rights (AAU) was also presented. The
research report provided an overview of the state of legal aid in Ethiopia and served
as a basis on which the Workshop participants made deliberations on the
opportunities, challenges and the way forward of improving access to legal aid in
Ethiopia.
This publication is a follow up of the Workshop. It includes the research
report on Assessment of Legal Aid in Ethiopia and a summary of the main points
raised during participants’ discussion at the Workshop. A Directory of Legal Aid
Providers containing basic information about legal aid providers in Ethiopia culled
from the research report on Assessment of Legal Aid in Ethiopia is also appended to
it. We hope that this publication will be informative and serve as starter for further
endeavors to improve access to justice.
Elshady Kifle
Chair, Center for Human Rights
Addis Ababa University
vii
List of Acronyms
AA Addis Ababa City
AAE Action Aid Ethiopia
AALF-AAU Alumni Association of Law Faculty of Addis Ababa University
AAU Addis Ababa University
AAU-CHR Addis Ababa University, Center for Human Rights
ACHPR African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights
ACPF the African Child Policy Forum
ACRWC African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child
ANPPCAN Association for Nation-wide Action and Protection against Child Abuse and Neglect
APAP Action Professional Association for the People
BoWCYA Bureau of Women, Children and Youth Affairs
CAT Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment
CBOs Community Based Organizations
CCERD Committee on the Convention against Racial Discrimination
CEDAW Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
CERD Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
CJPO-FSC The Child Justice Project Office of the Federal Supreme Court
CJAP Criminal Justice Administration Policy
CLPC Children’s Legal Protection Center
CPUs Child Protection Units
CRC/UNCRC United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
CSO Civil Society Organization
CwDs Children with Disabilities
CWPUs Child and Women Protection Units
EBA/ELA Ethiopian Bar Association/Ethiopian Lawyers Association
ECLF Ethiopian Christian Lawyers’ Association (Advocates Ethiopia)
EHRC Ethiopian Human Rights Commission
EHRCO Ethiopian Human Rights Council
EIO Ethiopian Institution of the Ombudsman
EWLA Ethiopia Women Lawyers Association
FDRE Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
FFIC Federal First Instance Court
FLACs Free Legal Aid Centers
viii
Acronyms ix
FSC-CJPO Federal Supreme Court-Child Justice Project Office

ICCPR International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
IEC Information, Education and Communication
LEP Legal empowerment of the poor
MoJ Ministry of Justice
MoWCYA Ministry of Women, Children and Youth Affairs
NGO Non-Government Organization
PDO Public Defense Office
PLWHA People Living with HIV/AIDS
SNNP Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples’ Regional State
UNODC United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
UNDP United Nations Development Program
UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund
USAID United States Agency for International Development
VAWC Violence against Women and Children
WCYAB Women Children Youth Affairs Bureau
ix
Assessment of Legal Aid in Ethiopia: A Research Report
By
Anchinesh Shiferaw and Ghetnet Mitiku
Editors
Fasika Hailu and Kokebe Wolde
Table of Contents
Executive Summary.................................................................................................................................55
Part one: Introduction...............................................................................................................................8
1.1 Background...................................................................................................................................8
1.2 Scope of the Study......................................................................................................................10
1.3 Research Method........................................................................................................................11 11
1.4 Limitations..................................................................................................................................12
1.5 Organisation of the assessment..................................................................................................13 13
Part Two: Conceptual Framework.........................................................................................................14 14
2.1 Background.................................................................................................................................14
2.1.1 Meaning of Legal Aid........................................................................................................14 14
2.1.2 Relevance of Legal Aid...................................................................................................... 16
2.1.3 Emergence and Development of Legal Aid.......................................................................18 18
2.2 International and Regional Human Rights Framework for Legal Aid.......................................23 23
2.2.1 Access to Justice.................................................................................................................24
2.2.2 Fair Trial.............................................................................................................................25
2.2.3 Equality before the Law.....................................................................................................26 26
2.2.4 Implications of the Human Rights Framework.................................................................27 27
2.3 Models of Legal Aid Service Provision.....................................................................................35 35
2.3.1 State Provided Legal Aid...................................................................................................35 35
2.3.2 Provision of Legal Aid by the Legal Profession...............................................................37 37
2.3.3 Legal Aid Provided by NGOs...........................................................................................40 40
2.4 Legal Basis for Legal Aid in Ethiopia.......................................................................................46 46
2.4.1 Recognition of International Standards.............................................................................46 46
2.4.2 National Laws and Policies................................................................................................48 48
2.4.3 Institutional Mandates........................................................................................................53 53
Part Three: Findings...............................................................................................................................57
3.2 Profile of Legal Aid Service Providers......................................................................................58 58
3.3 Accessibility of Legal Aid Services...........................................................................................62 62
3.3.1 Legal Awareness................................................................................................................63 63
3.3.2 Physical Access..................................................................................................................66 66
3.3.3 Program Access.................................................................................................................71 71
4 Assessment of Legal Aid in Ethiopia Assessment of Legal Aid in Ethiopia
4
3.3.4 Financial Access.................................................................................................................74

3.4 Delivery of Services....................................................................................................................79
3.4.1 Service Providers................................................................................................................80
3.4.2 Types of Cases....................................................................................................................82
3.4.3 Services Provided............................................................................................................... 84
3.4.4 Beneficiaries.......................................................................................................................86
3.5 Quality of Services.....................................................................................................................86 86
3.5.1 Professional Standards.......................................................................................................87 87
3.5.2 Case Management and Case follow-up.............................................................................89 89
3.5.3 Training..............................................................................................................................90 90
3.6 Coordination and Networking....................................................................................................91 91
Recommendations.................................................................................................................................. 93
Annexes................................................................................................................................................105
Annex 1: Checklist for the Database on Existing Legal Aid Service Providers............................105 105
Annex 2: Guiding Questions to Examine the Services Provided by Existing Service
Providers.........................................................................................................................................107
Annex 3: List of Questions for Stakeholders..................................................................................111
Annex 4: List of Key Informants of Legal Aid Providers..............................................................114
Annex 5: List of Key Informants from Institutional Stakeholders.................................................115
A Research Report on Legal Aid Service in Ethiopia 5
Executive Summary
This research was conducted with the objective of assessing the practice, gaps
and challenges in the provision of legal aid service in Ethiopia, as well as the level of
networking and coordination among the various legal aid providers. More
specifically, it aimed to analyse the relevant international and national legal and
policy frameworks concerning legal aid provision; review existing research and
documentation on the provision of legal aid services; create a data base of existing
legal aid service providers; examine the service provided by various actors; assess
the level of cooperation and coordination among legal aid providers; and, identify
challenges and good practices in the provision of legal aid service.
The scope of the research covered legal aid service rendered by NGOs, higher
learning institutions, professional associations and government organs in civil cases.
Both quantitative and qualitative research methods including literature review,
primary data collection through field visits and stakeholders’ consultations were
employed to undertake the assessment.
The assessment, in addition to compiling a database of legal aid service
providers, has identified important findings concerning the accessibility, delivery and
use as well as the quality of legal aid services. Accessibility of legal aid services is
analyzed in terms of legal awareness, geographic proximity, program coverage and
financial cost of accessing the service. The findings of the assessment indicate that in
terms of legal awareness most legal aid service providers have programmes designed
to improve awareness among their target communities as well as key actors and
stakeholders. Distribution of IEC materials, radio broadcasting, and outreach
programs are more commonly employed with varying degrees of success for the
purposes of creating awareness and introducing available services. The geographical
6 Assessment of Legal Aid in Ethiopia Assessment of Legal Aid in Ethiopia
6
coverage of legal aid services varies from region to region. For the most part, the
services are generally urban focused and closely related with the justice institutions
located in urban areas. With regard to financial accessibility, all legal aid services are
provided free of charge except for incidental/opportunity costs which are not covered
by service providers in most cases. Various methods are employed among legal aid
providers to identify beneficiaries eligible for legal aid services. It is submitted that
there is a need to set uniform eligibility criteria that can be utilized by all legal aid
providers at the national level.
The analysis on delivery and use of services focused on the identity of actors
delivering legal aid services, the range of services provided, and the methods of
delivery. The findings indicate that the nature of the institution providing the services
is an important factor in terms of determining the identity of the personnel giving the
legal aid service. Universities generally use staff and students while professional
associations and government organs utilize advocates licensed to practice before
federal and regional courts. Charities and societies, on the other hand, tend to engage
lawyers and paralegals. The most recurrent cases entertained by the legal aid service
providers are civil cases, especially family, property and labor cases, maintenance
allowance, and succession issues being the most frequent cases. The range of
available services covers oral advice or legal counseling, preparation of pleadings
and other documents, and legal representation by advocates before a court of law
with oral advice being the most recurrent. Finally, the beneficiaries of the services
are the poor with women and children targeted by most service providers. Other
groups of beneficiaries include the elderly, PLWHA and inmates of detention
facilities.
AAResearch
ResearchReport
ReportononLegal
LegalAid
AidService
ServiceininEthiopia
Ethiopia 77
The assessment analyzed the quality of legal aid services in addressing the
justice needs of the beneficiaries. This is gauged using three criteria: establishing
professional standards for personnel providing the service; existence and adoption of
model rules; and provision of relevant training for personnel providing the service. In
addition to the code of conduct for advocates provided by law at the federal and
regional levels, a few legal aid providers have developed guidelines and standards
governing the provision of legal aid service by them. However, the assessment found
that such professional standards are lacking among most legal aid service providers.
The same is true with regard to case management and follow up systems which are
found to be less than adequate in the case of most legal aid providers. Organization
of training programmes for the personnel that actually provide the service are
generally limited to orientation sessions and limited short term training opportunities.
The assessment did not find any systematic training programmes for services
providers, but for one of the legal aid providers covered by the assessment.
The assessment has come up with detailed recommendations for action by
various actors with particular emphasis on the concrete actions that should be taken
by the legal aid service providers themselves with the view to improving the
accessibility, delivery and quality of legal aid service in Ethiopia.
8
Assessment of Legal Aid in Ethiopia Assessment of Legal Aid in Ethiopia
8
Part one: Introduction

1.1 Background
Legal aid service is grounded on the principle that inability to pay for legal
service should not inhibit access to justice and equality before the law. It is
intricately related with the rule of law, fair trial, right to defend oneself, equality
before the law and, in general, right of access to justice.1
The right to legal aid is formally recognised in different legal systems and
under international human rights instruments.2 Under the Ethiopian legal system, the
right of accused persons to be represented by legal counsel appointed at the expense
of the State in cases where the accused does not have sufficient means to hire a
lawyer and miscarriage of justice would result should they not have representation is
recognised under the FDRE Constitution.3 In several instances, such right is
interpreted as requiring the government to ensure and facilitate that free legal aid
service is provided by other legal aid providers too, not only by state appointed and
paid legal counsels.4 Furthermore, the right of access to justice is guaranteed under
the FDRE Constitution.5 To enjoy this right, one does need not only be able to bring
cases before the court of law, but also defend his/her case by himself/herself or with
the help of a lawyer in order to get a just and adequate outcome of the case.
1
Saeed, S., ‘Legal Aid Bill: Analytical Study’, Khartoum Sudan, 2010.
2
See Article 14 (3 (d)) of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [Hereinafter ICCPR],
1966; Article 40 (2) of Child Right Convention [Hereinafter CRC], Dakar Declaration on the Right
to Fair Trial in Africa, 1999, and Lilongwe Declaration on Accessing Legal Aid in the Criminal
Justice Systems in Africa, 2004[Hereinafter Lilongwe Declaration].
3
Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 1995, Proclamation no. 1/1995, Fed.
Neg. Gaz. year 1, no. 1, Article 20(5) [Hereinafter FDRE Constitution].
4
See Lilongwe Declaration Supra note 2.
5
FDRE Constitution, supra note 3, Article 37.
However, there are many instances where one cannot do so because of lack of
awareness about existing legal remedies and financial setbacks to hire a lawyer. The
indigent and the vulnerable are primary victims in the category of persons who
cannot enjoy this right. To remedy these obstacles on the enjoyment of the right to
access to justice, free legal aid service is rendered by governmental and non-
governmental institutions.
In Ethiopia, apparently, various actors, both governmental and non-
governmental, are engaged in the provision of legal aid service to the indigent and
members of vulnerable groups. However, the approaches and methods the various
actors follow in the provision of the service, the kind of services they provide, the
profile of the providers, and how the service is delivered, and the general trend in
legal aid provision is little known. The governing legal and policy framework is not
studied before. This research is therefore intended to examine the legal and policy
framework pertaining to the provision of legal aid service and assess the practice of
legal aid service provision in Ethiopia.
1.2. Objectives
General Objective
The main objective of this assessment is to identify the trend in legal aid
provision by different governmental and non-governmental organizations including a
description of the main legal aid practices, gaps and challenges thereof, and
identification and description of the coordination and cooperation among the various
legal aid providers.
Specific Objectives
Specific objectives of the research include:
10Assessment of Legal Aid in Ethiopia Assessment of Legal Aid in Ethiopia
10
 Analysing the relevant international and national legal and policy

frameworks concerning legal aid provision;
 Forming a database of the existing legal aid providers in Ethiopia;
 Examining the accessibility and quality of the service provided by various
actors;
 Assessing the level of cooperation and coordination among legal aid
providers;
 Identifying gaps and good practices to be shared among legal aid providers;
and,
 Providing recommendations to improve the state of legal aid service
provision in Ethiopia.
1.2 Scope of the Study

This study does not intend to provide a full-detail analysis of the practice of
each legal aid provider. It tries to get an overview of the service provided by legal aid
providers which are currently operating in Ethiopia. For this purpose the researchers
chose to deal with the legal aid service rendered by NGOs, higher learning
institutions, professional associations and by the government in civil cases. The legal
aid service rendered by Public Defence Office6 at the Federal and regional level is
excluded from the scope of this study for the reason that it requires a deeper study
which is not intended under this study.
6
The Public Defense Office at the federal level is established by Federal Courts Proclamation, 1996,
Prol. No. 25/1996, Fed. Neg. Gaz., Year 2, No. 13 under the Federal Supreme Court with a view to
provide legal representation for defendants at the trial stage. Similar offices at the regional levels
are established by the respective regional legislator under the regional supreme courts.
1.3 Research Method

This research employed a research approach combining qualitative and
quantitative methods using information from both primary and secondary sources.
This research principally employed social science research methodology to collect
empirical data. The data collection method that was utilised for this research includes
key and general informants’ interviews. In total, more than 50 interviews have been
conducted covering both legal aid providers and stakeholders.7 The key informants
that were interviewed include coordinators of legal aid centers, relevant officials
from the MoJ, MoWCYA, the judiciary and the EHRC at the federal level and prison
administrators, court officials, officials of bureaus of justice, and women, children
and youth affairs bureaus, as well as police commissions at the regional level.
As regards providers of legal aid service, all legal aid providers identified
by the researchers and which are located in Addis Ababa and in selected regional
towns have been interviewed.8 Further, selected public higher learning institutions
which are rendering free legal aid service have also been interviewed. 9 The selection
of higher learning institutions for the purpose of data collection was made based on
their experience and with the aim of having representative data of geographical
regions and emerging regions.
7
See annexes 4 and 5 for the list of informants.
8
These are EWLA, ECLA, ELA and FSC-CJPO.
9
Addis Ababa University Center for Human Rights’ legal aid centers (Adama and Hawassa
branches), Hawassa University Legal Aid Center, Mekelle University Legal Aid Center, Adama
University Legal Aid and Research Center, Bahir Dar University Legal Aid Center, Haromaya
University College of Law Free Legal Service Center, Jimma University School of Law Legal Aid
Center, Gonder University Legal Aid Center and Jigjiga University Legal Aid Center.
12 Assessment of Legal Aid in Ethiopia
Assessment of Legal Aid in Ethiopia 12
Interview guides both for legal aid providers and stakeholders have been
prepared covering questions related with the central issues of this research.10 The
data collected through interview of key legal aid providers and stakeholders has been
examined and analysed to extract information regarding the accessibility of legal aid
service, the mode of delivery, quality of the service and cooperation and coordination
with other legal aid providers and stakeholders.
A thorough review of literature, research reports, and other documents related
to access to justice in general and legal aid service in particular has been made. The
primary and secondary sources such as national and international legal/policy
instruments, activity reports of legal aid providers, annual report of EHRC and MoJ,
various guidelines used by legal aid providers and other publications pertaining to
legal aid have been analysed. Moreover, empirical and normative research outputs
and assessment reports on legal aid services in Ethiopia carried out by academics,
research institutions and practitioners, have been reviewed.
1.4 Limitations
The researchers did not conduct focus group discussion with beneficiaries of
free legal aid service which was envisaged originally owing to the difficulty in
finding previous beneficiaries within the short period of time available for delivering
the assessment report. In addition, the desired data from legal aid providers was not
made available in its entirety owing to failure of some institutions to respond to
inquiries in a timely manner.
10
See annexes 1, 2 and 3.
1.5 Organisation of the assessment

This research report is organised with an eye to a coherent presentation of
findings. The first part of the research highlights the objectives of the research, the
scope of the research and its methodology. The second part lays down the conceptual
framework by exploring the meaning and relevance of legal aid, international and
national legal and policy framework, strategies/approaches of legal aid provisions
and principles and standards of legal aid.
Part Three is devoted to discussing the findings of the research in terms of
accessibility of legal aid service, delivery and use of the service, quality of the
service, and networking and coordination among legal aid providers. This part also
contains the profile of legal aid providers in Ethiopia. Recommendations that help
correct identified gaps and improve legal aid service provision comes following part
four which presents summary of best practices and gaps in the provisions of legal aid
service.
14
14
Part Two: Conceptual Framework

2.1 Background
2.1.1 Meaning of Legal Aid
Literally, ‘legal aid’ implies the provision of services of ‘legal’ nature free of
charge or at a discount (i.e. need-based payment).11 The term legal aid has been
defined in various ways depending on the purpose and thematic focus of the
endeavor. The key elements across definitions are: the services provided; the
providers of the services; and, the proceedings within which the services are
provided.
Definitions of legal aid emphasize the role of the State as the provider of
identified services,12 sometimes excluding similar services from the purview of the
definition where they are provided by other actors.13 Such definitions may refer to
services actually provided by state institutions or those funded by the State without
reference to the actual service providers. This is sometimes referred to as ‘public
legal services’ where funded by the State, or ‘State legal services’ where provided by
state institutions. Other definitions of legal aid take into account the provision of
legal services by a broad range of non-state actors including NGOs, CBOs,
professional associations and academic institutions.14
11
See Y. Endeshaw, Children’s Access to Legal Aid in Ethiopia, UNICEF-Ethiopia, Addis Ababa,
October 2011.
12
UNODC, Access to Legal Aid in Criminal Justice Systems in Africa: Handbook , 2011, p. 1 and 11.
13
For instance, the whole spectrum of legal aid services in Canada fall within the purview of the
government, i.e. federal and provinces.
14
ARC International, Gender-Based Violence Legal Aid: A Participatory Toolkit, GBV in Conflict-
Affected Settings, 2005, p. 8.
Legal aid provision may also be defined in terms of whether the services are
made available in civil or criminal proceedings or in both cases. Criminal legal aid is
provided to persons accused of a crime while civil legal aid is assistance provided to
persons involved in non-criminal disputes such as family matters and debt issues.
Broader definitions further extend the scope of legal aid to administrative processes
as well as alternative dispute resolution within or outside the formal legal system, i.e.
customary dispute settlement systems.
In terms of the services provided, legal aid may be understood as limited to
‘legally aided representation’ or may include the whole system of legal education,
information and services. Some definitions also cover other forms of legal assistance
as well as ‘mechanisms for alternative dispute resolution’.15 The nature of the
services provided also have direct implications on whether the reference is limited to
professional legal services or includes primary (non-professional) legal services,
named paralegal services.
Thus, the narrowest definitions of legal aid refer to the provision of legal
representation by a professional lawyer paid for by the State for persons accused of a
crime before a court of law. Broader definitions recognize the role of other actors and
stakeholders in the provision of a broader range of services relevant to judicial and
other proceedings.16 Terms such as ‘legal services’ and ‘legal aid services’ have been
15
Lilongwe Declaration, supra note 2, para. 1.; Penal Reform International, Access to Justice in Sub-
Saharan Africa: The Role of Traditional and Informal Justice Systems , 2000, p. 10; Also see:
Melina Buckley, Moving Forward on Legal Aid: Research on Needs and Innovative Approaches ,
Canadian Bar Association, 2010, p. 4.
16
Lilongwe Declaration, supra note 2, para. 1; Also see: M. Buckley, supra note 15, p. 4 and 7; for a
broad definition provided in the context of the emergence of legal empowerment from legal aid
practice also see: V. Maru, ‘Allies Unknown: Social Accountability and Legal Empowerment’,
Health and Human Rights in Practice, Volume 12, Number 1, 2010, p. 8.
used in place of legal aid to signify the broad range of service providers, processes
targeted, and the services provided.17
2.1.2 Relevance of Legal Aid

The rationale for the provision of legal aid services could be seen from
various complementary and overlapping perspectives.18 Existing evidence shows that
legal aid services targeting to benefit ‘disadvantaged populations’ play an essential
role in enhancing the rule of law, good governance, human rights, empowerment of
the poor, and poverty alleviation.19 The relevance of legal aid from social policy,
empowerment and human rights perspectives is especially pertinent here.
The social policy and empowerment perspectives stem from a conception of
poverty and its correlation with social exclusion.20 Poverty, which used to be
understood as lack of income, is being increasingly recognized in terms of ‘lack of
opportunity, a lack of control, and a lack of pathways to full participation in
17
According to the UNDP’s Practitioners’ Guide to A Human Rights Based Approach to Access to
Justice (2005), legal aid includes legal counsel and other services (e.g. financial facilities through
reduction in court fees, translation services for deaf-mute litigants, psycho-social support to victims
of trauma) that people need to navigate the legal process. See: UNDP, Programming for Justice:
Access for All: A Practitioners Guide to A Human Rights Based Approach to Access to Justice ,
2005, UNDP Asia-Pacific Rights and Justice Initiative, Bangkok, pp. 151-153.
18
M. Cappelletti and J. Gordley, ‘Legal aid: Modern Themes and Variations’, Stanford Law Review,
vol. 24, No. 2, 1972, p. 347.
19
S. Golub, ‘Forging the Future: Engaging Law Students and Young Lawyers in Public Service,
Human Rights, and Poverty Alleviation’, An Open Society Justice Initiative Issues Paper , 2004, p.
1.
20
Legal Aid Queensland, Strategic Policy Framework and Policy Program, 2006-2008, p. 4.
society’.21 Understood as such, it is closely related to the process of social

exclusion22 occurring when people or places suffer from a series of problems such as
unemployment, discrimination, poor skills, low incomes, poor housing, high crime,
ill health and family breakdown.23 Governments and other development actors have
increasingly become aware of the two-way link between social exclusion and the
‘infrastructure of justice’ (i.e. legal service institutions). On the one hand, the social
and economic costs of lack of access to justice play an important role in reinforcing
exclusion. However, the law could also be a potent instrument for inclusion. Legal
aid is thus recognized as ‘a vital, legally mandated social service’ essential in
maintaining ‘a functioning justice system and promote equality and justice in our
society’.24
The human rights perspective on the relevance of legal aid had a dual basis:
access to legal services as a right; and, availability of legal services as a pre-requisite
for the enforcement of human rights. The first draws upon the recognition of access
to justice, fair trial and equality before the law in the human rights legal framework
and underlines the provision of legal aid as a core component in the substance of
these rights. In addition, the relevance of legal aid within the human rights
21
D. Martin, A Seamless Approach to Service Delivery in Legal Aid: Fulfilling a Promise or
Maintaining a Myth? Legal Aid Research Series, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University,
2001, p. 1.
22
For a more recent treatment of social exclusion vis-à-vis legal aid, please see: Cabinet Minister for
Social Exclusion, Reaching out: An Action Plan on Social Exclusion (London: Government of
U.K., 2007), p. 49.
23
A. Currie, ‘Legal Problems of Everyday Life’, in R. Sanderfur, (ed.), Access to Justice, The
Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance, Emerald Group Publishing, 2009, p. 46 available at:
<www.justiceinitiative.org/db/resource2?res_id=103868>.
24
A. Brewin and K. Govender, Rights-Based Legal Aid: Rebuilding BC’s Broken System , Canadian
Center for Policy Alternatives, 2010, p. 4.
framework is seen in the ‘justiceability’ of all human rights and access to remedies in
cases of violation. The recognition of a right would be meaningless without access to
the means of enforcing claims arising from the right.
2.1.3 Emergence and Development of Legal Aid

The emergence of legal aid in Western societies has been attributed to the
interplay of a range of factors falling within three broad categories: ‚ growing
significance of modern social rights; new social dynamics25; and, the emergence of
modern legal professions‛.26 As early as the 1490s, there were schemes in England
operating ‘in forma pauperis’ under which lawyers were assigned free of charge for
the poor in common law courts.27 However, the gaps in the system in terms of the
burden on the poor in accessing the services led to the emergence of a number of
charitable legal aid schemes in England, the US and Germany in the first half of the
19th Century.28 This was followed by a shift towards state provision of legal aid in
England.
The post-World War II era saw a rapid expansion of legal aid services across
the Western World and within its sphere of influence.29 Within a period of three
decades national legal aid systems were reformed in the USA, Canada, Western
Europe30, and Australia and Judicare or mixed model schemes were established to
provide a comprehensive range of legal aid services. The establishment of a national
25
Such as democratization, industrialization and urbanization, electoral reform and mass education.
26
D. Fleming, ‘Legal Aid and Human Rights’, Paper Presented to the International Legal Aid Group
Conference, Antwerp, 6-8 June 2007, p. 2.
27
B. Dillon, A Review of Recent History of the Coolock Community Law Center , Research Report 3,
Combat Poverty Agency, 1989, p. 5.
28
Ibid.
29
Fleming, supra note 26, p. 3.
30
Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the UK.
Judicare legal aid scheme31 in the UK in 1949 was one of the key events sparking the
process.32
However, the last two decades of the 20th Century also saw a reverse trend
away from legal aid with falling or stagnant funding, declining scope, and more
restrictive eligibility criteria across national systems.33 In the Western countries, this
trend has been associated with socio-economic developments and attendant changes
in the legal profession. Yet, the emergence of a new ‘access-to-justice approach’ as a
‘third wave’ of reform affecting law and the poor was a key factor. 34 This approach
has a broader scope covering ‚the full panoply of institutions and devices, personnel
and procedures, used to process, and even prevent, disputes in modern societies‛
rather than the legal aid focus on access to legal services.35
The access to justice approach came with two important advantages. First, by
shifting focus from the delivery of legal services to addressing structural issues, it has
solved critical challenges inherent in access to law, i.e. legal aid systems. In addition
to addressing the efficiency and effectiveness concerns, the access to justice
approach also had the advantage of greater impact and sustainability of results.
Enhanced recognition of the role of actors and stakeholders across sectors, including
31
Meaning: delivery by way of private practitioners funded on a case by case basis, often through
some form of validated certificate. See R. Smith, ‘Legal Aid: Models of Organization’, Paper
Presented at a Conference of the European Forum on Access to Justice Held in Budapest on 5-7
December 2002, p. 8; available at: <www.legalaidreform.org>.
32
For similar developments in Canada, see: John D, Honsberger, ‘The Ontario Legal Aid Plan’,
McGill Law Journal, Vol. 15, No. 3, 1967, p. 436.
33
34
Buckley, supra note 15, p. 4. The development of legal aid in the 1960s Canada was especially
driven by social justice and access to justice considerations.
35
M. Cappelletti and B. Garth (eds.), Access to Justice: A World Survey , Vol. 1, Sijthoff and
Noordhof, 1978, p.124, quoted in: Roger Smith, supra note 31, p. 3.
non-state actors, is also important especially in resource constrained developing

countries’ contexts.
Since 2000, the access to justice approach has been progressively replaced by
Legal Empowerment of the Poor (LEP). Generally understood as ‚ the process
through which the poor become protected and are enabled to use the law to advance
their rights and their interests, vis-à-vis the state and in the market‛,36 LEP has been
defined by different development agencies in the following terms:37
 Asian Development Bank (ADB): ‚[Legal empowerment of the poor]
involves the use of law to increase disadvantaged populations' control over
their lives through a combination of education and action.‛
 Carnegie Endowment: ‚Legal empowerment of the poor is a rights-based
strategy for improving governance and alleviating poverty ... [and involves]
... the use of legal services and related development activities to increase
disadvantaged populations’ control over their lives.‛
 World Bank (WB): ‚Legal empowerment promotes safety, security, and
access to justice and helps poor people solve problems and overcome
administrative barriers.‛
 High Level Commission for Legal Empowerment of the Poor (HLCLEP):
‚Legal empowerment of the poor expands the rule of law to the benefit of
all citizens, rich or poor, men or women, rural or urban, and whether they
belong to ethnic majorities, indigenous people, or other minorities.‛
36
Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, Making the Law Work for Everyone: Report of
the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, Vol. I, 2008, p. 5-6 [Hereinafter Report of the
Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor]
37
USAID, Legal Empowerment of the Poor: From Concepts to Assessment, March 2007, Box 1:
Definitions of Legal Empowerment of the Poor, p. 2.
AAResearch
ResearchReport
ReportononLegal
LegalAid
AidService
ServiceininEthiopia
Ethiopia 21
21
 USAID: ‚Legal empowerment of the poor refers to actions and processes,

including but not limited to legal reforms, by which the poor are legally
enabled to act more effectively to improve their economic situation and
livelihoods, allowing them to alleviate or escape poverty.‛
Generally, legal empowerment has been defined as a rights-based strategy to
promote safety, security, and access to justice through the use of legal services and
related development activities to increase disadvantaged populations’ control over
their lives.38
LEP has been described by USAID as involving four interrelated tasks in
terms of interventions:39 reforming the law and giving the disadvantaged a voice;
providing knowledge as a means of empowerment; ensuring that the disadvantaged
are able to overcome barriers; and providing access to enforcement. The fourth task
incorporates actions designed to ensure that the disadvantaged can protect their rights
in and access to opportunities and assets through affordable, fair mechanisms for
enforcement of rights and contracts and dispute resolution. The provision of legal
services falls within this category of actions, along with other rights enforcement
measures.
Within the framework of Legal Empowerment of the Poor, developed by the
UNDP Commission on LEP, ‘access to justice and rule of law’ is one of the four
pillars along with property rights, labor rights and business rights. Legal
empowerment measures falling under this dimension are designed to:40
38
S. Golub, ‘What is Legal Empowerment? An Introduction’, in S. Golub (ed.), Legal Empowerment
Working Papers, International Development Law Organization, 2010, p. 2.
39
USAID, Legal Empowerment of the Poor, supra note 37, p. 11.
40
Report of the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, supra note 36, p. 5-6.
22
 Ensure that everyone has the fundamental right to legal identity, and is
registered at birth;
 Repeal or modify laws and regulations that are biased against the rights,
interests, and livelihoods of poor people;
 Facilitate the creation of state and civil society organizations and coalitions,
including paralegals who work in the interest of the excluded;
 Establish a legitimate state monopoly on the means of coercion, through, for
example, effective and impartial policing;
 Make the formal judicial system, land administration systems, and relevant
public institutions more accessible by recognizing and integrating
customary and informal legal procedures with which the poor are already
familiar;
 Encourage courts to give due consideration to the interests of the poor;
 Support mechanisms for alternative dispute resolution;
 Foster and institutionalize access to legal services so that the poor will know
about laws and be able to take advantage of them;
 Support concrete measures for the legal empowerment of women,
minorities, refugees and internally displaced persons, and indigenous
peoples.
Access to legal services is thus narrowly focused on ‘the poor’ and relegated
to one of nine specific objectives under one of three pillars of the comprehensive
LEP approach.
The linkage between legal aid and human rights has its basis in the adoption
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by the UN General
Assembly in 1948, proclaiming the right to equality before the law and its protection,
without discrimination (Article 7). This standard setting provision was elaborated
through the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in 1966
(Article 26). However, the relationship with human rights was not given due
attention until the middle of the first decade of the 21 st Century.41 Important factors
for the recognition include the International Legal Aid Group Conference on legal
aid and human rights in Europe in 2005, and the Legal Services Research Centre’s
International Research Conference in 2006.42
2.2 International and Regional Human Rights Framework for Legal Aid
The international and regional human rights instruments on civil and political
rights do not specifically mention legal aid as a right. As such, the human rights basis
for access to legal aid is to be drawn from the right to access to justice, fair trial and
equality before the law.
Access to justice and fair trial are rights recognized under the major
international and regional human rights instruments including: the Charter of the
United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and the African Charter on the
Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC). The core instruments on the issue, the
41
42
Papers presented by Roger Smith (legal aid and human rights in Europe) and John Johnsen (human
rights in the development of legal aid in Europe, with special attention to the work of the European
Council Commission on the Efficiency of Justice (ECCEJ)). These Papers are considered critical in
engendering such recognition.
UDHR and the ICCPR, state that everyone is equal before the law and has the right
to effective remedy against violations of fundamental rights.43
2.2.1 Access to Justice

The UDHR states that: ‚everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the
competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by
the constitution or by law‛.44 The ICCPR provides for the same right in more detail
by requiring each State Party to the Covenant:45
a. To ensure that any person whose rights or freedoms […]are violated shall
have an effective remedy, notwithstanding that the violation has been
committed by persons acting in an official capacity;
b. To ensure that any person claiming such a remedy shall have his right
thereto determined by competent judicial, administrative or legislative
authorities, or by any other competent authority provided for by the legal
system of the State, and to develop the possibilities of judicial remedy;
c. To ensure that the competent authorities shall enforce such remedies
when granted.
The ICESCR does not contain a similar provision explicitly obliging State
Parties to ‘develop the possibilities of judicial remedy’. Nevertheless, a State Party
seeking to justify its failure to provide any domestic legal remedies for violation of
economic, social and cultural rights would need to show either that such remedies are
43
Articles 7 and 8 of the UDHR and Article 14 of the ICCPR (also see: Article 7 of ACHPR, Article
5 (a) of CERD, Article 15 of CEDAW, Article 12 & 13 of CRPD, Article 6 of the Convention on
Human Rights and Article 8 & 24 of the American Convention on Human Rights).
44
Article 8, UDHR.
45
Article 2/3, ICCPR.
not ‘appropriate means’ within the terms of Article 2/1 of the ICESCR or that, in
view of the other means used, they are unnecessary.
2.2.2 Fair Trial

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), states that
everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an
independent, impartial and lawfully established tribunal in the hearing of civil actions
and criminal charges (Article 14/1). Under the ICCPR an unrepresented accused is
entitled to have legal assistance assigned, in any case where the interests of justice so
require, without payment if an accused has insufficient means to pay for legal
representation.46 The Human Rights Committee, in its General Comment 32, states
that ‚Counsel provided by the competent authorities on the basis of this provision
must be effective in the representation of the accused‛.47
The African (Banjul) Charter on Human and Peoples Rights (African Charter)
entitles every individual to have her or his case heard, and to be tried within a
reasonable time by an impartial court or tribunal.48 The 1995 Protocol to the African
Charter, on the other hand, specifically requires all ratifying states to ensure effective
access by women to legal aid, and to support local, national, regional and continent-
wide directed at providing legal aid for women (Article 8).
The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has also adopted and
endorsed a series of principles governing legal aid and penal reform. These include:
the Kampala Declaration on Prison Conditions in Africa and Plan of Action (1997);
46
Article 14/3/d, ICCPR
47
United Nations Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 13: Administration of Justice,
Thirty-first session, 1984.
48
African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, Adopted in1981, Article 7/1/c.
the Kadoma Declaration on Community Service Orders in Africa and Plan of Action
(1997); the Dakar Declaration and Recommendations (1999); the Principles and
Guidelines on the Right to a Fair Trial and Legal Assistance in Africa (2001); the
Ouagadougou Declaration on Accelerating Prison and Penal Reform in Africa and
Plan of Action (2002); and, the Lilongwe Declaration and Plan of Action (2004).
2.2.3 Equality before the Law

The provisions of international and regional human rights instruments on
access to justice and fair trial are reinforced by the recognition of a universal right to
equality before the law and its protection. The UDHR stipulates that every person is
entitled to the rights recognized within the Declaration ‚without distinction of any
kind‛ and guarantees all persons equality before the law as well as equal protection
of the law.49 Similarly, the ICCPR imposes a duty on states to respect and ensure the
recognized rights to all persons without distinction and stipulates the legal
prohibition of and effective protection against discrimination on any ground.50
Equality before the law and equal protection of the law has also been stipulated in the
African Charter.51 The Human Rights Committee has underlined the status of
non-discrimination, as well as equality before the law and equal protection of the law
without any discrimination, as ‘basic and general principles’ of the protection of
human rights.52
49
Articles 2 and 7, UDHR.
50
Articles 2/1 and 26, ICCPR.
51
Articles 2/1 and 2/2, ACHPR.
52
United Nations Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 18: Non-discrimination, Thirty-
seventh session, 1989.
2.2.4 Implications of the Human Rights Framework

Human rights define the relationships between the subjects of the rights
(rights-holders) with valid claims and the object of the rights (duty-bearers) with
correlative duties or responsibilities. In this sense, human rights are set of claims that
can be made by right-holders against the duty-bearers.
2.2.4.1 The Substance of the Rights

Access to justice is a fundamental right that generally guarantees every
person’s access to an independent and impartial process and the opportunity to
receive a fair and just trial when that individual’s liberty or property is at stake. 53
However, access to justice does not always involve judicial recourse but the
availability of accessible, affordable, timely and effective means of redress or
remedies.54 One major impediment to the exercise of the right to access to justice is
unavailability, or cost of obtaining legal representation or other forms of legal
assistance. Even individuals not formally excluded from the legal system, and
generally aware of their legal rights may be unable to rely on the legal system
because they do not have access to legal services. The same is true for ‘equality
before the law and equal protection of the law’. De jure equality would not translate
into de facto equality unless measures are taken to address barriers to meaningful
utilization of the right. The provision of legal aid services is to be considered in terms
of addressing these barriers to the unimpeded exercise of access to justice and equal
protection of the law.
53
R., Edwin, B. Kyra and T. Vessela, Pursuing the Public Interest: A Handbook for Legal
Professionals, Colombia Law School: New York, 2001, p. 214. Available at
<http://www.pili.org/2005r/content/view/48/53/>.
54
The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, The Domestic Application of the
Covenant, General Comment Number 9 (Ninth Session) UN doc. E/C. 12/1998/24, para 2.
The right to fair trial encompasses the ‘right to a court’ as well as a broad
range of due process protections, including the presumption of innocence, speedy
trial, the right to counsel and access to an interpreter. Here, access to legal aid is
clearly stipulated as a right. Yet, there are important questions that need to be
answered in understanding the substance of the right. These relate to the nature of
proceedings covered, the scope of legal assistance required, and when it must be
made available.
The right to fair trial is often understood as a right exercisable in respect of
criminal proceedings. The determination of the criminal nature of the proceedings is
to be done with reference to the substance of the proceedings and applicable
procedures as well as the potential consequences to the person involved. Typically,
criminal proceedings relate to the investigation, prosecution and adjudication of
violations of substantive laws defining ‘offences’. However, laws dealing primarily
with other areas of regulation such as taxation also contain provisions of similar
nature. In such cases, the protections are applicable throughout the criminal justice
process from arrest to conviction as well as the execution of adverse judgment
(deprivation of liberty). The CRC more specifically refers to the right ‘to have legal
or other appropriate assistance in the preparation and presentation of his or her
defense’ implying that the right is applicable throughout the criminal justice process
including investigation, prosecution, adjudication and the follow-up of dispositions.
It should, however, be noted that most of the standards of fair trial are equally
applicable to proceedings before civil, administrative and other tribunals. The most
relevant international human rights standards, i.e. article 14 of the ICCPR, have been
interpreted by the Human Rights Committee as inclusive of any proceeding. The
Committee noted: ‚In general, the reports of States parties fail to recognize that
article 14 applies not only to procedures for the determination of criminal charges
against individuals but also to procedures to determine their rights and obligations in
a suit at law.‛55 This designation theoretically covers all proceedings decisive of
rights and obligations in relation to a genuine dispute over a right, its scope or
manner of exercise. In international human rights practice, fair trial protection have
been applied to a wide range of proceedings including termination of employment,
divorce, custody and access to children, expropriation of property and social
security.56
Though the actual nature of the ‘counsel’ is not clearly stated, it extends to the
range of legal services required in criminal proceedings including professional advice
and representation (though not always necessary). The actual services are to be
determined with reference to the ‘justice’ requirements in the human rights standards
according to the circumstances of each case. States may also set more concrete
standards to define/elaborate the requirement, e.g. severity of punishments, profile of
the accused, and complexity of the case. The nature of the assistance under the CRC
extends to ‘legal and other appropriate’ supports.57
Where ‘legal assistance’ is available in civil and administrative proceedings,
the range of available services as well as the stage of proceedings they become
available are to be determined having regard to factors affecting the exercise of
access to justice, fair trial and equal protection of the law. In other words, the same
general standards applicable to criminal proceedings such as the complexity of the
case, profile of the parties and the rights/interests affected will apply. Special
protection measures to be made available to children involved in non-criminal
55
General Comment 13, supra note 47.
56
57
Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989, Article 37/d.
proceedings may include legal assistance due to the nature of the case (e.g. custody),
the profile of the child (e.g. orphans and vulnerable children), or the relationship with
the other party (e.g. emancipation from a guardian). Again, the nature and
availability of the services is to be determined having regard to the particular facts
and circumstances of the case.
2.2.4.2 Rights-Holders
Rights-holders are individuals and groups for whom rights have been recognized, i.e.
the subjects of human rights.
Access to justice and equal protection of the law are broadly recognized for
all persons in all proceedings for the determination of rights and obligations as well
as remedies for violations. Thus, the rights holders are to be understood in broad
terms. However, those with entitlements pertaining to access to legal aid may be less-
broadly defined in terms of vulnerability (to violations or barriers to access
remedies), nature and severity of violations, or other criteria.
The access to counsel stipulations within the right to fair trial are designed for
the protection of persons accused of infringement of the penal law. However, it may
be relevant to civil proceedings due to the applicability of fair trial protections, in the
sense of fair determination of rights and obligations, to civil and administrative
proceedings involving specific rights.
2.2.4.3 Duty Bearers

Duty-bearers are state and non-state actors who are required to work to
respect, protect and fulfill the legal entitlements set out in the relevant international
and regional human rights treaties. Within the human rights framework, duty-bearers
are collectively responsible for the realization of human rights and are accountable if
the right is not realized.
The State58, by virtue of signing and adopting international and regional

human rights instruments, is the ‘legal’ duty bearer, though institutions and
individuals also become ‘legal’ duty bearers through international/regional
instruments59, but mostly by virtue of constitutional and legislative impositions.
There are also those designated ‘moral’ duty-bearers incorporating non-state actors,
including individuals, private sector businesses and not-for-profit institutions, who
undertake to realize human rights on grounds other than clear duty arising from the
international or national legal framework. The key distinction between legal and
moral duty bearers has to do with their relationship with the rights-holders. The
rights-holders may claim realization of their rights by legal duty-bearers as a matter
of formal accountability. On the other hand, they may not make such claims on moral
duty bearers whose moral (hence voluntary or charitable) basis makes it a
relationship characterized by privilege.
2.2.4.4 State Obligations

The State is the main actor responsible for the realization of human rights for
reasons arising from the international as well as national human rights frameworks.
At the international level, the State assumes the obligation to take measures for the
realization of human rights upon signing international human rights agreements. In
general, the recognition of each specific right entails generic obligations to respect,
58
The international community, i.e. foreign states, and intergovernmental organizations also
undertake ‘legal’ duties through the provisions of international and regional human rights
instruments on international cooperation for the realization of human rights.
59
This is most notable in the Convention on Rights of Child and the African Charter on Rights and
Welfare of Child, which impose duties on a hierarchy of duty-bearers including parents, the
community, non-government organizations and the society at large.
protect and fulfill60 without undue discrimination on the part of the State having
become a party to the agreement. Each instrument also contains provisions
describing the nature of general and specific measures to be taken by the State
towards the implementation of the rights.
Article 2/2, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights:
Where not already provided for by existing legislative or other
measures, each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes
to take the necessary steps, in accordance with its constitutional
processes and with the provisions of the present Covenant, to
adopt such legislative or other measures as may be necessary to
give effect to the rights recognized in the present Covenant.
Article 1, African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights: The
Member States of the Organization of African Unity parties to
the present Charter shall recognize the rights, duties and
freedoms enshrined in this Chapter and shall undertake to adopt
legislative or other measures to give effect to them.
Article 4, Convention on the Rights of the Child: States Parties
shall undertake all appropriate legislative, administrative, and
other measures for the implementation of the rights recognized
in the present Convention.
The obligations of States under the core international and regional human
rights agreements generally relate to: constitutional recognition of the substance of
the rights; adopting appropriate legislation and policies to give effect to the rights;
60
The State should not directly violate the rights of its citizens (obligation to respect), it should
protect its citizens from violations committed by others (obligation to protect), and it should
facilitate and promote the full exercise of rights by its citizens (obligation to fulfill).
establishing institutional framework for implementation of the rights as well as

coordination and monitoring; and, taking appropriate program measures to realize the
rights.
The state obligation to take program measures for the realization of access to
justice, fair trial and equal protection of the law does not necessarily require
governments to establish legal aid schemes. For the most part, the specific
protections may be effectively implemented through other measures such as legal
awareness and education programs. The obligation may also be delegated to other
actors through legislation. A major approach in this respect is involving the bar61 to
increase the availability of legal assistance provided by lawyers to the poor or other
disempowered groups. To this end, governments impose a statutory obligation on
practicing lawyers or bar associations and provide for professional codes of conduct
for pro bono provision of legal services. Other approaches include the integration of
the services in professional legal education, qualification processes and
apprenticeship programs. Governments may also support professional legal
associations, law firms and other non-state actors involved in the provision of legal
aid to the poor. However, states are ultimately responsible for ensuring access to
legal aid and are effectively the providers of last resort. This is particularly true in the
context of criminal proceedings where the right to counsel is a requirement, i.e.
where justice so demands, and where the accused is a child.
61
The ‘bar’ is the generic name assigned to formal associations of practicing lawyers, i.e., legal
professionals involved in the provision of legal representation and advisory services in the private
sector.
2.2.4.5 Identity and Role of Non-State Actors

In the literal sense, the term ‘non-state actors’ refers to all institutions other
than the State and its organs. The term Non State Actors (NSA) is also widely used
in development cooperation, particularly under the Cotonou Agreement between the
European Union (EU) and the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. In the
formal language of the Cotonou Agreement, the term is used to refer to a wide range
of non-governmental development actors whose participation in ACP-EU
cooperation is now formally recognized. According to Article 6 of the Cotonou
Agreement, non-state actors include: civil society in all its diversity, according to
national characteristics; economic and social partners, including trade union
organizations; and, the private sector.
In practice, it means that participation is open to all kind of actors, such as
community-based organizations, women's groups, human rights associations, non-
governmental organizations (NGOs), religious organizations, farmers' cooperatives,
trade unions, universities and research institutes, the media, the private sector, etc…
Also, included in this definition are informal groups such as grassroots organizations,
informal private sector associations, etc…. The private sector, however, is considered
only in so far as it is involved in non-profit activities (e.g. private sector associations,
chambers of commerce, etc...)
The nature and role of non-state actors is far from clear in the international
and regional human rights framework. The possible role of actors other than the State
towards the realization of human rights is to be considered based on the obligations
of the State and to an extent the scope of activities human rights defenders are
expected to engage in. These may include:62 promotion of awareness; (support to the)
62
UNDP, Working Guidelines for Human Rights-Based Reviews of UNDP Programmes, 2003, p. 25.
implementation of standards, and monitoring implementation. These human rights

activities may be implemented in various programming contexts and take different
designations.
The United Nations adopted the Declaration on the right and responsibility of
individuals, groups and organs of society to promote and protect universally
recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms on December 9, 1998,
commonly known as the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders. The rights
protected under the Declaration include the right to provide legal assistance or other
advice and assistance in defense of human rights.63
2.3 Models of Legal Aid Service Provision

The diversity of models employed to provide legal aid services within
national legal systems is extensive. Generally, legal aid service provision may be
undertaken directly by the government or through non-state actors. A recent study on
the criminal justice systems in Africa64 found that legal aid models across the
continent involve service provision by the government, lawyers associations, law
schools and NGOs.
2.3.1 State Provided Legal Aid

The provision of legal aid by state institutions is in most jurisdictions focused
on criminal proceedings. Usually, indigent persons accused of serious crimes and
unrepresented children are the beneficiaries of legal assistance during the trial stage
of the proceedings at public expense. The specific strategies and institutional
63
Declaration on the Right and Responsibility of Individuals, Groups and Organs of Society to
Promote and Protect Universally Recognized Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, Adopted
by UN General Assembly, Res. No. A/RES/53/144, March 1999, Article 9(3(C).
64
UNODC, supra note 12, pp. 27-33.
arrangements vary across jurisdictions; but, prevalent ones include the public
defender, court appointed counsel, and publicly financed private representation.65
2.3.1.1 Public defenders

Public defenders are government employees engaged on a permanent basis to
provide legal assistance to eligible persons under legislative criteria for mandatory
professional representation. A public defenders’ office is established for this purpose
either as an independent government institution accountable to the legislature, within
the judiciary or under the relevant sector institution such as the Ministry of Justice.66
In some jurisdictions, the practice is referred to as provision through staff legal aid
lawyers or legal aid offices, often in conjunction with publicly financed
representation using lawyers operating in the community.67
2.3.1.2 Court appointments

This strategy, also called ‘State briefs’ in common law jurisdictions,68
involves the assignment of legal counsel by the Court.69 This approach is based on
the recognition of the status of legal practitioners as officers of the law and is often
supported by a legally imposed duty to provide legal aid. In such cases, the services
are provided without financial consideration or only for payment of nominal fees
from the public purse.
65
Smith, supra note 31, p. 3.
66
Id., p. 7.
67
Id., p. 9; Buckley, supra note 15, p. 6.
68
UNODC, supra note 12, p. 28.
69
In some jurisdictions such as Canada and the UK, we have ‘duty council’ referring to legal
professionals stationed at courts to provide on the spot legal advice. See: M. Buckley, ‘Moving
Forward on Legal Aid: Research on Needs and Innovative Approaches’, Canadian Bar Association,
June 2010, p. 8.
2.3.1.3 Publicly financed representation

The state may also engage the services of individual legal practitioners
through contractual arrangements.70 While similar to court appointment of counsel
and often considered a variation thereof, this arrangement is more of a commercial
arrangement than an exercise of public duties considered an inherent part of the legal
profession.
2.3.2 Provision of Legal Aid by the Legal Profession

The legal profession has historically been the main provider of legal aid
services to the poor. The basis for the practice is associated with the inherent public
purpose of the profession and the conception of justice as the core value underlying
the law. Issues of social justice, human rights and charity are also used in elaborating
the rationale for service provision. Often times, these aspects of legal practice are
embedded in the professional codes of conduct governing professional legal
practice.71 In terms of scope, this approach provides a broad and flexible
arrangement.72 The range of relevant legal services could be available in relation to
criminal, civil, administrative and other proceedings; to anyone involved; and, at any
stage of the proceedings.73
70
American Bar Association, Resolution 112A.
<www.abanet.org/legalservices/sclaid/downloads/06A112A.pdf>; Smith, supra note 31, p. 8;
Buckley, supra note 15, p. 60.
71
UNODC, supra note 12, pp. 28-29; also see: M. Buckley, supra note 15, p. 98.
72
UNODC, supra note 12, p. 12.
73
Buckley, supra note 15, p.111.
2.3.2.1 Pro bono schemes by lawyers and bar associations

This approach involves the voluntary provision of professional legal
assistance and representation free of charge or for reduced fees to persons unable to
afford the cost of services. ‘Pro bono’ has been defined as: ‚the provision of legal
services to poor, marginalized and indigent individuals, groups or community
without a fee or expectation of compensation, in order to enhance access to justice
for such people who cannot afford to pay for legal services‛.74 Though the provision
of services by individual practitioners is feasible, pro bono schemes are typically
initiated, implemented and coordinated by their professional associations. The
mandates of the associations also extend to regulation of pro bono schemes in most
cases. However, states do impose legal obligations on lawyers to undertake pro bono
services when called upon by the Court. Such obligations may be enforced through
professional licensing rules as well as mandatory codes of conduct including the
imposition of penalties on non-compliance. In such cases, the voluntary nature of pro
bono services is somewhat diminished creating some conceptual overlaps with
government provided legal aid services (especially court appointed counsel).
2.3.2.2 Universities and law clinics
An emerging approach to the provision of legal aid services by the legal
profession involves the engagement of staff and students in institutions for
professional legal education, i.e. law schools.75 This strategy is functionally linked
with pedagogical developments in legal education towards practice orientation and
away from emphasis on jurisprudence referred to as ‘clinical legal education’. As a
method of teaching clinical legal education is a student-centered, participatory
74
South African Legal Services Charter, Draft, August 2006, Article 2.
75
Martin, supra note 21, p. 1.
approach emphasizing skills development within a social justice context. Students

learn through examination of cases, provision of services to clients,
internships/externships with institutions, and engagement in legal literacy/civic
education programs in schools and communities.76 An integral aspect of clinical legal
education is the establishment of ‘legal aid clinics’ for the provision of legal services
to the poor and excluded social groups unable to access the legal system. The
services are provided by students as well as academic staff as part of the curriculum
and an extra-curricular activity. The availability and scope of services potentially
available within this arrangement is not limited in terms of the nature of proceedings
or type of assistance.
The engagement of legal education institutions in the provision of legal aid as
well as the specific strategies employed offer significant advantages. First, clinical
legal education helps strengthen the linkages between legal education and practice
with positive implications to the availability of high quality professional services in
general. The balanced focus on the law and its practice enhances the profile of
graduates in line with the demands of the society at large as well as the justice
system. The opportunity to instill a sense of social justice and professional
responsibility among students at an early stage is an added advantage. In the present
time setting the mobilization of students through the legal aid clinics helps address
the immediate needs of communities. Finally, the clinics provide an ideal setting for
legal awareness and paralegal service provision customized to the communities in
which they operate.
While the range of ‘legal service’ provided is extensive, legal requirements
and professional quality standards put a limit on the utilization of legal aid clinics.
76
Open Society Justice Initiative, Community-based Paralegals: A Practitioner’s Guide, 2010, p. 25.
This is especially true in relation to representation of clients in formal proceedings.

One strategy to address this challenge is the development of ‘student practice rules’
stipulating conditions under which supervised senior students may represent a client
before a Court or tribunal. The financial aspect of legal clinics also poses a challenge,
especially in the African contest.77 In many cases, the costs of running the
programmes is too expensive to be covered by the educational institutions
themselves and funding from external sources is essential. This creates a tendency
towards uncertainty and puts the sustainability of the programs in question.78
2.3.3 Legal Aid Provided by NGOs

The role of non-governmental organizations in the provision of legal aid
services is widely recognized and practiced. The profile of institutions and
interventions falling within this category are very diverse. The range of services is
similarly diverse. Yet, the emphasis among NGOs as a distinct category of actors in
access to legal aid appears to be on public interest litigation, paralegal programs and
informal justice systems.79
2.3.3.1 Legal Aid Centers

Some non-government organizations run legal aid centers directly providing
services often focusing on specific thematic issues or identified vulnerable group(s).
Others also work to strengthen existing services through research, advocacy,
77
Penal Reform in Africa, Index of Good Practices in Providing Legal Aid Services in the Criminal
Justice System, Version 2, February 2006, pp. 7-8.
78
D. McQuoid-Mason, ‘The Supply Side: The Role of Private Lawyers and Salaried Lawyers in the
Provision of Legal Aid ” Some Lessons from South Africa’, Paper Presented to the Lilongwe
Conference on Legal Aid, November 2004.
79
UNODC, supra note 12, pp. 13-14; also see: Economic and Social Council Resolution 2007/24.
technical support and financial assistance. The approach preserves some of the
advantages of legal aid clinics and capitalizes upon the unique relative advantages of
NGOs in terms of flexibility, expertise, specialization and organizational learning.80
On the other hand, the organizational and intervention profiles of NGOs give
rise to a number of challenges.81 These include:
 The risk of making access to justice a privilege to be accorded rather than a
right to be claimed
 Lack of clarity in the international and domestic legal frameworks on the
role of NGOs in the promotion of human rights and enhancing access to
legal aid
 Relevance of interventions guided by considerations other than the felt
needs of communities and the programming context
 Limited scope and coverage of interventions, capacity limitations and urban
orientation of NGO interventions
 Accountability issues arising in the relationships between NGOs and their
stakeholders (governments, donors, beneficiaries, staff, etc …)
 Lack of uniformity in programming approaches, service delivery standards
and institutional arrangements for the provision of legal aid services
 Sustainability issues due to financial dependence on external funding
80
For detailed comparative analysis, see: Walter Leitner International Human Rights Clinic (Fordham
Law School), A Handbook for the Justice and Peace Commission: Best Practices of Community
Legal Advice Programmes, Programme Assessment and Recommendations, 2008.
81
Martin, supra note 21, p. 3.
The provision of legal aid services by NGOs needs to be placed in an

appropriate legal, policy, sectoral and organizational environment that addresses
these concerns.
2.3.3.2 Public interest litigation

The provision of professional legal services within the legal aid programs of
NGOs gravitates towards public interest litigation rather than access to legal aid. In
the strictly legal sense, public interest litigation is ‚a legal action initiated in a court
of law for the enforcement of public interest or general interest in which the public or
class of the community have a pecuniary interest or some interest by which their
legal rights or liabilities are affected.‛82 A broader understanding extends the scope
beyond the enforcement of existing legal rights. As suggested by the Durban
Symposium83 the strategies employed in this context could include law reform, legal
education, literacy training and legal services through multi-disciplinary professional
engagement. Though diverse in form and stated objectives, the core purpose is social
change through laws and legal processes.
2.3.3.3 Paralegal Programs

The legal aid interventions of NGOs working at the community level typically
involve paralegal programs.84 These programs involve capacity building support to
‘community based primary legal service providers’ through awareness raising,
82 nd
B.L. Wadehra, Public Interest Litigation: A Handbook, 2 ed., 2009, Universal Law Publishing:
Delhi, p.29.
83
Held from June 29-July 8, 1997 under the auspices of Public Interest Law Initiative, Columbia
University, sponsored by the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Institute at the University of
Natal Durban, South Africa (Available at:<http://www.pili.org/publications/durban/preface.html>).
84
V. Maru, Between Law and Society: Paralegals and the Provision of Primary Justice Services in
Sierra Leone, Open Society Institute, 2006.
sensitization and capacity building strategies. Typically, the actual provision of

services is exceptionally undertaken mainly as a pilot project.
Paralegal programs, especially those using community-based paralegals, offer
some important advantages in enhancing access to justice in communities. These
include:85
- Members of communities trained and deployed as paralegals, which is a
defining feature of community-based paralegals, are in a position to provide
services more relevant to the needs of their communities and deliver
services in a more appropriate manner;
- Significantly lower cost of training and deployment as well as recurrent
expenses and the possibility of recruiting, training and deploying paralegals
enhances availability of legal aid services;
- Paralegals are generally more accessible to social groups normally facing
barriers in accessing and utilizing the formal legal system
- Possibility of addressing the justice needs of an entire community as well as
the legal needs of individuals;
- Speedy resolution of issues and disputes (compared with professionals) due
to informal (less formal) rules and procedures;
- Unlike legal professionals whose primary function is to promote the
interests of their client within the stipulations of the law, paralegals have the
freedom to serve ideals of justice, equity and fairness; and,
85
Open Society Justice Initiative, supra note 76, p. 12.
44
- Paralegal programs are potentially more sustainable in terms of enabling

transfer of knowledge and skills to the community, ownership through
participation, resource requirements and other considerations.
There are, however, some comparative disadvantages arising from the very
features making paralegal programs preferable. The major shortcomings relate to:86
- Low level of expertise precluding the provision of specialized legal
services;
- Legal barriers to the provision of legal services such as representation in
formal proceedings;
- Disparate quality standards for the training of paralegals and provision of
services;
- Risk of reinforcing social practices detrimental to marginalized social
sections;
- Risk of well-intentioned but misinformed actions compromising the legal
interests of clients and communities.
These shortcomings should be addressed through complementary approaches,
coordination among providers, follow up and supervision by qualified personnel and
continuous monitoring and evaluation. The development of uniform and binding
guidelines and standards for the design and implementation of paralegal programs is
also essential.
2.3.3.4 Informal justice mechanisms

Strengthening informal justice mechanisms is another area of engagement
common among NGOs. Capitalizing on their advantages in terms of flexibility and
86
Ibid.
diversity, a large number of NGOs target traditional and customary dispute resolution
structures and processes as a means of enhancing speedy access to effective
remedies.87
Advantages inherent in this approach include availability, accessibility,
relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability.88 Strengthening and re-
vitalizing traditional justice systems is by itself an important result in terms of
realizing cultural rights as well as promoting legal pluralism.
However, the approach suffers from shortcomings similar to those identified
for paralegal programs including low levels of expertise, limited legal recognition,
absence of uniform quality standards as well as risks associated with prevailing
social norms and adverse effects on the legal interests of beneficiaries.89 The need for
changes in ingrained institutional culture is a critical challenge that has to be
addressed piecemeal and over a long period since the engagement of these
institutions almost always involves changes in traditional roles. In addition, informal
justice mechanisms can potentially raise concerns relating to norms and practices
violating human rights. Conflicts with the formal justice system are also a challenge
even where traditional systems are legally recognized.
87
T. Geraghty and D. Geraghty, ‘Child Friendly Legal Aid in Africa’ in Child Friendly Legal Aid in
Africa, UNICEF and UNDP, UNDOC, 2011, Executive Summary, p. 23.
88
UNODC, supra note 12, pp. 37-38.
89
V. Maru, The Challenges of African Legal Dualism: an Experiment in Sierra Leone, Human Rights
and Justice Sector Reform in Africa, Open Society Institute, pp. 18-22.
2.4 Legal Basis for Legal Aid in Ethiopia

2.4.1 Recognition of International Standards
Ethiopia is a signatory to the UDHR and has ratified the ICCPR as well as
other instruments providing for access to justice and fair trial including the ICESCR,
the UNCRC, the ACHPR the ACRWC.
Article 9(4) of the FDRE Constitution provides that ‚all international
agreements ratified by Ethiopia are an integral part of the law of the land.‛ Moreover,
Article 13(2) of the FDRE Constitution provides that the fundamental rights and
freedoms recognized under Chapter 3 of the Constitution shall be interpreted in a
manner conforming to International Covenants on Human Rights and international
instruments adopted by Ethiopia. Ethiopia has ratified numerous international and
regional treaties.
Access to justice is recognized as a right in the FDRE Constitution (Article
37). This Article reads: ‚Everyone has the right to bring a justiciable matter to, and to
obtain a decision or judgment by, a court of law or any other competent body with
judicial power‛. The Constitution also recognizes the following basic principles of
justice:
- Non-retroactivity of criminal laws (Article 22/1): ‚No one shall be held
guilty of any criminal offence on account of any act or omission which did
not constitute a criminal offence at the time when it was committed ‛.
- Prohibition of double jeopardy (Article 23): ‚No person shall be liable to be
tried or punished again for an offence for which he has already been finally
convicted or acquitted in accordance with the criminal law and procedure ‛.
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- Equality before the law (Article 25): ‚All persons are equal before the law
and are entitled without any discrimination to the equal protection of the
law‛.
Moreover, one of the rights the FDRE Constitution provided for persons
accused of crimes is ‚the right to be represented by legal counsel of their choice ‛ and
‚to be provided with legal representation at state expense‛ where the inability of the
accused person to afford legal representation would result in miscarriage of justice.90
Other relevant provisions of the Constitution include:
- Right to have an interpreter (Article 20/7): ‚[Accused persons] have the
right to request for the assistance of an interpreter at state expense where the
court proceedings are conducted in a language they do not understand‛;
- Right to speedy trial (Article 20/1): ‚Accused persons have the right to a
public trial by an ordinary court of law within a reasonable time after having
been charged‛;
- Presumption of innocence (Article 20/3): ‚During proceedings accused
persons have the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty
according to law and not to be compelled to testify against themselves‛;
and,
- Review by a higher court (Article 20/6): ‚All persons have the right of
appeal to the competent court against an order or a judgment of the court
which first heard the case‛.
Though the right to access to justice and fair trial encompass the whole
system for the administration of justice, many of the key human rights issues arise in
90
FDRE Constitution, supra note 3, Article 20(5).
relation to the criminal justice process. Thus, the fair trial provisions of the FDRE
Constitution have to be seen in the context of the rights recognized for arrested and
accused persons as well as the rights of persons held in custody and convicted
prisoners.91 The rights of arrested persons include speedy trial, habeas corpus, the
right to bail and protection from self-incrimination.92 Rights recognized for persons
held in custody, accused persons and convicted persons include right to public trial,
presumption of innocence, right to be represented by legal counsel including
representation at state expense, right to treatments respecting their human dignity,
and rights relating to communication.93
2.4.2 National Laws and Policies
2.4.2.1 The Criminal Justice Policy
This policy which is put in place beginning from 2011 is major policy
framework of the country in the justice sector that gives broad recognition to legal
representation for arrested and accused persons in Ethiopia. The very preamble of the
Criminal Justice Policy stipulates that the provisions of the FDRE Constitution,
binding international human rights instruments and other globally accepted criminal
justice principles and practices are taken as sources in drafting the Policy.94 One of
the rights recognized by these national and international normative frameworks is the
right of access to justice which cannot be effectively utilized without access to legal
aid service. The policy gives emphases to capacity building of all actors of the
criminal justice system including the Public Defense Office/ PDO/. Although the
91
Id., Articles 19 ” 21.
92
Id., Article 19.
93
Id., Articles 20 ” 21.
94
Criminal Justice Policy of the FDRE, issued by the Council of Ministers of the Federal Democratic
Republic of Ethiopia, 2011 (Herein after Criminal Justice Policy), Preamble.
PDO, established by proclamation No. 25/1996 is administratively under the Federal

Supreme Court, the Policy deals about this institution in detail as it has pivotal role in
criminal justice process.95
Under the section dealing with fundamental principles, it provides that
services given under the criminal justice system should, among others, be effective,
just, accessible and speedy.96 As discussed in the previous sections of this
assessment, judicial proceedings would not be just, effective and accessible without
the availability of legal aid service. That is why the Criminal Justice Policy of
Ethiopia deals specifically with the right to counsel and the need to enhance the
capacity and ethics of public defenders.97 The policy lays the responsibility of
ensuring that individuals accused of committing a crime are represented by a counsel
to defend themselves in the investigating body, the public prosecutor and the
judiciary.
The Policy stipulates that there would be revision of existing laws on the issue
of the right to counsel in criminal proceedings and identifies four major rights and
duties that should be incorporated in the new law.98 These are:-
- The right of any arrested person to be assisted by a legal counsel of his
choice to defend the charges brought against him/her;
- The right to be represented by legal counsel of their choice and to be
provided with legal representation at state expense where the inability of the
accused persons to afford legal representation would result in miscarriage of
justice;
95
Id., Preamble, Para. 4.
96
Id., Sec. 1.4.
97
Id., Sec. 4.7.
98
Id., Sec. 4.7.1.
50
50
- The obligation of law enforcement officials to inform the suspect or the

accused in the language he/she understands his/her right to be represented
by legal counsel and to facilitate access to such counsel; and
- The right of a victim of serious crime or human rights violation, to get,
when he does not afford it, free and effective legal representation at state
expense for the purpose of claiming compensation.
The Criminal Justice Policy provides for the need to strengthening the
capacity of public defenders in its different sections.99 With this in view, the Policy
calls upon various stakeholders such as law schools to take appropriate measures to
enhance the capacity of the public defenders and thereby contribute to the
development of effective criminal justice system. The Policy also has identified the
need for revision of the existing criminal procedure law to realize the right to legal
representation.
Therefore, the Policy can be taken as a major stride in realizing the right to
legal aid. Although, for understandable reason, it gives more emphasis to legal aid
in criminal proceedings and therefore not comprehensive, the Policy is at the top of
the country’s justice policy framework in articulating access to legal aid and the right
to counsel. The only case where legal aid in civil cases is recognized by the Policy is
the right to legal representation of persons who claim compensation for damages
sustained due to serious crime or human rights violation.
2.4.2.2 The Criminal Code
The principles of criminal justice recognized in the provisions of the FDRE
Constitution have been provided for in more detail within the FDRE Criminal Code
99
Id., Sec. 4.7.2 and Preamble.
(2004). The following are the specific provisions of the Code dealing with these
principles:
 Non-retrospective Effect of Criminal Law (Articles 5 and 2/2): ‚ The Court
may not treat as a crime and punish any act or omission which is not
prohibited by law. The Court may not impose penalties or measures other
than those prescribed by law‛.
 Article 2/5: ‚Nobody shall be tried or punished again for the same crime for
which he has been already convicted, punished or subjected to other
measures or acquitted by a final decision in accordance with the law‛.
 Equality before the Law (Article 4): ‚Criminal law applies to all alike
without discrimination as regards persons, social conditions, race, nation,
nationality, social origin, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other
opinion, property, birth or other status‛.
2.4.2.3 The Criminal Procedure Code
Though it is already under review, the Criminal Procedure Code provides for
the rights of the accused as per the provisions of the FDRE Constitution. The Code
recognizes mandatory legal representation for persons accused of serious crimes and
directs the Court to appoint legal counsel where a ‘young person’ accused of a
criminal offence has no adult representation/support or where the offence carries a
punishment exceeding imprisonment for ten years or more or death penalty.100 Such
representation may be provided through a public defender, i.e. a person employed by
the government for the purpose of legal aid, or a court appointed attorney.
100
Criminal Procedure Code of the Empire of Ethiopia, 1961, Proclamation No. 185/1961, Negarit
Gazeta, Articles 174 and 172/4/.
The Criminal Procedure Code provides for an interpreter whenever necessary

for the purposes of any proceedings.101 As a rule, the court is expected to assign a
‘qualified court interpreter’ but may select another competent interpreter where none
is available.
2.4.2.4 National Human Rights Action Plan

The first National Human Rights Action Plan/NHRAP/ to be implemented
between 2013 -2015 is prepared with a view to develop a comprehensive and
structured mechanism to advance the respect, protection and fulfillment of human
and democratic rights guaranteed under the FDRE Constitution. In dealing with the
right of access to justice the Action Plan identified the lack of coordination among
different governmental and non-governmental organizations providing legal aid as a
problem/challenge.102 The NHRAP also identified absence of legal assistance before
the filing of a case in court as a problem with regard to rights of arrested persons,
persons held in custody and those who are convicted.103
As a solution to these problems and challenges the Action Plan provided for
the development and implementation of a legal aid strategy with the objective of
coordinating and integrating the legal aid services provided by different
governmental and non-governmental organizations.104 The responsibility of
developing and implementing the strategy is given to the MoJ and EHRC.105
101
Id., Article 126/2.
102
FDRE National Human Rights Action Plan, 2013 -2015, Section 2.5.4, p. 51.
103
Id., Section 2.3.4.
104
Id.. Section 2.5.5.
105
Ibid.
2.4.3 Institutional Mandates

A number of government institutions at the federal level have mandates
relevant to the provision of legal aid services in Ethiopia with corresponding
mandates allocated to their regional counterparts. It is evident that the institutional
framework of the country reveals that there is overlap of mandate and duplication of
efforts among the various institutions. Chief among these institutions are the MoJ,
Federal Supreme Court, MoWCYA and the EHRC. The MoJ is mandated to:106
- represent citizens, in particular women and children, who are unable to
institute and pursue their civil suits before the federal courts;
- license and supervise advocates practicing before federal courts
- ensure that whistleblowers and witnesses of criminal offences are accorded
protection in accordance with the law
- create legal awareness through the use of various methods with a view to
raising public consciousness in relation to the protection of human rights;
cooperate with the appropriate bodies in relation to legal education and
training.
The MoJ is entrusted with the power of registration of federal advocates,
issuance, renewal and revocation of licenses107 with the involvement of EBA.108 The
law provides for three types of federal advocates licenses that confer qualifications
upon advocates to appear before the different tiers of federal courts, namely, federal
106
Definition of Powers and Duties of the Executive Organs of the Federal Democratic Republic of
Ethiopia Proclamation, 2010, Procl. No. 691/2010, Fed. Neg. Gaz., Year 17, no. 1, Articles 16/11,
16/12, 16/13 and 16/15.
107
See Id., Article 16/12 and Federal Courts Advocates Licensing and Registration Proclamation,
1999, Procl. No. 199/2000, Fed. Neg. Gaz., Year 6, no. 2 Article 19.
108
Proclamations No. 199/2000, supra note 70, Articles 20, 23, and 27.
first instance court advocacy license, federal courts advocacy license, and federal
court special advocacy license.109 Of the three types of licenses the special advocacy
license, which has the least rigorous qualification criteria, is issued to lawyers who
seek to defend the general interests and rights of the society without receiving any
payment from their clients.110 For instance, applicants for this license are exempted
from such requirements as furnishing of evidence of professional indemnity
insurance and sitting for the qualifying examination. Furthermore, advocates licensed
to practice law in the federal courts are required by law to render a minimum of fifty
hours legal service a year free of charge or upon minimal payment ( pro bono
publico). The beneficiaries of such services are: persons who cannot afford to pay;
charitable, civic, and community organizations; persons for whom a court requests
legal services; and, committees and institutions that work for improving the law, the
legal profession and the legal system.111
The Federal Supreme Court and its regional counterparts through their
respective Public Defenders Offices render free legal service to accused persons to
give effect to Article 20/5/ of the FDRE Constitution. This article provides that
accused persons have the right to be represented by legal counsel of their choice, and,
if they do not have sufficient means to pay for it and miscarriage of justice would
result, to be provided with legal representation at state expense. This is the reason
109
Id., Article 7.
110
Id., Article 10/1.
111
Federal Court Advocates’ Code of Conduct Regulations, 1999, Reg. No. 57/1999, Fed. Neg.
Gaz., Year 6, no. 1, Article 49.
why the president of the Federal Supreme Court is given the power and duty to
organize the office of the public defense.112
The MoWCYA is the core executive body that is given the mandate on
women and child rights issues. The powers and duties of the Ministry include, among
others,: creating awareness on women, children and youth rights; collect, compile
and disseminate information on the situation of women, children and the youth;
ensure political, economic and social participation of women and the youth; follow
up and evaluate the integration of women and youth issues in federal government
policies, laws and programs; coordinate the activities of child rights actors and
stakeholders; and, follow up the implementation of treaties relating to the rights of
women and children. Moreover, MoWCYA is the lead agency for implementing the
policy framework on women’s and children’s issues.113 Since women and children
are among the most vulnerable groups in need of legal aid services, these mandates
could be critical in terms of making existing services accessible to them.
Proclamation 210/2000 was enacted to provide for the establishment of the
Ethiopian Human Rights Commission/EHRC/. Article 5 of Proclamation 210/2000
provides that the mission of the Commission is ‚to educate the public be aware of
human rights, see to it that human rights are protected, respected and fully enforced
as well as to have the necessary measure taken where they are found to have been
violated.‛ EHRC is mandated, among other things, to:114
112
Federal Court Proclamation, 1996, Procl. No. 25/1996, Fed. Neg. Gaz., Year 2, no. 13, Article
16/2/j.
113
Ethiopian National Plan of Action on Children (2003-2010), the National Action Plan on Sexual
Abuse and Exploitation of Children (2006-2010), and the National Plan of Action on Gender
Equality (2005-2010).
114
Ethiopian Human Rights Commission Establishing Proclamation, 2000, Procl. No. 210/2000, Fed.
Neg. Gaz., Year 6, no. 40, Article 6.
- ensure that human rights provisions of the Constitution are respected by all
organs of the state, political organizations, citizens and other associations;
- ensure that legislation, regulations and directives as well as government decisions
and orders do not contravene the human right provisions of the constitution;
- Provide public education using mass media and other means with the aim of
enhancing the public’s tradition of respect for and demand for enforcement of
rights;
- receive complaints and carry out investigations in respect of human rights
violations;
- make recommendations for revision of existing laws, enactment of new laws and
formulation of policies;
- translate into local vernaculars, international human rights instruments adopted
by Ethiopia and disperse the same; and,
Individuals have a right to lodge complaints before the Commission alleging
violation of their rights.115 After having received a complaint submitted to it,
anonymously or otherwise, the Commission investigates the complaints.116 The
Commission during its investigation of complaints can order the accused to appear
before it and defend their case.117 The EHRC had a specialized Women and
Children’s Affairs Department accountable to the Women and Children’s Affairs
Commissioner. The department is responsible for mainstreaming child rights issues
in the activities of the Commission as well as conducting focused child rights
activities.
115
Id., Article 22.
116
Id., Article 22 (3) and (4).
117
Id., Article 25(1).
Part Three: Findings

3.1 Introduction
The first section of this part provides an overview of the profile of legal aid
providers in Ethiopia.118 The information presented here is a summary of a more
comprehensive database of legal aid providers indicating their name, location,
contact information, beneficiaries and duration of operation (See the directory of
legal aid providers at the end of this publication for a full list of service providers).
The information regarding the legal aid providers shown in the directory can be an
important input for policy makers in designing appropriate regulatory framework. It
can also be utilized by existing and impending legal aid providers to make decisions
in selecting operational areas and target groups while designing their programs to
reduce duplication of efforts. The second section of this part deals with accessibility
of legal aid service. Accessibility of legal aid service is analyzed in light of legal
awareness, geographic proximity, program and financial coverage of the legal aid
service. The modes of delivery, the category of beneficiaries as well as quality of
services provided are dealt with in subsequent sections of this part. By making an
overall assessment of how legal aid service is being provided, this part identifies gaps
and best practices in the provision of legal aid service which will be used to enhance
the quality of legal aid provision.
118
The findings discussed under this part of the research reflect the data collected from legal aid
providers and stakeholders who are listed under annex 4 and 5. The data relating to legal aid
providers which were not selected for the interview are obtained from their activity reports which
go back to September 2012.
58
58
3.2 Profile of Legal Aid Service Providers

In Ethiopia, currently, a few civil society organizations and professional
associations registered at the Federal level119 and eighteen public universities120
provide legal aid service. The government also engages in the provision of legal aid
services both directly and indirectly. The role of the MoJ and regional justice bureaus
to enforce the pro bono obligation of licensed advocates is an essential component of
the legal aid scheme in Ethiopia. At the federal level, advocates are required to
provide pro bono services to indigent members of the community as a condition for
the renewal of their licenses. Moreover, the MoJ provides direct free legal service to
women and children through legal officers assigned at all the ten sub-city prosecution
branch offices of the MoJ located in Addis Ababa as well as in Dire Dawa. Similar
approaches have also been taken up by some regional justice bureaus; a case in point
is the Amhara Region Justice Bureau. The MoJ and its regional State counterparts
also assign advocates to provide legal aid to women, children and other vulnerable
groups as one way of giving effect to the mandatory pro bono obligation of licensed
lawyers.
The other government office that is highly involved in the provision of legal
aid to women and children is the MoWYCA and its regional state counterparts. In
some regions, such as the SNNPRS, the women, children and youth affairs offices
119
For Example EWLA, ELA, ECLA.
120
These are: Addis Ababa University, Jimma University, Jijiga University, Gonder University, Dire
Dawa University, Haramaya University, Bahir Dar University, Debre Markos University,
Wolayta Soddo University, Hawasa University, Wollega University, Ambo University, Mizen-
Tepi University, Dilla University, Mekelle University, Wallo University, Adama University and
Arbaminch University.
are directly involved in referral and monitoring of the enforcement of pro bono
obligation of licensed lawyers.
The civil society organizations listed in Section C of the Directory are
rendering legal aid services by opening offices in Addis Ababa and its peripheries
except EWLA which has six regional offices.121 EWLA is established in 1995 for the
protection of the rights of women and overall advancement and empowerment of
women. Its main objective is to see Ethiopian women enjoying their rights
guaranteed under international and national laws. Rendering free legal aid service to
women is one strategy through which EWLA seeks to achieve its objective. The
other two CSOs, ELA and ECLF, established in 2002 and 2008, respectively, have
legal aid centers in Addis Ababa. ELA has a branch office in the premises of the
Federal High Court, Lideta Branch, while ECLF, another CSO, has a legal aid center
in front of the Lideta Federal High Court and an additional office in Finifine
Surrounding Special Zone. They target the indigent members of the community.
These three organizations, EWLA, ELA and ECLF, render free legal aid service
using their members who are lawyers and paralegals. The service rendered by these
CSOs goes beyond legal advice and preparation of legal documents and includes in-
court representation of clients when it is found necessary.
Until very recently, the only legal professionals association in Ethiopia was
the Ethiopian Bar Association (EBA). This national association has since been joined
by regional associations of lawyers, including advisors, prosecutors and judges, as
well as the Alumni Association of Law Faculty of Addis Ababa University (AALF-
AAU). Some of the regional associations, namely Biruh (Dire Dawa), Tesfa
(Hawassa), and Selam (Harrar), have reportedly been engaged in the provision of
121
Its regional offices are located in Hawassa, Adama, Bahir Dar, Dire Dewa, Assosa and Gambella.
legal aid services in their respective towns. However, the current assessment could
only establish the ongoing services being provided by Selam Professional
Association for the People operating in the city of Harar. A relatively more extensive
legal aid service is provided by the Ethiopian Bar Association and AALF-AAU in
the premises of the Federal High Court Lideta Branch and Federal First Instance
Court Arada Branch,122 and EBA’s third legal aid center123 in Addis Ababa. These
centers, staffed by law school students and practicing lawyers, provide legal aid
services to those who cannot afford paid legal services.
Legal aid service is also provided by the Children’s Legal Protection Center
/CLPC/established under the auspices of the Child Justice Project Office of the
Federal Supreme Court (FSC/CJPO) through a government-CSO partnership.
Although, the center is a multi-donor funded initiative, the major partner providing
technical and financial assistance to the center is ACPF. It started rendering legal aid
service in 2012 and targets children and their caregivers who either represent
children or faced their own problems which affect the best interest of children. The
unique feature of the service provided by this project is that it introduced a referral
system where children with psychosocial problems are referred to institutions which
give counseling, educational support, nutritional assistance, community based
correction, reintegration with family and medical service or provide children with
shelter when necessary. Unlike other legal aid providers, CLPC involves social
workers in addition to lawyers and paralegals for mediation and counseling. The
center mobilizes pro-bono service of lawyers and paralegals from CSOs, i.e. EWLA
and ECLF and from Addis Ababa University Law School through the Memorandum
122
The EBA and AALF-AAU have established two legal aid centers in the premises of the Federal
First Instance Court Lideta and Arada branches (Addis Ababa) in collaboration with APAP.
123
AAE initiated and supported the establishment of the EBA Center in Addis Ababa.
of Understanding it concluded with the CSOs and the Addis Ababa University Center
for Human Rights for this purpose. CLPC is also highly engaged in the provision of
court representation, particularly for children in conflict with the law. It assigns pro
bono lawyers to each Federal Court bench that handles the cases of these children.
Most of the higher learning institution’s that provide legal aid service started
their operation in 2010 after securing funding from EHRC. 124 Some others are
established later in the year 2011 and 2012.125 However, legal aid centers of Mekele
University and Bahir Dar University are pioneers, established in 2004 and 2005,
respectively.
Most of the higher learning institutions render legal aid service by engaging
law students who are provided a brief orientation regarding how to provide the
service. The staffs of the universities (those teaching law) also participate in the
provision of legal aid as supervisors to the law students or representing beneficiaries
before courts in some selected cases.126 Few of the universities such as Addis Ababa
University Center for Human Rights (Adama, Ambo and Hawassa branches), and
Gondar University render legal representation service by using pro bono lawyers.
Adama University, Ambo University and Haramaya University obtained advocates
license in their own respective name to render court representation to clients. In
general, all of them target the indigent and vulnerable groups of the community with
the main objective being helping vulnerable groups such as women, children, persons
with disability, the elderly, and peoples living with HIV/AIDS gain access to free
124
Hawassa, Mekele, Jimma, Haromaya, Jigjiga, Dire-Dawa, Dilla, Mizan-Teppi, Bahir-Dar, Debre-
Markos, Wollo, Wollega, Wollaita, Adama and Ambo Universities (see EHRC, Annual
Performance Report, June 2010- July 2011, 15).
125
Arbaminch University legal aid Center established in 2012.
126
This is the experience of Jimma University and Bahir Dar University.
legal services. That is why most of them have branch offices in court and prison
premises or in either of the two.
3000
2500
2000
1500 Female
1000 beneficaries
Male
500 beneficaries
Total
0
The number of beneficiaries in 2010 in 9 public universities in Ethiopia 127
3.3 Accessibility of Legal Aid Services

Accessibility of a given service is very crucial to determine the category of
beneficiaries, quality of service (as a function of the justice needs of beneficiaries),
and the outcome as well as output of the service.128 Since legal aid service targets the
indigent and the vulnerable, accessibility of the service to this target group is very
crucial. Four parameters are considered in this research to measure accessibility of
legal aid service in Ethiopia. These are:-
1. Legal awareness/access to information
2. Physical access
3. Program access
4. Financial access
127
The information is taken from EHRC, Annual Performance Report, June 2010- July 2011, p. 17.
128
Geraghty and Geraghty, supra note 87, p. 9.
These parameters will be used to measure to what extent the services provided
by the legal aid providers are accessible and achieved the objective of serving the
indigent and vulnerable members of the society.
3.3.1 Legal Awareness

Legal awareness is important because it is difficult ‚to access the justice
system without being aware of one’s legally protected rights and knowledgeable
about the mechanisms available to claim those rights.‛129 Legal aid centers can
operate effectively and efficiently in a society where there is better awareness on
legally protected rights. Thus, legal awareness plays a significant role in the
operation of legal aid centers. For these reason, creating legal awareness is
considered as one component of the services of legal aid providers.
Most legal aid centers use different mechanisms to disseminate information
on legal rights. For instance, oral briefings on legal rights are given in waiting rooms
of Sidama Zone High Court by paralegals of Hawassa University Legal Aid Center.
The Center for Human Rights at Addis Ababa University publishes and distributes
briefing sheets on legal issues in user friendly languages.130 It also broadcasts on
issues related to law and justice to the general public using Radio Fana FM station. In
the radio program, which is broadcasted every week for one hour, different legal
129
Ibid.
130
To date, it has issued briefing sheets on issues concerning domestic violence, maintenance
allowance, personal and common property of spouses, access to justice, unlawful dismissal of
workers, best interest of the child, the rights of the accused etc. These briefing sheets are
considered as evidence based advocacy tools since the issues that are published on the briefing
sheets are selected from the issues brought before AAU-CHR centers for legal assistance.
Furthermore, the briefing sheets use real cases brought before the Centers to elaborate on legal
rights.
issues and cases are presented and the public participates by providing its views and
forwarding questions on the legal issues being discussed on a live network.131 The
program has broad coverage that enables it to transmit legal information to the large
portion of Ethiopians specially those living in the rural areas who otherwise have
little or no alternative means of getting information about their legal rights. It is
believed that the means used for legal awareness by the Center for Human Rights has
been efficient in creating legal awareness and enhancing accessibility.132
Most legal aid centers of public universities in Ethiopia do not have programs
to improve rights awareness in the community. Nevertheless, some are formulating
strategies to this effect. For instance, Bahir Dar University has a plan to launch a
radio program to this end. Besides, there are exemplary initiatives being undertaken
by some universities. For instance, Haromaya University delivers awareness creation
programs through lawyers in each of the free legal service centers who educate the
community on various legal issues for 30 minutes every day. Besides, according to
the Legal Aid Center Coordinator,
The University [through the Social Justice Center] has its own Training and
Community Awareness program that works in collaboration with the Free Legal
Service Centers. The Training and Community Awareness Program uses two
methods to reach out to the community. The first is the community awareness
131
So far it has transmitted radio programs on topics such as employment law (including the rights of
domestic workers), rights of people with disabilities, discrimination against women, family law
(including the rights of women to marital property), domestic violence, adoption and child rights,
access to justice and legal aid.
132
89 radio programs have been transmitted, 70,000 copies of 11 briefing sheets and 1050 copies of
booklets have been distributed to stakeholders both governmental agencies and NGOs- See
‘Evaluation of the Pilot Project on ‚Legal Literacy, Rights Advice and Information for Poor
People in Three Regions of Ethiopia’, Feb. 2012, p, 13 and 23.
program delivered using the Haramaya University Community Radio (HUFM). It

is a two hour radio program entitled Law and the Community delivered both in
Afaan Oromo and Amharic languages each language running for an hour. The FM
radio covers large part of East Hararghe Zone, some woredas of West Hararghe
Zone and the entire of Harari Regional State. The second is the face-to-face
community awareness program that provides trainings on some legal issues to the
judges, prosecutors and police officers using the staff of the College of Law.
Some universities have organized workshops in order to create legal

awareness.133 In this regard, Jimma University organized a workshop on access to
justice in which representatives from Wereda Courts, Justice Bureau, Women and
Children Affairs Bureau participated. It also has a weekly radio program in Amharic
and Oromifa on Jimma community radio. Likewise, Jigjiga and Hawassa universities
have used community radio programs to create legal awareness. Mekelle University
has been educating the public about legal rights using its students in fifty three
woredas and sub-woredas of the zonal administrations in which it has branch
offices.134
Outreach activities are also carried out by different legal aid providers to
empower and create working relation with the community. The outreach program
administered by North Gondar Zone Justice Office has been effective in creating
community legal awareness at the grassroots level. The Zonal and Wereda Justice
Offices’ civil and criminal cases division in collaboration with Gondar University
give public legal awareness education to the community.135
133
This is the experience of Jimma University and Hawassa University.
134
Interview held with Eyob Awash, Mekelle University Legal Aid Center Director.
135
Interview held with Bisrat Abera, Prosecutor, North Gondar Zone Justice Office.
The Justice Bureau of Amhara Regional State and MoJ are also engaged in
awareness creation campaigns using media outlets and brochures. The former under
its responsible organ for training and research undertakes awareness creation
activities and trainings. The MoJ, particularly the department of women and
children’s affairs, promotes its legal aid service by using the annual International
Women’s Day/March 8/ and the Sixteen Days of Activism to End Violence against
Women and Children commemoration programs. On these events brochures will be
distributed to participants coming together from different relevant institutions. In
addition, the service is also promoted to different sub-city women, children and
youth affairs offices, so that they will refer women and children in need of legal aid
to the MoJ.
EWLA has organized different workshops on different occasions to create
legal awareness regarding women’s rights. It also has a weekly radio program on
Sheger radio (FM 102.1) for half an hour addressing different women’s rights issues.
FSC-CJPO gives trainings to stakeholders that directly and closely work on children
such as police officers, judges, support staffs of courts, pro bono lawyers, nurses,
gynecologists and social workers on children rights issues, effective communication
with children and child development, among others to increase their effectiveness on
their jobs and strengthen their collaboration with CLPC. With a view to create public
awareness on children’s rights, CLPC also occasionally sponsor the weekly
Ethiopian Television show, Chilote, which features drama on legal issues.
3.3.2 Physical Access

Easy physical access is one of the measures of the accessibility of legal aid
service. Physical access here is examined in terms of geographical coverage of legal
aid service in Ethiopia and location of legal aid providers’ offices in terms of their
accessibility to the vulnerable and indigent members of the society. The first one will
analyze the distribution of legal aid service across the country while the second one
will focus on whether the offices/buildings where legal aid providers are located are
accessible for transportation, for persons with disability and vulnerable groups of the
society.
The geographical coverage of legal aid services varies from region to region.
There is concentration of CSO legal aid providers in Addis Ababa. Except EWLA
which has six branches in different parts of the country, ECLF, ELA and the CLPC
of the FSC extensively work in pilot projects located in Addis Ababa and its
peripheries.136 When the legal aid provided by MoJ in Addis AbAba is also taken
into account, it makes the concentration of service providers in Addis Ababa strong.
As regards legal aid centers of higher learning institutions, some have
extensive outreach programs which cover large geographical area. Haromaya
University is the leading one in this regard having 15 branch offices.137 Regarding
government run legal aid service, the legal aid service provided by Amhara Regional
State Bureau of Justice is the larges as it covers all Woredas of the region.
The fact that most legal aid centers operate having their office in major cities
and towns made their services urban focused. Even when they have outreach
programs to rural areas, the general trend shows that legal aid service in rural areas is
136
According to Fasika Hailu, coordinator of FSC-CLPC, FSC-CJPO has a plan to expand its service
to regional states by 2014 and integrate its program in court structures in the next five years.
137
See the Directory of Legal Aid providers for further information on geographical coverage of
legal aid centers of higher education institutions.
provided by paralegals and law students rather than by licensed lawyers.138 This
might be a result of the concentration of legal professionals in major cities and towns
leaving much of the rural area out of access to professional legal service.
The concentration of CSO legal aid centers in urban areas and in places close
to Addis Ababa resulted in exclusion of some places from benefiting from legal aid
scheme. According to the information gathered by the researchers, legal aid is poorly
provided in Gambella and Benshangul/Gumuz where only EWLA has a branch
office while the Afar Regional State is a totally neglected region except for the
provision of legal aid by the regional justice bureau as well as the women, children
and youth affairs bureau. To cover vast geographical area of the country and to reach
to clients in rural areas, mobile legal aid camps should be established in different
parts of the country.139 It is also important to note that the trend to open legal aid
centers in the compound of government institutions such as courts, prisons,
MoWCYA, justice bureaus, etc. should continue so that the service can reach to the
community at grassroots level by following these government institutional structures
which reach down to the smallest government administrative units.
Among CSO and public universities that provide legal aid service, none of
them, except AAU-CHR, EWLA, FSC-CJPO, and Jigjiga University, made formal
138
For instance EWLA uses Committees whose members provide paralegal training to cover large
geographical area while most of the higher education institutions use law students to provide legal
aid service.
139
Paralegals in Tanzania and Uganda use mobile legal aid camps, which serve the purpose of
reaching clients where they are and cut paralegal costs. See Danish Institute for Human Rights,
‘Access to Justice and Legal Aid in East Africa: A Comparison of the Legal Aid Schemes Used in
the Region and the Level of Cooperation and Coordination Between the Various Actors’, A report
by the Danish Institute for Human Rights, based on a cooperation with the East Africa Law
Society, 2011, p. 93.
and documented needs assessment before opening their branch offices. Most of the
other legal aid providers made informal discussions with the community and
stakeholders before opening branch offices. For instance, Jimma University and
Haromaya University conducted discussions with stakeholders and the community
members to find out whether there is a need for legal aid service though the results of
the discussion are not documented. According to the information obtained from
Amhara Regional State Bureau of Justice, it started to give free legal aid service to
civil cases after the need for such a service was identified in the business process re-
engineering (BPR) study it conducted. Therefore, it can be concluded from the
experience of most of the legal aid providers that a formal needs assessment studies
were not made before they start providing legal aid service. It is recommended that
legal aid providers conduct legal aid need assessment before opening offices so as to
identify areas where there is legal aid service gap and avoid duplication of efforts.
With regard to the specific location of service provision, most centers are
located in court and prison premises and in government offices such as BoWCYA.140
This made the centers accessible to the beneficiaries since most of the time it is these
institutions that are approached by indigent and vulnerable people to enforce their
rights. This also helped the beneficiaries to avoid the additional transport cost that the
beneficiaries of free legal aid would incur if the legal aid providers were providing
their services in a different location. However, some offices of the legal aid centers
140
These locations are selected by most legal aid providers considering the number of cases that are
brought before these organs and their proximity to the main office of the legal aid providers
themselves. For instance, FSC-CJPO took into consideration: decentralization of the service,
accessibility, need of clients; availability of office space in courts; and, willingness of officials in
the selected locations to support the objective of the project.
are located in buildings which are far away from beneficiaries141 resulting in small
number of beneficiaries.
The finding of this research shows that there is overlap of service provision in
some areas. For instance, both AAU-CHR and Adama University provide legal aid
service in the same prison. Even if an arrangement is made for both to work on
alternative days, their presence in a similar location is not advisable considering the
limited availability of legal aid service all over the country. The FSC-CJPO and the
Ethiopian Bar Association also have their legal aid centers in the same building at the
Federal High Court Lideta Branch. Although CJPO’s center focuses on children and
their care providers while EBA provides its services to all indigents, it is still an
apparent duplication of efforts. The researchers believe that it would have been wise
had one of them opened the legal aid service center elsewhere where the service is
not available.
In selecting the locations for legal aid service center, accessibility for the
beneficiaries must be given greater consideration. In most cases legal aid services are
provided in the ground floors of buildings making them more accessible to persons
with disability. However, some legal aid offices are located in the upstairs of
buildings without elevators which make the offices less accessible for persons with
disabilities and unfriendly for the poor from rural areas.142 In some instances, the
141
For instance, one of the centers of AAU-CHR in Adama is located in a building found at the
center of the city. However, the number of beneficiaries coming to this center is minimal
compared to other centers located in premises of prisons and court houses.
142
The office of ECLF (Lideta Center), AAU-CHR (Adama branch), EWLA, FSC-CJPO (the center
in the Federal High Court Bole branch) are found, respectively, on the third, second, six and first
floors of their respective buildings. Some of the offices in Gondar are also located on upstairs.
person providing the legal service give the service by coming to the ground floor
whenever persons with disability visit the centers seeking legal services.143
3.3.3 Program Access

The legal aid service provided by different actors should be made accessible
to all. Programs can be made accessible through different strategies. One of the
strategies is advertisement of the program by using different means. Unless the
existence of the legal aid service is known by the poor and vulnerable members of
the society, no one will be able to use the service.
Awareness of existence of legal aid providers and the type of service provided
can be promoted using print and electronic media, posters, leaflets, etc. Basic
information regarding the kind of service provided, where the legal aid provider is
located and when the service is provided is what needs to be communicated.
Various legal aid providers use different means of advertisement. AAU-CHR
has a radio program on Radio Fana FM station by which it informs the public about
its service. Further, it uses leaflets, posters, banners, megaphones advertisement in
market places on market days etc. A booklet entitled ‘Legal Advice and Information
in Three Regions of Ethiopia: A practical Guide’ is prepared containing information
on the program. Trainees from idirs, kebele and other community associations, who
take part in paralegal trainings partner with the AAU-CHR to advertise its program
whenever there is public gathering and members meeting. It has also a web page
describing its programs and activities. Further, members of Project Advisory
Committee (PAC) and Local Advisory Committee of the Access to Justice Project144
143
For instance, AAU-CHR (Adama branch legal aid office).
144
Members include representatives from governmental and non-governmental organs such MoJ,
EHRC, MoWCYA, Women’s Association, Federal HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Office,
advertise the activities of the legal aid service provided by AAU-CHR in their
respective institutions.
Among the advertisement means used by AAU-CHR, advertising the services
through radio program proved to be effective since many clients coming to the legal
aid service centers referred the radio program as their source of information about the
service.145
CJPO-FSC occasionally uses an Ethiopian Television show, Chilote, to
publicize its activities. EWLA currently has a weekly radio program on Sheger Radio
(FM 102.1) which is transmitted for half an hour. This program and printed outlets
are used to inform the public about EWLA’s services. Brochures on the program are
distributed on the various workshops organized by the association. It used to
advertise its program through television previously, which does not exist currently
because of financial constraints.146 According to EWLA, electronic media is more
effective in popularizing its programs. ECLF uses radio, television, newspaper,
billboard, brochures to advertise its program while ELA uses brochures and
billboard.
ELA, the Federation of Ethiopian National Associations of Persons with Disability, EWLA and
the Ethiopian Elderly and Pensioners’ Association. Local Advisory Committees also exist at the
local level in the localities where AAU-CHR has established branch offices to provide legal aid
service (i.e., at Hawassa, Adma Addis Ababa) Members of the Local Advisory Committee are
drawn from governmental and non-governmental organs. The committees shave the responsibility
to provide strategic guidance, adopt work plans of the Project, assess progress of the Project and
receive regular reports on progress, ensure financial accountability, assist in campaigns on legal
rights issues, speak on behalf of the Project and work for the sustainability of the Project.
145
AAU-CHR, ‘Legal Advice and Information in Three Regions of Ethiopia: A Practical Guide’,
2011, p. 28.
146
Interview held with Meron Aragaw, Program Coordinator at EWLA.
Public universities use various means to increase awareness in communities

about the legal aid service they provide. The most common method used is
dissemination of printed materials such as brochures, flyers, posters etc.147 It is also
usual to make announcement of their service in courts and prisons when they have
offices in such locations.148 Due to high costs, media advertisements are rarely used.
Only few universities use community radios to transmit information about their
programs.149 For instance, Jimma University legal aid center uses Jimma community
radio station to advertise its services. Likewise, Gondar University and Haramaya
University legal aid centers advertise their program using their respective community
radio stations. Gondar University further uses Gondar Fana FM radio. Universities
also utilize their institutional links with various organs to disseminate information
about their legal aid programs.150 There are also some public universities which use
websites to inform the public about their legal aid service.151
In most instances, information about the program is posted on billboards
around the office of legal aid centers to be viewed by the public. However, the
researchers observed that in some instances notice boards in front of legal aid centers
are not placed to assist clients identify the service providers.152
The Amhara Regional State, Bureau of Justice uses radio programs,
brochures, and newsletters to advertise its legal aid program.
147
Bahir Dar University use brochures, billboard, and occasional interview by media to promote and
inform the public about its service.
148
Hawassa University.
149
Hawassa University.
150
Haromaya University.
151
Jimma University, Addis Ababa University, and Gondar University.
152
Adama branch office of AAU-CHR legal aid center.
The extent of promotion of the legal aid service by legal aid providers varies
significantly. Because of high cost implication of advertising the program using
electronic media outlets, most service providers prefer using print media. This being
the case, innovative ways of low cost advertisement methods such as posting stickers
on taxis etc. should be explored. The use of public forums as well as liaising with
local leaders such as chairpersons of Idir and civil servants can be less costly and
effective to inform the public about the availability of legal aid service.
3.3.4 Financial Access

Lack of financial resources is one of the major barriers hindering people from
accessing justice. Thus, legal aid services are expected to entail less or no financial
burden on beneficiaries. In principle, legal aid service for the indigent and vulnerable
groups of the society should be provided free of charge. However, there are
indirect/incidental costs clients incur to benefit from the service such as
transportation and photocopying cost, court fees and so on. Further, identifying
indigent persons who cannot afford to pay for the service from those who can is an
issue that needs to be sorted out in the provision of legal aid service. The source of
fund to cover operational costs of legal aid providers is another issue which will be
discussed under this section.
Although the extent of the engagement varies from institution to institution,
all legal aid providers try to identify the financial status of the client approaching
them for assistance. However, most of them lack formally set eligibility criteria to
identify indigent clients. Legal aid providers such as EWLA and FSC-CJPO which
exclusively focus on women and children, respectively, as their target groups, use the
same criterion as the first test to identify their clients rather than the financial
condition of their clients. In case of EWLA, unless a male client brings a case on
behalf of a woman, he would not benefit from the service. The same is true for FSC-
CJPO which requires the client to be either less than 18 years of age (a child) or in
case he/she is above 18 years, he/she must show that the case involves legal issues
affecting children. Therefore, in these two institutions the issue of financial capacity
of the client comes next to him or her falling within the target group of the
organizations.
Other legal aid providers require their client to be an indigent or vulnerable
person. They use various objective and subjective criteria to identify indigent and
vulnerable persons. Those who apply objective criteria require pauper evidence to be
presented from Kebele Social Courts.153 In these circumstances, sometimes it might
happen that a person who can’t present pauper evidence since he/she owns a valued
property in kind may stand in need of free legal aid service since under his/her
current situation he/she may not have access and control over his/her property to
avail it for the service expenses. This is the case most of the time with women who
desert their home because they are battered by their husband. The same is true for
persons who do not have valid Kebele ID cards who would not be considered as
Kebele residents and are not eligible to request pauper evidence from the Kebele
Social Courts.
The legal aid providers that apply subjective criteria determine the situation of
the client through an interview about his/her employment status, income status,
educational status, whether he/she owns any property, number of dependents, marital
status etc. to determine his/her financial capacity. Some others try to find out about
the financial capability of the individual from his social status which can be inferred
from the way he/she speaks, dresses, etc. In this case, it is the service provider’s
153
Haromaya University and MoJ.
judgment/appreciation of such factors that determine whether the client should

benefit from the service. The problem with the subjective criterion is that most of the
legal aid providers do not have uniform criteria to determine what amount of
minimum wage, number of dependents, estimated value of property or educational
level, manner of speech and clothing, etc. that makes an applicant an indigent and
therefore eligible for the service.
Furthermore, in most instances, only the aforementioned parameters are
applied to determine the eligibility of the applicant and other tests relating to the
nature of the case are not considered. As the experience of other countries shows
‘test cases’ i.e. cases that are deemed to have a general impact on local community
are one of the criteria utilized to determine cases that should be handled for free. 154
Although most legal aid providers prefer to use both the subjective and
objective eligibility requirements on a case by case basis, some of the informants
argue that it is better to use subjective criteria by taking into account the situation of
the client rather than requesting the applicant to present pauper evidence which might
create inconvenience to the client in some cases. The experience of most legal aid
providers shows that the fact that the applicant is a member of vulnerable groups
such as children, women, elders, persons with disability or HIV/AIDS, etc. qualify
him/her to benefit from the service without the need to present pauper evidence. A
person who does not belong to these groups would be required to furnish pauper
evidence.
In more than few instances, the result of interviews with legal aid providers
show that most of the time they accept clients without the need to screen visitor for
eligibility since the number of beneficiaries approaching their centers seeking legal
154
See the experience of legal aid providers in Kenya and Tanzania, supra note 139, p. 84.
aid is small. It is in a very few instances that they have refused to offer their service
for the fact that the applicant does not fulfill the eligibility criteria. However, this
might bring conflict of interest with practicing lawyers and those who are not
licensed but are involved in writing pleadings and preparing other court documents
for consideration as they would be losing their potential clients. There are instances,
in few places, where lawyers/pleading writers posed resistance to legal aid providers.
The case of Bahir Dar University legal aid service office inside Bahir Dar Prison
facility is a good show case for this. Although, the problem was resolved by the
prison administration by informing that the Bahir Dar University Legal Aid Center
serves only those who cannot afford to pay for the service, prisoners with legal
expertise who are engaged in providing legal services to other inmates for
consideration were engaged in act of destroying posters of the legal aid center of
Bahir Dar University.155 This demonstrates that there is a need for formulation and
strict application of uniform eligibility criteria in order to avoid conflict of interest
with professional lawyers and to wisely use the limited resource to serve the indigent
members of the society.
Beneficiaries access legal service free of charge in all institutions which
provide legal aid services. In most cases, expenses for papers, copying etc., when the
service rendered involves preparation of legal documents, are covered by legal aid
providers. However, other indirect costs such as transportation cost, court fees,
subsistence costs, etc. are not covered by legal aid providers. In this regard, since
most of the legal aid centers are located in court premises, prison, and other
governmental institutions compounds where people gather to seek remedies, the
155
Interview held with V/Commander Negalegn Tulu, Prisoners Rehabilitation and Administration
V/Head, Bahir Dar Prison Institution.
beneficiaries do not incur additional transportation or opportunity costs to benefit

from legal assistance services. FSC-CJPO has victims fund which can be used to
cover some of immediate costs such as transportation, court application, medical,
shelter, food, etc costs.156 EWLA also used to have such scheme which is now
discontinued. In an interview held with Amhara Regional State Bureau of Justice, it
was indicated that the Bureau covers costs related to the provision of free legal aid
such as service fee, fees for filing, copying and per diem for witnesses, etc. However,
beneficiaries of the service are required by courts to pay for stamp duty and fees for
copying judgments of lower courts which the Justice Bureau does not cover and
which is unaffordable for the clients. This made the service provided by the Bureau
futile since such indigent persons cannot take their cases to the court even if they can
get free legal aid service since they do not have the means to pay for the stamp duty
and cover the photocopying expense. It was suggested that when courts waive court
fee for pauper applicants, it should also order that the applicant be exempted from
any other court related payments.
With regard to the source of funding to run legal aid service, most CSOs
providing legal aid obtain their funding from grants provided by EHRC and other
local sources by undertaking different fundraising activities.157 FSC-CJPO obtained
its funding for its legal aid program predominantly from ACPF. Since providing
legal aid to women and children is provided for in the establishment proclamation of
the MoJ, except for the mandatory pro-bono service by licensed lawyers, funding for
156
This fund is allocated by ACPF and individuals can also make contributions to this fund.
157
EWLA for instance prepares exhibitions to raise findings by selling t-shirt, bags etc. bearing its
logo. It also prepared music concert with free service of the singers. EWLA cannot secure funding
from foreign sources since CSOs working on rights cannot receive more than 10% of their
funding from foreign sources.
staff and the actual service provision in Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa comes from
government budget.
Most of the public universities providing legal aid obtained funding from
EHRC. However, their program which depended on such funding is at the verge of
discontinuation due to the fact that such fund is not available currently. Recognizing
the need to make legal aid programs sustainable, public universities providing legal
aid need to include the cost of running the service into their budget. For instance,
Mekele University, Haromaya University, and Gondar University have incorporated
the cost of running legal aid service into their budget. They should also try to pull
funding from other sources. In this regard AAU-CHR has been able to acquire
funding from Norwegian Embassy for its legal aid and access to justice related
activities.
The good practice that should be mentioned in this regard is the practice of
Amhara Regional State Justice Bureau and the MoJ. The Bureau and the Ministry
have integrated the program within their organizational structure and programs and
have convinced their respective governments to allocate budget for the service. This
is an important step in making legal aid service to indigents sustainable.
3.4 Delivery of Services

The delivery of legal aid services relate to the identity of actors delivering
legal aid services, the range of services provided, and the methods of delivery.
Consideration of these issues primarily focuses on two core questions: who should
deliver legal aid services in terms of professional competence and what services
should be made available. These two questions also raise two corollary issues as to
the types of cases for which the services are available and the profile of beneficiaries,
i.e. who should benefit from legal aid services.
80
80
3.4.1 Service Providers

The profile of legal aid service providers is a matter inherently dictated by the
very rationale for legal aid. This linkage starts with the identification of barriers to
access to justice. Generally, four fundamental barriers to access to justice are
recognized. These are: lack of legal identity,158 ignorance of legal rights,
unavailability of legal services, and unjust and unaccountable legal institutions.159
The most serious among these barriers for the poor is the unavailability, or
expense, of obtaining legal representation or other forms of legal assistance. Even
individuals not formally excluded from the legal system, and generally aware of their
legal rights, may be unable to rely on the legal system because they do not have
access to legal services. Legal aid service provision is, therefore, intended to address
this gap through access to free or discounted legal services. However, the same
limited availability of professional legal expertise that made it expensive also
impacts legal aid service providers. One way of addressing this challenge is through
the engagement of actors other than lawyers in the process of legal aid service
provision. These typically include trained paralegals, law students and non-legal
professionals.
Ideally, legal aid service provision should take a functional approach in the
sense that it should focus ‚on the nature of the task to be performed and on the skills
158
Lack of legal identity refers to the total exclusion of disadvantaged groups from the opportunities
and protections of the legal system in the sense that they cannot engage in juridical acts or receive
basic services, like water, sewage, mail delivery, and garbage collection. An example relevant to
the Ethiopian context may be people living on the street who cannot access public services since
they have no residence/domicile.
159
Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, Progress Report, Working Group 1: ‘Access to
Justice and Rule of Law’, First Meeting of the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor,
20-21 January 2006.
and competencies necessary to perform that task‛160. The logic is that not all, if not
most, tasks involved in the provision of legal aid services require the skills and
knowledge of a legal professional but could generally be addressed by less skilled
actors with the supervision of a lawyer. In most cases, the needs of the beneficiary
could be effectively addressed with little or no involvement of a lawyer, especially
where efficient systems are in place.
The finding of the current assessment suggests that the profile of service
providers is generally the function of the nature of the institution providing the
services as well as the services provided. Typically, higher education institutions link
their services to clinical legal education and other curricular arrangements as part of
their primary roles as providers of professional legal training. As such, they generally
use their own staff and normally senior class students to provide the legal aid
services. In some cases, they only use staff (e.g. Hawassa University) or students
(e.g. Mizan-Tepi University). There are also cases where university legal aid centers
use external practicing lawyers either through independent arrangements with the
lawyers or through the official pro bono service requirements under the law.161 In one
case, i.e. Mekelle University, lawyers have been engaged for the exclusive purpose
of providing legal aid services through the center. Finally, the use of paralegals either
as trained community members or students has been observed in a number of
cases.162
160
161
Advocates practicing before federal courts are required to provide pro bono services for at least 50
hours per year and regions have also developed similar standards with varying implementation
arrangements.
162
The AAU-CHR has a unique approach of involving students from other universities as paralegals
reflecting its practice of establishing centers outside Addis Ababa. For instance, the Center has
engaged graduating class students from Hawassa and Adama universities as paralegals.
Charities and societies engaged in the provision of legal aid services could be
categorized into two overlapping groups based on the profile of service providers.
The first category, typically covering associations of legal professionals (i.e. ELA,
AALF-AAU and Selam Professionals’ Association for the people) only use lawyers
to provide legal aid services. Those in the second category, on the other hand,
employ the services of both lawyers and paralegals. These include the ECLF,
EWLA, and the Children’s Legal Protection Center under the FSC/CJPO.163 The
distinction, however, appears to be incidental rather than inherent to the profile of the
institutions.
Finally, the government institutions providing legal aid services use practicing
lawyers as service providers. This is done through referral arrangements following
the official pro bono service requirements or through individual referrals based on
the willingness of the advocate involved. The Ministry of Justice, the Amhara Region
Justice Bureau and the SNNPR Women, Children and Youth Affairs Bureau were
among the institutions in this category. The MoJ and the Amhara Region Justice
Bureau also provide direct services through legal officers and prosecutors assigned
for the purpose. The experience of the SNNP-WCYAB in using the pro bono
obligations of advocates practicing in the regional courts for the provision of legal
aid services to women through a collaborative effort with the SNNP Justice Bureau’s
licensing functions can be noted as a good practice in this respect.
3.4.2 Types of Cases

The types of cases entertained by the legal aid service providers covered in
this study are generally limited to ‘civil cases’ in the broadest sense. That is, since
163
Treated here as a charitable institution due to its peculiar profile of operating as a government-
CSO partnership.
the study did not cover the provision of legal aid services for criminal cases through
the PDO, reference is mainly made to the specific types of ‘civil’ cases for which
legal aid services have been made available.164 In addition to a general question on
whether or not the legal aid service providers entertained civil, criminal and
administrative cases, the respondents were asked to note the specific cases they have
entertained. The findings show that family, property and labor cases are predominant.
Maintenance allowance and succession issues are especially recurrent according to
the responses from key informants representing service providers of all categories of
legal aid providers, i.e. universities, civil society and government institutions.
The following table shows a summary of the cases handled by the AAU-CHR’s legal
aid centers in a period of nine months (April 2012 ” Jan 2013).165 As could be seen
from the table, family and labour cases stand out among the most frequently handled
cases of the centers. This conforms to the findings of the primary data collected from
key informants representing the legal aid service providers. These findings may not
be surprising considering the profile of the beneficiaries of the services, i.e. the poor,
women and other disadvantaged groups.
164
Representatives of legal aid service providers were asked about whether their services are
available in criminal cases but the specific types of cases have not been sought.
165
While this table does not represent the whole spectrum of legal aid service providers identified
and contacted while doing this assessment, it does provide a general vies applicable to most, if not
all, direct service providers. This could best be surmised from the fact that almost all key
informants identified family and labor issues as the most recurrent cases they have handled.
84
Type of case Addis Ababa Adama Hawassa Total

Property 74 18 59 151
Labour 214 31 57 302
Family 135 81 114 330
Succession 123 21 49 193
Criminal 31 12 0 43
Contract 40 0 44 84
Other cases 141 28 67 236
Extra contractual 13 0 0 13
Land 0 0 143 143
TOTAL 771 191 533 1495
Source: Compiled from the reports of the Centers.
3.4.3 Services Provided

The definition of legal aid services or legal assistance could be understood
as covering a broad range of services necessary in ensuring one’s access to justice or
addressing justice needs. In the broadest sense, these could include services utilized
in and outside the justice system. However, the current assessment focuses on the
services availed within the justice system and in relation to civil proceedings. Thus,
what is being discussed here is about three major types of services that may in some
cases be viewed as part of a continuum. These are: oral advice or legal counseling,
preparation of written pleadings and other documents, and representation by an
advocate before a court of law. Other relevant services falling within the scope of the
assessment include mediation services which are generally considered composites of
the above noted services.
The general trend among service providers identified during the current
assessment is indicative of a predominantly oral advice oriented service provision
approach. The finding of the assessment did not only reveal that legal counseling
service is availed but also identified it as the most recurrently provided form of legal
aid service. This is to be expected for two reasons. First, most legal issues and
disputes affecting the indigent are amenable to resolution through simple
professional or at least informed advice as well as referral to other available services.
This is particularly true for the legal needs of the poor which are generally of low
profile requiring simple legal services. Secondly, oral advice or legal counseling is
the form of legal aid service that is easiest and cheapest to provide to the largest
number of beneficiaries within the justice system. As such, it is most likely to be
available to and utilized by most beneficiaries.
Information gathered from key informants show that the preparation of
written pleadings and other documents enabling beneficiaries to access formal legal
processes are the second most recurrently offered service.
Finally, the provision of court representation services is the least availed and
utilized of all legal aid services. For instance, the Mekelle University Legal Aid
Center, which apparently has extensive experience in this respect, provided
representation services in 72 cases while Hawassa University provided the service
for 20 cases during the year long financial support it received from the EHRC.166 The
limited availability of qualified legal professionals and high cost of representation
have been noted as key causes for the apparently limited provision of court
representation. Service providers have sought to address these challenges using
existing mandatory pro bono requirements and through the engagement of external
advocates on voluntary basis. The experience of the MoJ that enables clients’ access
court representation either through direct service provision by prosecutors at sub-city
166
Annual reports of the legal aid centers and interview with key informants.
offices of the Ministry or when this is not possible through referral to licensed
attorneys is worth mentioning here.
3.4.4 Beneficiaries
The beneficiaries of legal aid services are by definition the poor or those who
are prevented from accessing the justice system due to various constraints. While a
few identify specific vulnerable groups such as children (e.g. FSC/CJPO), women
(EWLA and the SNNP WCYAB) or both (the MoJ and the Amhara Region Justice
Bureau), almost all legal aid providers characterize their beneficiaries as the indigent,
the marginalized and under-privileged sections of society. Other specific groups of
beneficiaries identified by key informants include the elderly, PLWHA and inmates
of detention facilities. In terms of variations among institutions, the legal aid centers
of universities and some of the charities and societies characterized as ‘professional
associations’ (e.g. ELA and ECLF) appear to have the broadest variety of
beneficiaries. However, the level of disaggregation of actual beneficiaries by the
institutions does not enable to see the diversity of beneficiaries since the
documentation is generally limited to distinctions by sex.
3.5 Quality of Services

The quality of legal aid services is a measure of its effectiveness in addressing
the justice needs of the beneficiaries or service recipients. An effective legal aid
system ‚delivers services that are competently performed, that are provided in
accordance with high professional and ethical standards, and which positively impact
the lives of individual and vulnerable groups of beneficiaries‛.167 The specific issues
to be considered are: whether or not the system of legal aid has established
167
professional standards for providers, existence and adoption of model rules, and
provision of relevant training for service providers.168 The findings of the current
assessment are presented in three sections: professional standards; case management
and case follow up; and, training. Though the issue of coordination and networking
has significant implications for the quality of legal aid services (especially through
standard setting and referral arrangements), coordination issues have been dealt
separately for the purpose of emphasis and in light of the objectives of the current
assessment.
3.5.1 Professional Standards

The development of professional standards for legal assistance providers is a
key hallmark of an effective and thereby high quality legal aid system. The
development or existence of professional standards, however, is not sufficient to
ensure effectiveness and quality of legal aid services. Two additional requirements
relating to the scope of the rules and the substantive standards set forth should be
fulfilled to this end. First, the model rules should govern the conduct of both legal
professionals and non-lawyers providing the legal aid services. Secondly, the rules
should set forth applicable standards of professionalism including integrity,
thoroughness, promptness, responsiveness, record keeping, and ongoing training.
An important consideration in the context of the current assessment is the
existence of an official ‘code of conduct’ for advocates’ promulgated as a law at the
federal level. This piece of legislation requires advocates licensed to practice law in
the federal courts to render a minimum of fifty hours legal service a year free of
charge or upon minimal payment (pro bono publico). As such, the rules of
168
UNICEF, ‘Child-Friendly Legal Aid in Africa: Outcome Report’, First Draft, Dakar, Senegal,
June 2010, p. 42.
professional conduct covered in the regulation are also applicable to services

provided by licensed advocates practicing before the federal courts in the provision
of legal aid services. However, these legal rules do not specifically address the
relationship between the providers and recipients of legal aid services and does not
apply to lawyers licensed to practice before regional courts. 169 Paralegals and non-
licensed legal professionals, including staff of universities, are also excluded from
the scope of application. Thus, the existence of separate professional standards for
legal aid providers at institutional and sector level is very preferable.
The findings of the assessment show that legal aid service providers do not
have specific professional standards for the provision of legal aid services. While a
few (e.g. the FSC/CJPO and MoJ) have working manuals and guidelines in place,
others do not have comparable tools to ensure quality of services. The AAU-CHR
also provides training to paralegals on the principles of professional conduct. In
short, there are no specific professional legal standard setting instruments for legal
aid service provision at institutional or sector level. The problem is especially critical
in relation to the services provided by higher education institutions (with the possible
exception of the AAU-CHR and its three centers) and the civil society actors
involved in the provision of legal aid services.
The legal aid center operated by the FSC-CJPO has put in place extensive
manuals and working procedures for the provision of legal aid services for children.
These include: a legal counseling guideline, pro-bono service guideline, court
representation guideline; and a Referral Service Manual for Children involved in the
169
Some regional justice bureaus are reportedly in the process of adopting comparable codes of
conduct for legal practitioners. More importantly, the current assessment has identified an
initiative underway in the SNNP to adopt a specific regulation for the provision of pro bono
services.
Justice System.170 These are by far the most extensive set of instruments identified
during the current assessment. A similar initiative was also reported by Jimma
University which has had internal rules, student practice rules and court
representation rules developed by an independent committee.171
The Addis Ababa University Center for Human Rights

Principles governing the provision of legal aid services to its beneficiaries:
 Free: services are provided free of any charges to the beneficiaries
 Confidentiality: client information shall not be disclosed without his/her consent.
 Impartiality: paralegals shall not discriminate in deciding to whom they will give
advice and shall not be influenced by their own views and prejudices.
 Independence: the provision of advice and information is based on the law and
policies of Ethiopia and free from Government interference.
 Empowering: Project aims at empowering people by giving them the information
and advice they need to claim their rights.
3.5.2 Case Management and Case follow-up

The case management and follow up arrangements for legal aid service
provision, though typically a delivery issue, have a significant bearing on the quality
of the services. The centers operated by the AAU-CHR use a comprehensive case
management and recording system that provides detailed information on the profile
of the beneficiary/applicant, the case or grievances, services provided and follow-up
information. Most providers (e.g. Jimma University) have specific forms developed
for the purpose of recording and following up the progress of cases with some clarity
and uniformity. However, the practice among a number of service providers did not
170
The FSC-CJPO also has ‘Guidelines for the (establishment and) Administration of Victims Fund’
inherited from the CLPC of ACPF.
171
Reported to the EHRC in 2004 EC.
conform to the requirements of the service. Oftentimes, the records were incomplete
and lacked cross referencing to adequately follow up on the progress of cases. There
were also cases where follow ups were not conducted once the cases have been
assigned to an individual service provider. The FSC-CJPO has developed a case
follow up strategy which categorizes each case handled by its centers as cases that
need serious and less serious follow up. It also puts in place the method of follow up
for each category and actions to be taken after each follow up session.
3.5.3 Training
Legal aid providers, including non-lawyers, should receive ongoing need
based training in areas relevant to the provision of legal aid services. Such training
should incorporate both theoretical and practical training in substantive legal
concepts and applicable laws as well as skills in communication, counseling,
advocacy, negotiation, and mediation.172 Linkages should also be made with higher
education institutions both in terms of professional legal education and short term
training.
Service providers contacted during this assessment indicated that they provide
orientation training of varying depth for lawyers, paralegals, and students providing
legal aid in their respective institutions. Others reported participating in the training
programmes of the justice sector and other comparable institutions upon invitation.
The MoJ provide training based on the implementation manual developed to guide
the provision of direct legal aid by its staffs. However, no service provider reported
the existence of a regular on-going training programme for service providing
personnel at any level. An exceptional good practice in this regard is that of AAU-
CHR, that provides a week long training for its student-paralegals and paralegals
172
Geraghty and Geraghty, supra note 87, pp. 17-18.
drawn from the community before they commence giving service and refresher
training based on gaps observed during service provision by the paralegals. Although
the provision of such training program should be need based and aimed at filling
observable gaps, the training is very critical for non-lawyers as well as the whole
spectrum of service providers including qualified lawyers and licensed advocates.
3.6 Coordination and Networking

The assessment has found extensive evidence of coordination with various
stakeholders among service providers. In some cases (e.g. Mekelle University), the
range of actors and stakeholders engaged were found to be broad-ranging including
various community-based organizations, professional associations, governmental and
non-governmental organizations and other stakeholders operating at regional,
national and international levels.173 Legal aid service providers have utilized the
linkages they have with various stakeholders to forge partnership as well as for
referral arrangements. A typical example of the first is found in the experience of the
AAU-CHR which has forged partnerships with Adama, Hawassa, and recently Ambo
universities as well as the Prison Administration in Adama and courts in the SNNP
for the provision of its services. The FSC/CJPO similarly utilized the facilities of
173
Links were identified with Action Aid Ethiopia (AAE), Open Society justice Initiative, the
Ethiopia Human Rights Commission, Organization for Social Service and AIDS (OSSA) Tigray
Branch, the Government of the National Regional State of Tigray, Bureau of Justice of the
National Regional State of Tigray, the Prison Administration of the National Regional State of
Tigray, the Police Commission of the National Regional State of Tigray, the Women’s
Association of the Region, the Women’s Affairs of Bureau the National Regional State of Tigray,
Lawyers’ Association of the National Regional State of Tigray, Action Professionals Association
for the People (APAP), Prison Fellowship Ethiopia, Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association,
Mekelle University Human Rights Center, Gondar University School of Law, and Bahir-Dar
University School of Law Legal Aid Center.
courts in Addis Ababa to establish its centers and forged partnership with AAU-
CHR, EWLA and ECLF to mobilize paralegals and pro-bono lawyers.
However, the level and quality of coordination among legal aid service
providers as well as with key actors and stakeholders leaves much to be desired.
While there is clear evidence of coordination, the existing practice appears to be
disparate and disjointed. On the one hand, the efforts to establish referral, networking
and coordination arrangements among service providers has been put on the shelf
since the last effort in 2007. In November 2007, organizations that provide free legal
aid service to disadvantaged social groups launched a referral and coordination
network. A directory of complementary service providers and a Directory of Legal
Aid Providers in Ethiopia were also developed and publicized around the same time.
However, the arrangement has become ineffectual with the phasing out of legal aid
programmes of many of the organizations along with their re-registration as
Ethiopian resident charities and scaling down of programmes in others as a result of
Charities and Societies Proclamation.
The only serious effort in this connection appears to be the one underway with
the focal role of the FSC/CJPO and AAU-CHR. The issue of coordination between
legal service providers and justice sector and other stakeholders, on the other hand,
remains to be left to the endeavors of each organization acting independently of other
service providers. While major efforts to put in place a coordination framework at the
national level around issues such as VAWC and child justice (a major initiative
hosted by the MoJ) have noted the need to bring together legal service providers, the
results have yet to materialize.
4 Recommendations
1. The Legal and Institutional Framework
1.1. Constitutional Issues - While constitutional changes cannot be foreseen at
this stage, the following gaps could be addressed through legislative
provisions. The FDRE Constitution (Article 20/5) recognizes the right to
be represented by legal counsel at the expense of the state at the trial stage
of criminal proceedings, subject to requirements pertaining to inability to
pay for counsel and resulting miscarriage of justice. Thus, legal aid has not
been explicitly recognized in the Constitution as a right in civil and
administrative proceedings, in the early stages of the criminal justice
process (i.e. during arrest, interrogation, and pre-trial detention), and after
judgment has been rendered. Finally, the scope of ‘legal services’ is limited
to ‘representation by legal counsel’.
1.1.1. Though the Constitution does refer to the right to communicate with legal
counsel in dealing with the rights of persons held in custody and convicted
prisoners, it does not extend representation at state expense to these
categories of persons. It is also not clear if the obligation to provide legal
aid services extends to appeals.
1.1.2. The obligation of the state towards the realization of ‘representation by legal
counsel’ is stated in restrictive terms both in the Constitution and the
Criminal Justice Policy excluding the role of the state in encouraging and
facilitating the provision of services by other non-state actors. A mere
statement of the right would have been more appropriate.
1.1.3. The Criminal Procedure Code perpetuates most of the shortcomings in the
provisions of the Constitution recognizing the right to representation by
legal counsel. These include the availability of legal assistance at the trial
stage of criminal proceedings and, and services limited to representation.
1.2. The legal aid mandate of the MoJ faces the risk of narrow interpretation in
terms of scope limited to civil proceedings arising from criminal conviction.
The Ministry should thus take a clear position on the issue towards making its
services available to women, children and other vulnerable groups in all civil
proceedings within its mandate.
1.3. The pro bono services stipulated in the Code of Conduct Regulation have not
been supported by the creation of appropriate institutional structures and
procedures for implementation. This has made it difficult to utilize the legally
stipulated obligations of advocates to benefit the poor. Drawing up and
executing an implementation framework for mandatory pro bono services
should thus be a priority consideration. Replicating the practice to regional
states should also be given due consideration.
1.4. Despite the legal provision for ‘the special advocacy license’, the legal regime
currently applicable to the regulation of charities and societies excludes a
large number of non-state actors from engaging in legal aid service provision.
This has limited the utility of the special advocacy license in addressing the
justice needs of the poor. The issue should thus be resolved preferably with
the involvement of all key actors and stakeholders including the MoJ, the
Charities and Societies Agency and service providers.
1.5. The multiplicity of government actors with relevant mandates to engage in
access to legal aid for women, children and other vulnerable groups is likely to
pose challenges in relation to overlapping mandates, duplication of efforts,
coordination and monitoring. This is specially a concern in terms of putting in
place a comprehensive information management and monitoring system at the

national level. The mandates of the MoWCYA, MoJ, FSC and the EHRC
should be clarified through promoting dialogue and creating effective linkage
among the various actors.
2. Access
2.1. The geographic coverage of legal aid programs has been characterized as
urban and local for a very long time. This has particularly been true for
programs operated by NGOs that have been the primary providers of legal aid
services until very recently. While there has been trend towards availing
services to rural communities using various outreach programs and other
approaches, these need to be enhanced and extended.
2.2. Very few among existing legal aid service providers undertake specialized
programs targeting the most vulnerable groups in society. While some non-
state actor do provide focused services as a core component in their legal aid
programs, most offer generic services to a broader group of targets. The same
is also true for the free legal aid centers operated by public universities across
the country. Promoting specialized programs helps in enhancing quality of
legal aid service.
2.3. Some legal aid service providers, mainly charities and societies, appear to
have scaled down or terminated their legal aid programs for reasons attributed
to limited access to funding. This is particularly worrying in terms of
vulnerable groups’ access to legal aid in that some of the organizations noted
for their specialized services fall within this category. Unless promptly
addressed through alternative sources of funding, this could lead to a
dwindling number of service providers and loss of accumulated organizational

experience with adverse implications on access to legal aid.
2.4. The provision of legal aid services by public universities does not appear to
have been conceived and implemented within a framework of clinical legal
education. This is likely to adversely affect the sustainability of the programs
as well as limiting the utility of the approach. While there are existing
experiences to this end, they need to be more properly documented, extended
and replicated across institutions.
2.5. The current system for access to legal aid is not an integrated whole with the
various programs forming a comprehensive national service provision
framework. The gaps in the system include geographic variations of
availability, scope and service profile. Legal assistance to beneficiaries in civil
proceedings is seldom available in general while coverage of criminal legal
aid varies across regions, between urban and rural areas as well as federal and
regional jurisdictions and levels in the criminal justice system. This issue
could only be resolved within the framework of a national legal aid system. In
the meantime, coordination and referral arrangements could alleviate the
problem.
3. Delivery and Quality of Services
3.1. In terms of the providers of legal aid services, the existing practice does not
seem to have effectively utilized available professional legal services. This is
particularly true for the mandatory pro bono services required of advocates
practicing before federal courts and in some regional states. While there are
efforts to this end, the current practice lacks detailed implementation and
follow up framework. Moreover, the practice does not appear to be uniform
among regional states. Addressing this issue could best be commenced with
detailed implementation guidelines preferably issued by the MoJ. This could
serve as a model for regional states which do not have their own
implementation tools to date. Similarly, the provision of pro bono services
should be linked with other service providers, notably charities and societies
as well as university legal aid clinics, towards creating access to more
qualified service providers. This end could also be served by strengthening the
practice of granting advocacy licenses to service providers.
3.2. The absence of quality standards for the provision of legal aid services is a
critical concern. To date, the only relevant, standardized and uniform
standards that have been made widely available are the Orphans and
Vulnerable Children Service Standards published by the then Ministry of
Women’s and Children’s Affairs in early 2010.174 The standards include a
section on legal protection services that outlines relevant principles, strategies,
components and standards for programs designed to reduce stigma,
discrimination and social neglect while ensuring access to basic rights and
services protecting children from violence, abuse and exploitation. However,
the guidelines are too generic to be of much use as professional standards for
the provision of legal aid services even to children cannot be extended to other
vulnerable groups. Resolving this issue could be addressed from two
perspectives. The first is coming up with an official comprehensive set of
mandatory standards for legal aid service delivery similar to the 2010 OVC
standards. The existing efforts to regularize pro bono service delivery by
174
Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MOWA) and the Federal HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Office
(FHAPCO), Standard Service Delivery Guidelines for OVC Care and Support Programs, Addis
Ababa, February 2010.
licensed advocates in the SNNP Region could serve as a starting point for this
purpose. Secondly, one could contemplate a bottom-up approach wherein the
service providers come together to develop and adopt uniform standards for
legal aid service delivery to be endorsed by the government. The experiences
of the FSC-CJPO, the AAU-CHR and Jimma University could be important in
this respect. The provision of legal aid services does not appear to have been
linked with professional legal training or on the job training for service
providers. Despite significant reviews and improvements, the legal education
curricula at public universities are still geared towards general legal practice
rather than specific knowledge and skills required in the provision of legal aid
services. While some specialized training programs do exist, their primary
targets are judicial and law enforcement personnel. The programs
administered within the Justice Organs Professionals Training Centers provide
a good example in terms of specialized service delivery. Alternatively, legal
aid service providers should consider coming up with training programmes
that can be applied in a more uniform manner across the sector. This could at
best be achieved through a network of service providers rather than on an
individual basis.
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Annexes
Annex 1: Checklist for the Database on Existing Legal Aid Service Providers
Profile of the Legal Aid Service Provider/Center
1. The name of the institution
2. Year of establishment: _______________
3. Location
3.1. Head Office
- Address ___________City_______Woreda_______Kebele __________
3.2. Branch Offices/Centers (if any)
4. Institutional Profile
4.1. Vision-
4.2. Mission
4.3. Goal/s
4.4. Objectives
5. Intervention Profile
5.1. Beneficiaries
5.1.1. Specific social groups targeted by the institution
5.1.2. Profile of beneficiaries by disaggregation (sex, age, disability, etc …) (Please, give
us any document that shows such data)
5.2. Service Providers
5.2.1. Lawyers
5.2.2. Social workers
5.2.3. Paralegals
5.2.4. Others (please specify): _________________________________________
5.3. Types of cases/issues/complaints entertained (Please, give us any document that shows
such data)
5.3.1. Civil cases
5.3.2. Criminal cases
5.4. Services provided
5.4.1. Legal counseling (oral advice)
5.4.2. Preparation of pleadings
5.4.3. Legal representation
5.4.4. Other (please specify):- ________________
5.5. No. of staffs
5.5.1. Administrative:- __________________
5.5.2. professional
5.5.2.1. Lawyers:- ________
5.5.2.2. Paralegals:- ______
5.5.2.3. Law students:- __________
5.5.2.4. Non-lawyers:- ______
5.5.2.5. Others:- _________
Annex 2: Guiding Questions to Examine the Services Provided by Existing Service Providers
1. Profile of the Key Informant
1.1. Name of the Institution Represented:- ______________________________________
1.2. Official Capacity/Title of the Informant in the Institution:- ________________
1.3. Address of the informant:
- Tel. (office) ___________________
- Mobile ________________
- Email ____________
2. Level of Access
2.1. Legal Awareness:
2.1.1. Are there any programmes and activities in place to improve rights awareness in
served communities?
2.1.2. Are there any programmes and activities to popularize the services availed by the
legal aid service provider?
2.1.3. Was a legal need assessment conducted in the design of the programme?
2.1.4. Are there ongoing efforts to proactively identify legal needs in served
communities?
2.2. Geographic Access:
2.2.1. Does the provider have branch offices? How many?
2.2.2. If there are branch offices, how were the locations selected?
2.2.3. Was a baseline or needs assessment conducted prior to opening the branch
offices/centers?
2.2.4. Are all the centers currently in operation?
2.2.5. Is there a situation where you closed any of those branches? If so, why?
2.2.6. How does the legal aid service provider work to improve geographic access to its
services? (e.g. are there any outreach programmes?) How do you reach out to rural
areas?
2.2.7. Are the buildings where legal aid is provided accessible to all?
2.2.8. Do you have sign language expert?
2.2.9. Do you have translators in case the client speaks a different language?
2.3. Program Access:
2.3.1. Is adequate funding and other resources available for the provision of legal aid
services?
2.3.2. Have alternative funding sources and schemes been sought? Are the services
provided in a comprehensive manner?
2.4. Financial Access:
2.4.1. Are there any direct costs for the provision of legal aid services (e.g. costs of
application)?
2.4.2. What about indirect costs (e.g. transportation) and opportunity costs (e.g. time spent
at the center)?
2.4.3. What has been done to minimize these costs?
2.4.4. Does the center provide any financial support to cover direct, indirect and
opportunity costs of accessing the services?
3. Delivery and Use of Services
3.1. Service Providers:
3.1.1. Who is providing the legal aid service?
3.1.2. What are the qualifications of the individuals providing the legal aid service?
3.1.2.1. Lawyers
3.1.2.2. Social workers
3.1.2.3. Paralegals
3.1.2.4. Others (please specify):
3.1.3. How is the center managed? Who is involved in the management of the center?
3.2. Types of cases/issues/complaints entertained: What types of case are most recurrently
brought before the Center?
3.2.1. Civil cases
3.2.3. Administrative proceedings
3.3. Services provided: What are the services provided most recurrently to beneficiaries?
3.3.1. Legal awareness
3.3.2. Legal counseling (oral advice)
3.3.3. Preparation of pleadings
3.3.5. Other (please specify)
3.4. Beneficiaries
3.4.1. What are the eligibility criteria for an individual to benefit from the service? Do you
use subjective or objective criteria? If it is subjective, what are they?
3.4.2. How do you identify a person who can afford to pay for the service from the other
who can’t?
3.4.3. Who are the beneficiaries of the legal aid provision?
3.4.3.1. Specific social groups targeted by the institution
3.4.3.2. Profile of beneficiaries by disaggregation (sex, age, disability, etc …)

3.4.4. What mechanisms do you use to follow-up cases?
3.4.5. How do you advertise the service? What mode of advertisement do you use?
4. Quality of Services
4.1. Establishing Professional Standards for Lawyers and Non-Lawyers
4.1.1. What mechanisms do you apply to make sure the service provided is confidential,
independent and empowering of the client?
4.1.2. Is there a code of conduct for legal aid service providers in place?
4.1.3. Does the center have an operational manual governing the provision of services?
4.1.4. What type of quality assurance mechanisms do you employ? Are model rules in
place to govern the conduct of lawyers and non-lawyers providing legal aid
services?
4.1.5. Do these rules set forth the duties of such advocates, and applicable standards of
professionalism (including integrity, thoroughness, promptness, responsiveness,
record keeping, and ongoing training)?
4.2. Training
4.2.1. Is training provided to lawyers and non-lawyers providing legal aid services on a
regular basis? Is there a regular training programme in place?
4.2.2. If yes, does the training programme cover substantive legal concepts and applicable
laws, regulations, and rules, as well as skills training in advocacy, negotiation, and
mediation? Is there a standard training manual for legal aid service providers?
4.2.3. Does the center support or promote professional education and training to service
providers on areas specific to legal aid service provision (e.g. graduate studies on
legal aid)?
4.3. Performance
4.3.1. Identification of target areas for the provision of services based upon evaluation of
the needs for legal aid
4.3.2. Coordination with other agencies and groups providing legal aid in order to
minimize duplication of effort, as well as coordination with other service providers
to ensure that beneficiaries are linked into essential services
4.3.3. How do you coordinate and cooperate with justice actors such as prison, police,
courts and other governmental organs?
4.3.4. Creation of minimum standards for providers of legal aid
4.3.5. Advocacy for comprehensive supported legal aid programs, including government
and non‐government actors
4.3.6. Staffing and resourcing of legal aid delivery programs that include lawyers and
non‐lawyers
4.3.7. Provision of continuing education to staff service providers
4.4. Additional Issues
4.4.1. What are the challenges in providing legal aid service?
4.4.2. Has the program been evaluated previously either internally or externally? What are
the results?
4.4.3. Is there a need for specialization in targeting a specific group to benefit from your
service?
Documents to be collected
1. Legal aid service manual from MOJ
2. Case Filing formats of each legal aid providers
3. Rules available at the Centers
4. Activity reports
5. Documents that shows the Profile of beneficiaries by disaggregation (sex, age, disability,
etc …), Types of cases/issues/complaints entertained and service provided
Annex 3: List of Questions for Stakeholders

The following interview questions have been adapted to the name and functions of each stakeholder
institutions. The guideline actually used for the courts and the Police are presented below as a sample
to avoid duplication.
Courts
1. Profile of the Informant

1.1. Name
1.2. Represented court/bench
1.3. Responsibility
1.4. Address (For additional information)
1.4.1. Telephone (Office)
1.4.2. Mobile Phone
2. E-mail Address
3. Demand for and Availability of Legal Aid Services
3.1. How much of the demand on the part of beneficiaries of the court’s services for legal aid
services has been met
3.2. Which social sections face problems or unable to access legal services
3.3. In what areas do these social sections need legal aid services
3.3.1. Civil cases
3.4. Other (please specify)
3.5. What types of services do the unmet needs of these social sections relate to Please
prioritize.
3.5.1. Legal counseling/oral advice
3.5.2. Preparation of applications, pleadings, and other documents
3.6. Other (Please specify)
4. Is there any institution providing legal aid services to the users of the court Yes  No  If yes,
please specify the name of the institution
5. Delivery of legal aid services, networking and coordination
5.1. What is the role of the court in the provision of legal aid services to users
5.2. Who provides the legal aid services to the users of your services
5.2.1. Lawyers 
5.2.2. Social workers 

5.2.3. Paralegals 
5.4. Is there a mechanism through which paralegals, law students and interns (persons without
an advocacy license) to the users of the court’s services? If so, plese describe.
5.5. Are there mechanisms in place to avoid overlapping and improve the availability and
quality of legal aid services through coordination with other justice sector institutions? If
so, please describe.
5.6. Can you think of a successful experience that can be considered a good practice in the
delivery of legal aid services? If so, please describe
Police
1. Profile of the Informant
1.1. Name
1.2. Represented institution
1.3. Responsibility
1.4. Address (For additional information)
1.4.1. Telephone (Office)
1.4.2. Mobile Phone
2. E-mail Address
3. Demand for and Availability of Legal Aid Services
3.1. How much of the demand on the part of beneficiaries for legal aid services has been met
3.2. Which social sections face problems or unable to access legal services
3.3. In what areas do these social sections need legal aid services
3.3.1. Civil cases
3.4. Other (please specify)
3.5. What types of services do the unmet needs of these social sections relate to Please
prioritize.
3.5.1. Legal counseling/oral advice
3.5.2. Preparation of applications, pleadings, and other documents
4. Is there any institution providing legal aid services to the users of your services Yes  No  If
yes, please specify the name of the institution
5. Delivery of legal aid services, networking and coordination

5.1. What is the role of your institution in the provision of legal aid services to users
5.2. Who provides the legal aid services to the users of your services
5.2.1. Lawyers 
5.2.2. Social workers 
5.2.3. Paralegals 
5.4. Is there a mechanism through which paralegals, law students and interns (persons without
an advocacy license) to the users of the your services? If so, please describe.
5.5. Are there mechanisms in place to avoid overlapping and improve the availability and
quality of legal aid services through coordination with other justice sector institutions? If
so, please describe.
5.6. Can you think of a successful experience that can be considered a good practice in the
delivery of legal aid services? If so, please describe
Assessment
Annex 4: List Legal
of of KeyAid
Informants
in Ethiopiaof Legal Aid Providers 114
Annex 4: List of Key Informants of Legal Aid Providers
No. Name of interviewee Institution represented Position

1.
No. Shemelese Abebe
Name of interviewee AAU Center
Institution for Human Rights Legal Aid Center (Adama branch office)
represented Office
Positionassistant
2.
1. Yednekachew Ayele
Shemelese Abebe AAU Center
AAU Center forfor Human
Human Rights
Rights Legal
Legal Aid
Aid Center
Center (Hawassa
(Adama branch office)
branchoffice) Center Coordinator
Office assistant
3.
2. Gizachew Sileshi
Yednekachew Ayele Bahir Dar University Legal Aid Center
AAU Center for Human Rights Legal Aid Center (Hawassa branch office) Academic staff & Coordinator of the Center
Center Coordinator
4.
3. Fitsum Zeleke
Gizachew Sileshi Ethiopian
Bahir Dar Christian
UniversityLawyers Fellowship
Legal Aid Center Coordinator
Academic staff & Coordinator of the Center
5.
4. Yemaneh
Fitsum G/Mariam
Zeleke Lawyers Association
Ethiopian Christian
Ethiopian Lawyers Fellowship Lideta Branch Legal Aid legal counsellor
Coordinator
6.
5. Mulugojjam
Yemaneh Demesse
G/Mariam Women Lawyers
Ethiopian Lawyers Association, Bahir Dar Branch
Association Office Coordinator
BranchBranch
Lideta Legal Aid legal counsellor
7.
6. Meron Aragaw
Mulugojjam Demesse Ethiopian Women
Ethiopian Lawyers Association,
Women Lawyers Association, Addis Ababa
Bahir Dar Main Office
Branch Coordinator
ProgramOffice
Branch Coordinator
8.
7. Fasika Hailu
Meron Aragaw Child Justice
Ethiopian Project,
Women Lawyers Supreme Court
FederalAssociation, Addis Ababa Main Office CLPC Coordinator
Program Coordinator
9.
8. Hiruye Wubie
Fasika Hailu Gondar University
Child Justice Free
Project, Federal Aid Center
LegalSupreme Court Legal
CLPCAid Center Director
Coordinator
10.
9. Sultan Kasim
Hiruye Wubie Haramaya University College of
Gondar University Free Legal AidLaw Free Legal Service Centers
Center Director of the Social
Legal Aid Center Justice Center
Director
11.
10. Kassahun Molla
Sultan Kasim Jimma
HaramayaUniversity School
University of Law
College of Law
LegalFree Center
AidLegal Service Centers Director
Director of the Social Justice Center
12.
11. Eyob Awash
Kassahun Molla Mekelle University Legal Aid Center
Jimma University School of Law Legal Aid Center Director
Director
13.
12. Admassu
Eyob Alemayehu
Awash HawassaUniversity
Mekelle UniversityLegal
LegalAid Center
AidCenter Coordinator
Director
14.
13. Solomon Guadie
Admassu Alemayehu Jigjiga University
Hawassa UniversityLegal Aid
Legal AidCenter
Center Coordinator
Coordinator
15.
14. Milion
SolomonMenbere
Guadie Southern
Jigjiga University
Ethiopia Legal
YoungAidLawyers
CenterAssociation V/President
Coordinator
16.
15. Mezegebu Bejaura
Milion Menbere Adama
SouthernUniversity
Ethiopia Young Lawyers Association Coordinator
V/President and legal counsellor
17.
16. Kasahun Sertse
Mezegebu Bejaura Selam
AdamaProfessionals’
University Association for People -Coordinator and legal counsellor
17. Kasahun Sertse Selam Professionals’ Association for People -
A Research Report on Assessment of Legal Aid Service in Ethiopia 115
A Research Report on Assessment of Legal Aid Service in Ethiopia 115
Annex 5: List of Key Informants from Institutional Stakeholders
Annex
No. Name Key
5: Listofofthe Informants from Institutional Stakeholders
interviewee Institution represented Position
No. Name of the interviewee Institution represented 175 Position
1. Alebel Tadesse Amhara National Regional State, Bureau of Justice175 Civil Cases Business Process Owner
1. Alebel Tadesse Amhara National Regional State, Bureau 176 of Justice Civil Cases Business Process Owner
2. Beserat Abera North Gondar Zone, Bureau of Justice176 Civil Cases Expert
2. Beserat Abera th
North Gondar Zone, Bureau of Justice Civil Cases Expert
3. Sgt. Desta Geze Azezo 5th Police Station Coordinator of Community Policing
3. Sgt. Desta Geze Azezo 5 Police Station Coordinator of Community Policing
4. Aster Yayehe Azezo Kebele Admini., Women, Children & Youth Affairs Bureau Women, Children and Youth Affairs Head
4. Aster Yayehe177 Azezo Kebele Admini., Women, Children & Youth Affairs Bureau Women, Children and Youth Affairs Head
5. Anonymous177 North Gondar Zone, Prison Administration Head
5. Anonymous North Gondar Zone, Prison Administration Head
6. Guade Demeke North Gondar Zone, Women, Children and Youth Affairs Bureau Gender and Youth Affairs promotion head
6. Guade Demeke North Gondar Zone, Women, Children and Youth Affairs Bureau Gender and Youth Affairs promotion head
7. Ayenalem Endeya Mekele First Instance court Registrar
7. Ayenalem Endeya Mekele First Instance court Registrar
8. A/Inspect. Giday G/Michael Kedamaye Weyane Kefele Ketema Police Station Human Resource Head
8. A/Inspect. Giday G/Michael Kedamaye Weyane Kefele Ketema Police Station Human Resource Head
9. V/Comma. Tebreha Ibrahim Mekele Prison Counselling Service coordinator
9. V/Comma. Tebreha Ibrahim Mekele Prison Counselling Service coordinator
10. Mesho Hailu Mekele Kedamay Weyane Kifle Ketema, Bureau of Justice Prosecutor
10. Mesho Hailu Mekele Kedamay Weyane Kifle Ketema, Bureau of Justice Prosecutor
11. Kahassaye G/Kidan Tigraye Regional State, Labor and Social Affairs Bureau Capacity Building and Community
11. Kahassaye G/Kidan Tigraye Regional State, Labor and Social Affairs Bureau Capacity
Mobilization Building
Senior Expertand Community
Mobilization Senior Expert
12. Atumo G/Mariam MoJ, Advocates Licensing and Administration Directorate Legal Expert
12. Atumo G/Mariam MoJ, Advocates Licensing and Administration Directorate Legal Expert
13. Lemma Mulugeta and Ministry of Women, Children and Youth Affairs Legal Service Experts
13. Lemma Mulugeta and
Tegabu Aregawi Ministry of Women, Children and Youth Affairs Legal Service Experts
Tegabu Aregawi
175
175
It is also a legal aid provider.
176 ItIt is
176
is also
also aa legal
legal aid
aid provider.
provider.
177 It is also a legal provider.
177
The name of theaid informant has not been indicated in the questionnaire sent from this site.
The name of the informant has not been indicated in the questionnaire sent from this site.
14. Asha Ameni Adama Zone High Court Adama Zone High Court President
15. Comma. Abebe Teshome East Shoa Zone Prison Prisoners Rehabilitation Head
16. Zewedu Mulugeta Adama Wereda Justice Bureau Prosecutor
17. Ayesha Aba Simer Adama City, Women, Children and Youth Affairs Bureau Women empowerment head
18. V/Comma. Negalign Tulu Bahir Dar Prison Center Prisoners Admin. & Rehabilitation Head
19. Damete Gashu Amhara Regional State, Women, Children and Youth Affairs Bureau Gender and Youth Affairs Promotion Expert
20. Gezali aba Simel Jimma Zone High Court Judge & Representative of the President
21. Inspector Habtamu Taderu Jimma Zone Prison Legal Service officer
22. Kedeja Aba Mecha Jimma Zone Women, Children and Youth Affairs Bureau Gender Promotion Officer
23. Inspector Girma Hailu East Harerge Prison Administration Prisoners Admin. and Rehabilitation Head
24. Keder Abedujeda East Harerge High Court Judge
25. Amin Adem Oromia Regional State, East Harerge Justice Bureau Head
26. Admasu Tilahun East Harerge Zone, Women, Children and Youth Affairs Bureau Information not provided
27. D/Inspect. Aliy Aman Harari Regional State Prison Administration Legal Service officer
28. Abdulaziz Mohammed Hareri Women, Children and Youth Affairs Bureau Project Coordinator
29. Seblewongel Tilahun SNNPRS Women, Children and Youth Affairs Bureau Gender Officer
30. Mate Matane Gemeda SNNPRS High Court (Sidama zone) President
31. Hailegebriel Tadesse SNNPRS Justice Bureau Prosecutor
32. Tewodros Getahun SNNPRS Hawassa Prison Center Counsellor in Psychology
33. Kedere Abedo Juda Easter Harerge High Court Judge
34. Zekiya Asmali Harari Regional State Justice Bureau Senior Prosecutor
Workshop Report:
National Workshop of Legal Aid Providers

in Ethiopia
Rapporteur:
Kalkidan Aberra
Editor
Kokebe Wolde
Addis Ababa
May 09 & 10, 2013
1. Overview
The National Workshop on of Legal Aid Providers in Ethiopia was organized
by Center for Human Rights, Addis Ababa University. The main purpose of the
Workshop was to create a forum for the different actors that are engaged in legal aid
provisions to discuss the state of legal aid in Ethiopia, share their experiences, share
the experience of other countries and map the way forward to improve the state of
legal aid in Ethiopia. Thus, the workshop brought together over 50 participants and
representatives of legal aid providers in Ethiopia, namely, public universities,
government organs, non-governmental organizations and donor agencies. A series of
presentations on legal aid were presented and discussed upon by participants.
The main themes of the presentations and discussions focused on the legal
and policy framework governing legal aid service delivery in Ethiopia, the type of
legal aid services provided, the level of cooperation and coordination among legal
aid service providers, and the challenges in the provision of legal aid service. In
addition an overview of models of legal aid delivery, international principles and the
experience of three African countries were presented by Professor Thomas Geraghty,
Dirtector of Bluhm Legal Clinic at Northwestern University. This led to plenary
discussion on the objectives of networking, models of networking, opportunities and
challenges and process and procedure to be followed in setting a networking forum.
This report highlights the key points raised during presentations and presents
a narrative summary of the discussion made by participants and the eventual
networking proposal that emerged from the Workshop.
2. Opening Speech
The Workshop was formally opened with opening speech made by W/t
Elshaday Kifle, Head of the Center for Human Rights, Addis Ababa University. In
her opening speech W/zt Elshaday welcomed the participants to the workshop. She
Workshop Report: National Workshop of Legal Aid Providers in Ethiopia 119
also outlined that the aim of the Center, established in 2008, was to promote human
rights in Ethiopia through teaching, research and community service. In line with this
aim the Center offers a Masters program in human rights which approaches human
rights from a multidisciplinary perspective. It also has a joint PhD Program in
‘Peace, Federalism and Human Rights’ which is run jointly with Institute of Peace
and Security Studies and Center for Federal Studies. She also highlighted the Center
so far has produced and/or published: the first edition of Ethiopian Human Rights
Journal, the Handbook on the Rights of the Child and Background Documents on
Children’s Acts in Ethiopia. In addition there is a plan to publish a peer-reviewed
book on Good Governance and Human Rights. In relation to community service, the
Center has been running the Legal Literacy, Rights Advice and Information Project
since 2010, which is now substituted by the Access to Justice Project.
W/rt Elshaday also reflected that equality before the law and access to justice
are fundamental rights recognized in numerous international and domestic legal
instruments. However, the high cost of legal services, ignorance of the law and
illiteracy results in the absence of effective realization of the rights. In the absence of
rights advice and information giving, these rights will continue to be meaningless for
the poor and vulnerable section of our society. Therefore, it is imperative that there
be a vibrant system for free legal aid provision that involves the concerted effort of
all the stakeholders, where those who cannot afford the paid services of the lawyer
can resort to avail their legal right of access to justice. She stated that to make
significant changes and to make the legal aid system robust and more relevant to the
justice system collaborative work by the actors and stakeholders in legal aid
provision is crucial. To this end, the Center for Human Rights has organized the
workshop to strengthen cooperation, coordination and networking among legal aid
providers. In her concluding remarks, she stressed the importance of mapping ways
of cooperation and networking among legal aid providers; and to lay the ground
work for establishing a strong network.
3. Brief Introduction on Access to Justice Project

Faciltator: Ato Getahun Kassa ” Center for Human Rights, Addis Ababa
University
Presenter: W/ro Tsege Alemayehu ”Center for Human Rights, Access to Justice
Project, Addis Ababa University
In the introductory session, W/ro Tsege Alemayehu introduced to the
participants about the genealogy of the project, its current programs and
achievements to date. She explained that the project first started in 2010 in
partnership with the University of Glasgow with the aim to provide legal advice and
information to poor and vulnerable groups; improving access to information, training
and advocacy work by using evidence from clients to identify gaps in the law and its
implementation of evidence based advocacy; establish and strengthen the network of
legal aid service providers to ensure that best practices are shared, and the service is
provided in an efficient and coordinated manner; and enhance awareness and
practical implementation of human rights laws and standards through research,
training and sharing of good practice.
Currently the project has partnership agreements with universities of
Hawassa, Adama and Ambo (with the new Access to Justice Project) and Supreme
Court Child Justice Project. It has eighteen (18) legal aid centers consisting of urban
centers in Addis Ababa, Adama Hawassa and outreach services in rural areas
surrounding those cities. The core activities of the project are: provision of free legal
aid service; legal literacy and awareness creation through various publications, radio
programs and trainings; networking; training on human rights; research and

publications and internship and exchange programmes.
She identified the achievements of the project to date as being: maintaining
sustainability; assisted over 6000 clients; raised awareness of rights among general
public; trained paralegals or better qualified law students and built legal capacity in
other organizations; established effective partnerships with governmental, non-
governmental, community based organizations, and universities ” in the provision of
community service; established infrastructure for legal aid service delivery;
developed training manuals, case records, quality control mechanism and
contributed to evidence based advocacy. She concluded her presentation by
identifying key lessons learned from the project which are:
• Information ” has to be accurate, up to date and accessible
• Training is crucial
• Volunteerism works but they must be supported and managed
• Good case recording system and role of the manager in checking cases -
vital to quality
• Networking should be strengthened
4. Models for the Provision of Legal Aid: Experiences of Other

Countries
Facilitator: Ato Getahun Kassa ” Center for Human Rights, Addis Ababa
University
Presenter: Professor Thomas F. Geraghty - Director of Bluhum Legal Clinic,
Northwestern University
Professor Thomas F. Geraghty began his presentation by briefly reflecting on
the existing legal aid service in Ethiopia which is mainly provided by law schools
and law students. He further stated that in order to further develop the existing legal
aid service participants should focus on adopting a national legal aid model or
framework. To this end, he stressed the UN principles and Guidelines on Legal Aid
in Criminal Justice Systems and Lilongwe Declaration and Plan of Action on Legal
Aid in Criminal Justice Systems in Africa as well as the experiences of Malawi,
Sierra Leone and Uganda could serve as good source for standard setting.
In elaborating the UN Principles and Lilongwe Declaration he listed some of
the guiding principles such as widening the scope of legal aid in criminal cases to
include legal representation upon arrest or legal advice to victims of crimes, issue of
equity and independence of legal aid providers. The independence of the legal aid
service is related to the kind of legal aid system a country adopts; government funded
or non-governmental funding. Maintaining independence could be difficult if the
legal aid is funded by the government. He drew attention to the experience of
government funded legal aid service in Chicago where Congress occasionally has cut
funding where the provision of legal aid service to those wanting to sue the
government has resulted in conflict of interest.
However, Professor Geragthy pointed out that government funding could help
overcome the issue of sustainability which is a major concern in providing legal aid
services. He highlighted the experience of non-governmental organizations such as

the Ethiopian Bar Association and the pro bono services provided by lawyers. The
same challenge is faced by organizations in the USA where legal aid services move
from project to project.
Professor Geragthy also highlighted that another area to be considered in
choosing a certain model of legal aid service is the use of lawyers versus paralegals.
For instance Malawi’s implementation plan for Legal Aid Act advocates for the use
of paralegals taking into account the scarcity of resources, in this case lawyers, and
seeking to address the need of the poorest and most vulnerable parts of society. The
same approach is adopted by Sierra Leone where the parliament has issued a legal
aid act explicitly providing that paralegals are to be in each of the 149 Chiefdoms.
On the other hand, the number of law schools and law students in Ethiopia has
increased substantially in recent years which could be a huge resource potential for
the legal aid service. Of course to use this potential it could be necessary to adopt
some kind of ‘student practice rule’ where senior law students will be allowed to
represent clients in court under the supervision of qualified lawyers or faculty.
Professor Geragthy finally pointed that if Ethiopia aims to set up a nationwide
legal aid service, the experience of these countries which have launched a nationwide
legal aid service is worth to look at to answer the questions regarding: the model of
legal aide, role of government in enacting legislation pertaining to legal aid,
monitoring, standard setting, ensuring quality and sustainability.
Discussion
During the ensuing discussion, the participants noted the Workshop should
focus not only in networking NGOs, as previous initiative have done, but also on
establishing a network with government organizations such as the Ministry of
Justice, public defense office, etc. with the view to come up with guidelines and
mechanisms to make legal aid service provision effective. In relation to legal aid
clinics run by law schools concerns were raised regarding linking and balancing of
clinical legal education and legal aid service and sources of funding which has an
impact on the sustainability of these programs. Sustainability of programs is also a
concern for resident NGOs since the new civil societies law provides that resident
NGOs have to get their funding mainly from within Ethiopia. On the question of
independence of government funded legal aid centers, the presenter stressed
overcoming the independence problem would require strengthening of professional
ethics of lawyers whereby loyalty to the client will out weight loyalty to the funder.
In addition, sometimes the national context would require balancing duty to the client
versus duty to the community.
Participants also discussed the need for a broad, nationwide consensus on the
definition and scope of legal aid service. They further noted community level
participation in designing and providing legal aid should be encouraged. Elaborating
on this point of discussion, W/ro Zenaye Tadesse, Executive Director of EWLA,
identified four main challenges facing the legal aid service in Ethiopia: difference of
opinion on the nature or definition of legal aid by service providers; the absence of
law regulating provision of legal aid services; and lack of coordination and
networking among service providers. She thus recommended that a certain
government organ should be responsible for coordinating service providers, setting
up standards and ensuring accessibility of the services. Reflecting on the points
raised by her, the presenter cautioned that too much regulation could impose
restrictions on individuals and/or groups that can have creative approaches to the
provision of legal aid services.
5. Synchronizing Legal Aid Services and Clinical Legal Education

in Ethiopia
University
Presenter: Ato Seife Ayalew - Center for Human Rights, Access to Justice
Project, Addis Ababa University
Ato Seife Ayalew began the session by identifying the legal and policy basis
of legal aid services and clinical legal education in Ethiopia. Thus, he stated that the
Higher Education Proclamation No. 351/2003 set the objective of providing quality
education and rendering community services. In addition, since 2006 clinical legal
education has become part of the Ethiopian law schools’ curriculum. According to
the curriculum, the objectives of clinical legal education are expanding and
deepening law students’ understanding of substantive laws, supporting the
development of essential professional skills, sensitizing students to ethical issues,
promoting professional collaboration, enhancing interdisciplinary knowledge,
serving underserved clients, improving legal systems, and promoting access to
justice. He noted that legal aid service preceded clinical education and as such
Mekelle University and Bahir Dar University established free legal aid centers in
2004 and 2005 respectively.
Since then most law schools have established legal aid centers, most of them
based on the funding provided by Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC). A
number of elements were identified as common features of these centers. First, the
objectives of establishing legal aid centers were: providing ‚community service‛,
provide practice oriented legal education and allow students to practice what they
have learned in class. Second, the types of legal aid centers run by these law schools
can be generally divided into: urban, rural (outreach/satellite) and prison based.
Third, their target groups are indigent and vulnerable groups mainly women,
children, persons with disabilities, the elderly and persons living with HIV/AIDS.
Finally the main actors in these centers are teachers, students, practicing lawyers and
paralegals.
Coming to the main theme of the presentation Ato Seife emphasized the need
for synchronizing legal aid centers with clinical legal education by presenting the
benefits of such synchronization. He noted the following as some of the benefits that
ensue from linking legal aid centers with clinical legal education: Serves both
community service and curricular objectives via practical legal education; provides a
great opportunity for students to learn professional ethics, professional responsibility
and practical skills such as interviewing, counseling, drafting pleadings; ensures
sustainability in the provision of legal aid services; makes universities and law
schools more socially relevant; legal aid centers cases may be used to inform
academic discussions and policy research and legal aid centers can benefit from law
faculties’ expertise and students’ volunteer work.
He then presented the Strengths, weakness, opportunities, threats (SWOT)
analysis of the legal aid centers currently run by Ethiopian law schools. He identified
the fact that most law schools are running legal aid centers and outreach programmes
and provide their services both on civil and criminal cases as strengthens of these
centers. Whereas the fact that these centers were established without undertaking
needs assessment, they are also heavily dependent on external funding, are located at
isolated outposts (laws schools), poor quality control mechanisms, supervision and
follow- up and case recording as weaknesses of these centers.
Discussion
After the presentations, participants shared the best practices of their
institutions in providing legal aid services. Gondar University, for instance, have
eight legal aid centers operating in Gondar city and nearby Woredas and clients that
need representation are represented by the law school teachers, who have an
obligation to provide community service that amount to two credit hours. Mekelle
University, on the other hand, has prepared a guideline on how to screen clients and
cases to be handled by the legal aid center. Concerning representation, attorney hired
by the University usually represent the client in court after a panel decides for the
case should go to court. In addition, the Tigray Regional State allows students to
represent clients in court. In the case of Haramaya and Jimma universities, the
license to practice is given to the universities that enable these institutions to
represent clients in court in their respective jurisdictions. However, the license given
to these universities by the regional justice bureaus is sometimes challenged by
judges as lacking clear legal backing. Jimma University’s comprehensive internal
rule dealing with issues such as screening of clients and case recording was also
mentioned as one of the best practices.
Participants have also noted the difficulty that is encountered in running law
schools’ legal aid centers as the funding from EHRC is interrupted and university
officials do not own and integrate them into their planning. A representative from the
Federal Supreme Court Children justice Project has remarked that since children and
women’s cases are complicated and students have no experience and expertise,
students should do the advice service under close supervision.
Participants also noted that the new charities and societies (CSO) law has an
indirect effect on the working of law schools’ legal aid centers because CSOs
working on human rights issues were one important source of funding for law school
legal aid programs. On the other hand, participants stressed the need to collaborate
and network among universities and other service providers that would enable them
to share best practices, overcome service gap regarding representation as well as
advocate for their common cause such as the need for a legal framework regulating
legal aid and student practice law. Finally, some participants stated including
representatives of government stakeholders in such workshops is important to raise
their awareness and change attitude on such issues as student practice rule.
6. Research Report on Assessment of Legal Aid in Ethiopia

Facilitator: Ato Fasil Mulatu ” Center for Human Rights, Addis Ababa
University
Presenters: W/ro Anchinesh Shiferaw - Center for Human Rights, Addis Ababa
University
Ato Getnet Mitiku - Consultant
In introducing the assessment report on networking and provision of legal aid
in Ethiopia, the presenters highlighted that there are various governmental and non-
governmental institutions that provide legal aid in Ethiopia. However, these actors
use various modes in the provision of the service. Despite some general trends, the
kind of service they provide, who provides those services, how the service is
delivered varies across legal aid providers. The service rendered by these institutions
includes provision of information about legal rights and responsibilities; outreach and
community legal education; legal advice and brief services; support and assistance
for individuals capable of representing themselves; representation before judicial
organs, etc. The presenters noted that preliminary assessments indicate that the
provision of the service is scattered, uncoordinated, urban-based and unpredictable

due to various reasons.
The Centre for Human Rights initiated this assessment with the objective to
identifying the trend in legal aid provisions by different governmental and non-
governmental organs including a description of the main legal aid practices, its gaps
and challenges, and identification and description of the coordination and
cooperation among the various legal aid providers. The legal aid service provided by
Public Defence Office at the Federal level and at the regional level was not included
in the study.
After briefly reflecting on the meaning of legal aid, relevance of legal aid,
international and regional human rights framework concerning legal aid; they
outlined national policy and legal framework such as the adoption of general human
rights instruments; constitutional provisions on access to justice; fair trial and
equality before the law; equality before the law under the Criminal Code (Art. 4) and
the Criminal Procedure Code which provides for mandatory legal representation for
serious crimes (Art.174); juveniles without adult representation (Art.172(4) and
providing interpreter (126)2.
According to the presenters models of legal aid service provision in Ethiopia
can mainly be categorized as:
• Government provided legal aid: public defenders; court appointments; and

publicly financed representation [emphasis on criminal cases]
• Legal profession: pro bono schemes (voluntary or mandatory); universities
and law clinics (clinical legal education)
• NGOs based legal aid centers: public interest litigation; paralegal
programmes; informal justice mechanisms
Assessment
Workshop of Legal
Report: Aid inWorkshop
National Ethiopia of Legal Aid Providers in Ethiopia 130
131
The presenters further noted that accessibility of legal aid service is very
crucial in terms of determining category of beneficiaries, quality of service, the
outcome, and output of the service. The researchers measured accessibility of legal
aid service in Ethiopia in terms of legal awareness, geographical, program, and
financial accessibility. On the basis of these ‘indicators’ the researchers concluded
that:
• Although most legal aid centers use different mechanisms such as
publication and distribution of briefing sheets and radio programs, these
initiatives are not well planned, are seasonal and hence not sustainable to
help create awareness about the legal rights as well as the provision of legal
aid services;
• In relation to the geographical coverage of legal aid services, most legal aid
centers operate in major cities and towns. In addition most centers are
located in court houses, prison premises, and governmental offices such as
Bureau of Women, Children and Youth Affairs (BWCYA). The location of
the legal aid centers in such places has both positive and negative aspects;
on the positive side the centers are accessible to the beneficiaries since most
of the time it is these institutions that are approached by indigent and
vulnerable people who seek legal aid services. It also avoids additional
transportation cost they might incur to access these legal aid providers.
On the other hand, some offices of the legal aid centers are found far away
from beneficiaries and there is an overlap of service provision in a single place in
certain cases. Finally the fact that most legal aid centers are found in buildings
which are less accessible to persons with disabilities was noted.
• With regard to financial accessibility it was noted that eligible clients,
although the criteria for eligibility vary greatly, benefit from legal aid
service for free and expenses for documents copying etc. are covered by
legal aid providers. However, other indirect costs such as transportation
cost, subsistence cost etc. are not covered by legal aid providers except in
the case of Federal Supreme Court Children Justice Project (FSC - CJP)
which has victims fund.
In concluding their presentation they noted, inter alia, that the narrow
conception of legal aid services within the constitution and Criminal Procedure Code
should be addressed through a substantive legislation adopting a broader definition of
legal aid; efforts to create legal awareness should be strengthened and legal
awareness should be considered as a component of legal aid service and development
and implementation of uniform service provision standards for legal aid services
providers should be considered.
Discussion
The participants began the discussion by raising questions to be answered by
the presenters and giving comments on the research report. The questions and
comments focused on: the importance of needs assessment before opening legal aid
centers, the research questions and data collection methods, the non-inclusion of
some of the experience of NGOs and universities in the research report. In relation to
the importance of needs assessment, most participants felt that, given the socio-
economic status of the country and scarcity of lawyers in rural areas, failure of most
legal aid centers to conduct a needs assessment upon establishment should not be
raised as a shortcoming of these programs. They stressed that this concern should
probably be raised only in the case of Addis Ababa as most NGOs and lawyers are
found in this city. They noted that the issue that needs to be raised by the report
should have been impact assessment. With regard to the research question and data
collection method, some participants raised their concern that the research question
as well as the nature of the research report is not clear.
Further, a representative of Alumni Association of Faculty of Law of Addis
Ababa University pointed that the report failed to include his organization in the list
of service providers. He explained that established in 1992 E.C. the alumni
association has been giving community services in two streams: three months legal
literacy program to community members and legal aid service. He noted that the
legal literacy program is no longer functional due to lack of funding whereas in the
provision of legal aid service the alumni association teams up senior law students
with lawyers to give legal advice and write pleadings other court documents to
clients. The final comment was the non-inclusion of the experience of Ethiopian
Human Rights Council (EHRC) in the report. According to a representative, the
EHRC attempted to establish a network of legal aid providers with the aim of
avoiding duplication of activities, develop referral system, guidelines, case selection
manual and case recording or management system. To this end it has signed a
memorandum of understanding with seven organizations. Hence, the participant
stressed, the report should have looked up prior experience and attempt to network
legal aid service providers and learn the reason why it has not succeeded.
Reflecting on the questions and comments, the presenters responded that the
assessment is not yet finalized and comments forwarded by the participants will be
included in the report. With regard to needs assessment, although the need for the
legal aid service is obvious, any designing of project to provide legal aid service need
to identify which segments of the society needs the service and how to make it
accessible to them. Moreover, the assessment has identified some legal aid centers
that provide the same services at the same location or that entertain very few number
of cases. Thus, the report has identified the lack of needs assessment by legal aid
centers upon establishment as one shortcoming.
The presenters also elaborated that the research is a survey focusing on who is
providing legal aid services and describing the types of services provided. They said
that the main research questions are: are there policy and legal frameworks governing
the service, are the services being provided adequate, available and standardized and
is there coordination and networking among service providers. In dealing with the
research questions, the assessment has concluded that there is a need for a legal
framework dealing with legal aid and the preliminary findings show the most
successful legal aid system are those that have clear legal framework. In the
Ethiopian context, this issue warrants further investigations to clarify the role of
government in the provision of legal aid service. This is so because due to the new
charities and societies law, legal aid service is shifting from civil societies to public
institutions /universities/ and clients seeking legal aid service first approach
government institutions. Consequently, the role of government institutions in
providing legal aid service and setting legal framework should be analyzed. Further,
in relation to setting up legal framework in areas such as institutional licensing for
student practice, the regional dimension needs further scrutiny.
The presenters also stressed that they have taken into consideration prior
networking attempts which have not succeeded due to technical incapacity and the
new charities and societies law which has banned pioneer service providers from
providing the service. Finally, the participants discussed the appropriateness of using
the term ‘legal aid’ as access to justice is a legal rights and a responsibility of the
lawyer, not a charity. However, it was noted that almost all lawyers use this
terminology although human rights instruments have opted for the term ‘legal
assistance’ instead.
Assessment
Workshop of Legal
Report: Aid inWorkshop
National Ethiopia of Legal Aid Providers in Ethiopia 134
135
7. Experiences and Challenges in Legal Aid Service Delivery:

The Case of Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association and Children’s Legal
Protection Center – Federal Supreme Court
Facilitator: Ato Fasil Mulatu ” Center for Human Rights, Addis Ababa University
Presenters: W/ro Zenaye Tadesse ” Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association (EWLA)
W/ro Fasika Hailu ” Children’s Legal Protection Center ” Federal
Supreme Court
W/ro Zenaye Tadesse, Executive Director of EWLA, began her presentation
by introducing to the participants about EWLA, its mission and objectives, its
organizational structure and core programs. Accordingly, she stated that EWLA is a
non-profit and non-partisan membership organization established in 1995
(operational in 1996) with the overall objective of promoting the legal, economic,
social and political rights of Ethiopian women. As such EWLA’s mission is to
contribute towards the realization of the economic, political and legal rights of
women.
On the basis of its mission EWLA has set four main objectives, namely:
identify working laws and traditional practices that are discriminatory and harmful to
women so as to make recommendations and to advocate for the amendment of laws
that discriminate against women and for the enactment of new laws that are
necessary to promote the interests of women and balance the harm made against
them in the past; educate women and society on the rights of women guaranteed in
existing laws and the remedies available when the rights are violated, to encourage
and support women to stand up for their rights by making use of the existing justice
system; provide legal aid and counseling to women that cannot afford paid legal
services and to represent them in court; and increase the number of women lawyers
by encouraging and supporting female law students and those women who are
interested in becoming lawyers.
As she explained it, the organizational structure of EWLA includes:
The General Assembly: is the supreme policy formulating and decision making
organ of EWLA, which is composed of regular members. Currently, the number of
EWLA’s regular and associate members is estimated to be around 500;
The Board of Directors: consists of 7 persons elected by the General Assembly,
provides a leadership oversight in the process of implementing the management and
programmatic tasks of the organization including periodic evaluation of performance
and,
The Secretariat: The Secretariat consists of the Head office, six branch offices in
the regional states and 53 voluntary committees working at grass roots level.
She further highlighted that the organization has three core programs: legal
aid & representation, public education & capacity building, and research &
advocacy. By focusing on legal aid and representation, she identified the services
provided by the organization as: mediation services, free legal aid and assistance to
women (counseling, provision of legal advice, preparation of court briefs (affidavits,
suits, appeals, etc)), regarding civil cases and follow ups of criminal cases, court
representation depending on the gravity of the case, and periodic case analysis
activities are also undertaken, as these provide an insight on test cases which provide
material on laws that need to be reformed in order to afford better protection to
women. She also noted that the primary beneficiaries of EWLA’s legal aid service
are women and girls.
She shared the experience of EWLA in establishing some form of networking
with other organizations working on the area. In this respect, she raised the cases
where the organization partnered with local government to expand the service (A.A:
sub-cities, Regions: women’s affairs offices and police stations); participated in the
establishment of a network to cooperate for the provision of legal aid services to the
poor (2008); is currently working with Federal Supreme Court with the aim of
cooperating for the provision of legal aid to children and referral to administrative
organs and law enforcement institutions. Finally she raised some of the challenges
the organization faced in providing legal aid: lack of comprehensive legislation, lack
of clear guideline in administering pro bono service, networking, and identification
of responsible body to monitor and raise funds and the new charities and societies’
law which puts financial constraint on the provision of legal aid by local NGOs.
In sharing the experience of Children’s Legal Protection Center on the
provision of legal aid service W/ro Fasika began by outlining the rationale of the
program. According to the population census of the country, children account for
52% of the total population and this section of society is the most vulnerable to
violence and abuse. Moreover, in spite of the improvement on the part of other
service providers such as child friendly courts, there are still gaps in the provision of
legal aid to children and lack of coordination among service providers, hence, the
need for such a specialized legal aid center. As a result the center was established
with the aim of providing free legal aid service and psycho-social support with a
broader view of ensuring the protection and fulfillment of children’s rights. It also
provides trainings to judges, public prosecutors, police, and rehabilitation centers
working with children in conflict with the law, lawyers, medical professionals, social
workers, registrars and other governmental and non- governmental organizations on
the rights of the child.
Currently the Center provides these services at three locations, namely: the
Federal Supreme Court, Federal First Instance Court Lideta branch and Federal High
Court Bole branch. In addition, the Center has signed Memorandum of

Understanding (MOU) with 34 government and non-governmental organizations.
The objective of these MOU is to strengthen child rights protection activities
undertaken by the Center and these organizations. So far the Center has provided
free legal aid services to 1376 children; referred 165 cases, six of which were
referred to the police while the remaining were referred to different organizations
that provide psycho- social services to children and provided training on children’s
rights to 599 professionals. She stated that the Center was successful to achieve its
objectives because it works within the government structure, was able to coordinate
with partner organizations, the involvement of seasoned private practitioners in the
provision of legal advice, it provides mediation services and undertakes follow up
and monitoring in accordance with preset guidelines.
8. The Role of Ministry of Justice in Civil Justice Administration

University
Presenter: Ato Adiamseged Atnafu ” FDRE Ministry of Justice
Ato Adiamseged Atnafu, representative from Ministry of Justice, spoke about
the powers and functions of the Ministry, legal basis or mandates of the Ministry in
relation to the provision of legal aid and the activities undertaken so far by the
Ministry in the provision of legal aid service. The Ministry was said to have four
main functions in relation to its mandate in civil matters: legal advice service,
contract drafting services, alternative dispute resolution and litigation. The legal
advice service included services to indigent and vulnerable persons either by
prosecutors at the Ministry or utilizing the pro bono obligation of private
practitioners; the alternative dispute resolution, a mandate that emanates from
Proclamation No. 691/2003, also mainly focused on resolving cases that involve
women and children and the Ministry also represent women and children in litigating
civil cases. These functions of the Ministry emanate from Proclamation No.
691/2010, Proclamation No. 471/1998, Proclamation No.4/1995 and Proclamation
No.11/1988 which all regulate the provision of legal aid service by the Ministry.
Regarding the beneficiaries of their legal aid service, Ato Adiamseged said
that they are indigent members of the public. In order to identify who an indigent is
for this purpose the Ministry has developed a draft directive. According to this draft
directive, a person will qualify as indigent and be entitled to the free legal service of
the Ministry if,
 He/she has no immovable property,
 He/she has no movable property the value of which exceed 10,000 Birr
 His/her monthly salary is less than the minimum monthly salary of public
employees
Other needy persons who will not be covered by these criteria will be covered by pro
bono service of licensed lawyers
In order to operationalize the mandate of the Ministry to provide legal aid
service regulations, directive and guidelines are needed. In this regard Ato
Adiamseged identified the following areas that need clear guidelines or regulation:
the management of pro bono service by licensed advocates, criteria to identify
persons that can receive legal aid service from the Ministry and identification of
cases to be assigned to pro bono service by licensed advocates. He noted that the
legal aid service of the Ministry is currently facing three main challenges: lack of
awareness among the public about the Ministry’s mandate to provide legal aid
service, absence of clear legal framework on the provision of legal aid service and
problems of networking and coordination among legal aid service providers. As a
final note he explained that the Ministry is working towards standardizing and
structuring the legal aid service provision in the country.
Discussion
The participants raised numerous questions regarding the role of MOJ in the
provision of legal aid service. The questions can be summarized as follows:-
“ Has the Ministry synchronized its legal aid service with the functions of public
defender office?
“ In relation to the mandatory 50 hours pro bono service to be provided by lawyers,
how does the Ministry deal with cases that may exceed the allotted time? Wouldn’t
making the service mandatory affect the willingness and effectiveness of the
lawyer to deal with the case? How does the Ministry plan to work in collaboration
with lawyers on the issue?
“ Has the Ministry taken any initiative to collaborate, engage with and support other
legal aid service providers?
“ The Ministry is representative of the government interest, and as such how does it
deal with conflict of interest cases where the clients are litigating with government
organs?
In response, the presenter stated that there is no need to synchronize the
functions of public defender’s office and legal aid service of the MOJ as they are
very different as the former only deal with serious criminal cases while the latter
deals with civil cases. The pro bono obligation of licensed advocates should be seen
as a great potential because if we multiply the 50 hours with the number of lawyers,
according to the Ministry’s Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) document, this
could go as high as 50,000 hours per year. But with regard to the implementation and
the ensuing burden on the lawyer, the Ministry is drafting a document that addresses
the concern. One option is lending financial support to cover transport, photocopy
and translation costs of the lawyer providing pro bono service.
So far the Ministry has not taken an initiative to collaborate, engage with and
support other legal aid service providers to the expected level. However, the current
five-year strategic plan of the institution includes a plan to strengthen the link with
charities and societies, universities, regional justice bureaus and others that provide
support to the administration of justice in the country. On the question of conflict of
interest, the presenter clarified that if the client is woman or child, the Ministry will
represent the woman or child instead of the government office. In other cases of
conflict of interest the Ministry dares to represent neither.
Continuing on their discussion, the participants further explored the role of
the Ministry in setting a national standard, institutional and policy framework to
ensure sustainability and accessibility of legal aid service in the country. In setting
standard one major concern is the criteria for indentifying indigent persons. For
instance, MOJ uses ownership of immovable property as an indicator while the
Mekelle University uses monthly income. The participants then agreed
standardization should be a priority. In addition, a participant mentioned that the
Ministry and Regional Justice Bureaus have a consultative forum that could be
helpful to facilitate standardization of the practice of legal aid in the country.
9. Networking: Plenary Discussions

Facilitator: Ato Faisl Mulatu ” Center for Human Rights, Addis Ababa University
Before breaking into groups, participants first discussed the necessity of
networking, the model to be adopted, prior experience of networking, and the
relevance of regulating legal aid service. As to networking, all the participants agreed
that it is necessary to avoid duplication of service, experience sharing and to set up
referral system. The informal and case based referral experience of Gondar
University to Bahir Dar University, Mekelle University to Hawassa University and
Mekelle University to EWLA was shared to shed light on the importance of
networking among service providers. The model of networking to be adopted,
however, should consider the similarities and difference among the service providers
mainly between law schools based legal clinics and those run by charities and
societies. The objectives of the legal aid clinics are also different. They are aimed at
integrating clinical legal education with legal aid.
It was noted that a new effort to create a networking forum needs to draw
lessons from prior experiences. In relation to this, the 2010 Ethiopian Human Rights
Commission (EHRC) led networking attempt, the 2009 ‘Ethiopian Law Schools
Legal Aid Networking Workshop’ organized by Mekelle University that established
a committee to draft the networking constitution and other attempts lead by NGOs
such as Action Professionals Association for the People (APAP) and EWLA were
mentioned. The participants agreed that the documents from these attempts could
serve as an input for the ongoing effort. Finally, regulation of legal aid service was
agreed upon although no consensus was reached regarding the nature and depth of
the regulation. In this regard, the National Human Rights Action Plan, which
includes legal aid, and the plan to draft a ‘National Legal Aid Strategy’ in the next
five years were mentioned as important steps. Further it was stressed that regulation
should take into consideration the diversity of service providers, local variations,
contexts and creativity.
After the plenary discussion, participants broke up for group discussion on the
subject of networking of legal aid providers. The group discussions enabled the
participants to discuss on and come up with networking ideas. The group discussions
focused on the objectives, goals and purposes of networking, the model of
networking, opportunities and challenges of networking and the process or procedure

to establish the networking. The response of the four group discussions are
summarized as follows:
1) Establishing a network of legal aid service providers is absolutely essential;
2) The objectives of this network should include: experience sharing, fund
raising and distribution, standardization of legal aid services, avoiding
duplications, setting up referral system, lobbying on issues of common
interest, working toward expansion of the services, conducting research on
legal aid, creating awareness, research sharing, and monitoring and
evaluation of quality of services;
3) The participants suggested two types of networking: the first, an all
inclusive network of all individual legal aid providers based on a
memorandum of understanding, and the second proposal suggested model is
network of networks after small networks are created by different category
of legal aid providers. However, all the participants agreed whatever model
is adopted it should be a loose forum with no permanent body and
hierarchical relationship with the service providers.
4) The participants recognized the networking forum could make use of
existing institutions and forum, such as legal aid centers, Ethiopian Human
Rights Council, or NGOs to serve as a secretariat;
5) The participants also identified possible challenges the networking could
face: legal impediment to the establishment of a new organization, similar
initiatives by various stakeholders, lack of uniform standards by legal aid
centers, lack of comprehensive legal framework and guidelines, financial
constraint, minimal level of volunteerism, lack of support from university
administration in some cases, lack of awareness and ineffectiveness of loose

networking forums;
6) The participants finally forwarded their suggestions on the process and
procedure to be followed to set up the networking. Accordingly, they
suggested identification of core actors and setting up a committee that
represents these actors that will develop TOR, guidelines, organize
workshops, etc...
10. Workshop Follow up

At the end of the Workshop, all the participants reached a consensus that a
networking committee should be established. They identified a number of benefits
that can emanate from networking which includes joining forces for common aim,
resource and experience sharing, avoiding duplication of tasks, funding raising and
cost sharing.
To ensure an effective follow up of the consensus reached at the workshop,
the participants also agreed to establish a steering committee. The participants also
discussed which service providers should be included in the steering committee and
the following institutions were identified as the steering committee members: Addis
Ababa University- Center for Human Rights, Ethiopian Women Lawyers’
Association, Federal Supreme Court- Children’s Legal Protection Center, and the
Ministry of Justice. Addis Ababa University Center for Human Rights was assigned
to take up the initial task of facilitating and convening the committee and setting up a
consultative meeting.
Directory of
Legal Aid Providers in Ethiopia
This Directory of Legal Aid Providers in Ethiopia is part of the research report on
Assessment of Legal Aid in Ethiopia. As such, the information contained in it
reflects that which was available and valid in May 2013. Note, however, that
information regarding public defender offices has not been included in this listing.
Directory of Legal Aid Providers in Ethiopia 147
A. Higher Educational Institutions Providing Legal Aid Service
N.B.: The information for legal aid providers of Gondar University, Bahir Dar University, Mekele University, Adama University, Hawassa University, Haramaya University, Addis Ababa
University, Jimma University and Jigjiga University is obtained directly from the m through interviews conducted by the researchers themselves or research assistants. The information
for the remaining legal aid providers is obtained from their activity reports of 2011 and 2012.
No. Name of the legal aid Contact Information of the main Location of main and branch offices Target group Service
provider office (beneficiaries) providers
1 Gondar University Free Tel- 0588110619 Gondar main office, North Gondar Prison, Azezo Indigents, women, Lawyers and
legal Aid Center Email- hiruy.wubie@gmail.com branch, Aremacheho Woreda/Tekele Denegaye children and law students
Website- WWW.uog.edu.et/legal aid branch, Makesegnet branch, Denebeya people with
Woreda/kola deba branch, Chelega Wereda branch, HIV/AIDS
Addis Zemene branch
2 Mizane-Teppi University Email- adane.gebre33@yahoo.com Mizan Aman branch, Tapi Town branch (is not Indigent people Staffs (no
Free legal Aid Center operational b/c secretary is not hired) (all) court
representation
yet)
3 Jimma University Free Tel.- 0478110141 Jimma High Court Branch, Jimma Woreda Court Indigent persons Academic
legal Aid Center Email-kassahun.molla@yahoo.com branch, Jimma Prison branch, Main Office at and vulnerable staffs and law
Website- Jimma University, Serbo branch, Debo branch, persons such as students
http://www.ju.edu.et/legalaid/ Agaro branch (Goma Woreda branch) women, children,
people with
disability, veterans,
prison inmates
4 Ambo University Free Email- yedagrgeamsal@gmail.com Ambo branch (university main office Indigent members Legal center
legal Aid Center Ambo High Court of the society and have license ,
Wereda court vulnerable groups students, staffs
Guder branch such as Women,
Addis Alame branch (phased out) children, persons
with disabled and
HIV/AIDS
5 Mekelle University Free Tel- 0344408379 Mekelle Main Office, Mekell prison, Mekelle Marginalized and Law students,
legal Aid Center Wereda Court, Mekelle High Court, Axum branch, vulnerable groups instructors,
Email- eyobawash@yahoo.com Adigerate branch, Maichew branch such as women, paralegals and
children, the lawyers
elderly, people
with HIV/AIDS,
persons with
disability, arrested
and convicted
persons
6 Bahirdar University Free Tel.- 0582220526 Bahir Dar Main office, Bahirdar prison Center, Women, Children, Law students
legal Aid Center Finote Selam Center, Enjibara Center, Woreta persons with and instructors
Email- giz1973@yahoo.com Center disability and
People with
HIV/AIDS
7 Wellaita Sodo University Tel.- 0465514590 Wellaita Sodo High Court Indigent members Law students,
Free legal Aid Center Email- dereko39@yahoo.com Wellaita Sodo Zone Prison Adminstration of the Community paralegal and
Wellaita City Main Office and vulnerable instructors
groups such as
women, children
persons with
disability, people
with HIV/AIDS
8 Hawassa University, Tel. 0462209441 First Instance Court, Hawassa City prison Indigent and Law students
Social Justice Center Free Administration, Hawassa High Court, Yergalem vulnerable groups
legal Aid Center Email- bushoadmas@yahoo.com Town, Zeway Town, Arba Minch Town , such as women,
Shashemene Town persons with
disability
9 Addis Ababa University, Tel. 0111222562 Addis Ababa (Sidest Kilo main office, Ferensay Indigent and Paralegals and
Center for Human Rights Legasyon and Amist Kilo), Adama (Adama legal vulnerable graduating law
Access to Justice Project Email- tsigeal@hotmail.com aid branch main office, Branch at Adama Women, members of the students (In
Children and Youth Affairs Bureau, Misrak Shewa community case of Adama
Website- Zone Prison, Depo Prison Administration Center, branch, 12
Kebelle 07 branch, Kebelle 01 branch), Hawassa lawyers gave
http://www.aau.edu.et/humanrights/in
(Hawassa main office, Sidama Zone High Court, their consent to
dex.php/project/legal-literacy-rights-
Hawela Tula Sub-city branch, Dore Bafano give pro bono
advice-informatio
branch) service)
10 Dire Dawa University Dire Dewa First Instance Court, and

Free legal Aid Center Shenele Zone High Court
11 Jigjiga University Free Solomonguadie67@gmail.com Awaberie, Kebribeyah, Gurrume Indigent people, Lawyers
legal Aid Center Children and
women
12 Haromaya University Free Tel : 025 553 0084 Deder Woreda Court, Deder Prison, Kombolcha Indigent members Law students
legal Aid Center Email: sultangenna@yahoo.com woreda court, Haramaya woreda court, Awoday of the community and Lawyers
town, Girawa woreda court, Gawa Prison, East such as women, using the
Hararghe High Court, East Hararghe Prison, Harari children, persons advocacy
Prison, West Hararghe High Court, Chiro Woreda with disability and licenses issued
Court, Oda Bultum Woreda Court, and in all Harari elders in the name of
Regional Courts. the university
from Oromia
and Harari
Regional
Justice
Bureaus.
13 Debre Markos University N/A Meserake Gojjam (DebreMarkos) High Court
Free legal Aid Center Debre Markos City Prison
Debre Markos City Wereda Court
Dejen Wereda Court
Dembecha Wereda Court
14 Wollega University Free Wellega High Court
legal Aid Center Rebi Woreda High Court
Shambo/ Horo Gudro High Court
15 Dilla University Free legal N/A Dilla High Court
Aid Center Yerga Chefe Woreda Court
16 Wollo University Free N/A N/A N/A N/A
legal Aid Center
17 Arbaminch University N/A N/A N/A N/A

Free legal Aid Center
18 Adama University Legal Tel. 0221100022 Adama University main office, Adama Wereda Indigent members Law students
Aid and Research Center Email- mezgebu2004@gmail.com Court, Adama Special Zone High Court, East of the community of the
Shewa Zone High Court, East Shewa Prison, Ada including prison university,
Wereda Court (Beshoftu), Mojo Wereda Court, inmates, persons trainees of
Bosete Wereda Court (Welenchite) with disability, Oromia
veterans, children Justice, legal
and women research and
training
institute and
Lawyers using
the advocacy
license issued
in the name of
the university
by Oromia
Regional
Justice Bureau,
B. CSO and professional association providing legal aid service
No. Name of the legal aid Contact Info. of main office Location of main and branch offices Target group (beneficiaries) Service providers
provider
1. Ethiopian Christian Lawyers Tel.- 011 860 5377 Lideta Center (Near Federal High Indigent members of the community Lawyers and
Fellowship (ECLF) email- eclfaddis@gmail.com Court, Lideta Branch); Finifine Special including Children, women and paralegals
Website- Zone Persons with disability
www.advocatesethiopia.org
2. Ethiopian Women Lawyers Tel.- 0115508759 Main office in Addis Ababa Women Lawyers and Para
Association (EWLA) Email- ewla1995@gmail.com Hawassa Branch & outreach legals
Website- www.ewla-eth.org - Hosa’ena
- Welkite
- Alana
- Jinka
- Aleta Wenedo
- Yirga Alem
- Arba Minche
- Welaita
- Butajira
Benshangul Branch & outreach
- Menge
- Bambassie
- Kamashe
- Mao-Komo
- SherekoleliyuWereda
- Kamash
Adama Branch & outreachs
- Assela/Arsi
- Boset/Wellenchiti
- Sebeta
- Goma/Jimma
- Shalla
- Yabello
- Agaro
- Metahara
- Meki
- Lale
- Debere Zeit
- Gini Michu
- Western Wollega
- Shashemene
Gambella Branch & outreach
- Goni Wereda
- Abo Wereda
- Godere Woreda
- Lire
Dire Dewa Branch & outreach
- Belewa
- Beyewalye
- Keressa
Bahir Dar Branch & outreach
- North Shewa- D/Birhane
- South Wello- Desse
- Waghamra- Sekota
- North Wollo- Weldia
- South Gondar- D/Tabor
- Oromia Special Zone- Kemise
- East Gojjam- Debre Markose
- Fenote Selam
- Harbu Wereda- Mersa
3. Ethiopian Lawyers Tel.- 011 5530122 Federal High Court, Lideta Branch Indigent persons Lawyers
Association (ELA) Email-eba@ethionet.et
Website- www.ethiopian-bar.org
4. Selam Professionals’ Main office in Harer city Indigent persons lawyers
Association for the people
5. Alumni Association of Law Tel. 251- 11-1-579361 Main office in Addis Ababa, Yeka Indigent persons Lawyers and
Faculty of Addis Ababa Sub-City with centers at the Federal paralegals
University High Court/Federal First Instance (students)
178
Court Lideta and Arada branches
6. Ethiopian Bar Association N/A N/A N/A N/A
178
The Association also has collaborative legal aid projects with the Ethiopian Lawyers Association.
C. Government institutions providing Legal Aid Service
S/no. Name of the legal aid provider Contact Location of main and branch Target group Service
Information of offices (beneficiaries) providers
main office
1. Ministry of Justice, Tel.- 0115531721 It operate in Addis Ababa Indigent members of the lawyers
 Advocacy licensing and society
Administration Directorate
 Women and children’s Protection
directorate,
 Civil Cases Directorate
2. Children’s Legal Protection Center/CLPC/ Tel.- 0115565603/ Federal Supreme Court- Children and Care Lawyers,
under the Federal Supreme Court Child 0118965394/95/96 Coordination Office, Federal High givers (When their legal Paralegals and
Justice Project Office Court Lideta Branch, Federal High problem affects social workers
Court Bole Branch Children)
3. Amhara Regional State, Bureau of Justice It exists at the regional, Zonal, and Indigent and Vulnerable Lawyers (licensed
Woreda level Justice Bureaus in groups such as children, advocates & staff)
the Region. person with disability,
elderly, people living
with HIV/AIDS

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ASSESSMENT OF LEGAL AID IN ETHIOPIA:

Center for Human Rights

Assessment of Legal Aid in Ethiopia: A Research Report...........................................11

Workshop Report: National Workshop of Legal Aid providers...............................117

Directory of Legal Aid Providers in Ethiopia...........................................................145

FSC-CJPO Federal Supreme Court-Child Justice Project Office

3.3.4 Financial Access.................................................................................................................74

Part one: Introduction

 Analysing the relevant international and national legal and policy

1.2 Scope of the Study

1.3 Research Method

1.5 Organisation of the assessment

Part Two: Conceptual Framework

2.1.2 Relevance of Legal Aid

society’.21 Understood as such, it is closely related to the process of social

2.1.3 Emergence and Development of Legal Aid

non-state actors, is also important especially in resource constrained developing

 USAID: ‚Legal empowerment of the poor refers to actions and processes,

2.2.1 Access to Justice

2.2.2 Fair Trial

2.2.3 Equality before the Law

2.2.4 Implications of the Human Rights Framework

2.2.4.1 The Substance of the Rights

2.2.4.3 Duty Bearers

The State58, by virtue of signing and adopting international and regional

2.2.4.4 State Obligations

establishing institutional framework for implementation of the rights as well as

2.2.4.5 Identity and Role of Non-State Actors

implementation of standards, and monitoring implementation. These human rights

2.3 Models of Legal Aid Service Provision

2.3.1 State Provided Legal Aid

2.3.1.1 Public defenders

2.3.1.2 Court appointments

2.3.1.3 Publicly financed representation

2.3.2 Provision of Legal Aid by the Legal Profession

2.3.2.1 Pro bono schemes by lawyers and bar associations

approach emphasizing skills development within a social justice context. Students

This is especially true in relation to representation of clients in formal proceedings.

2.3.3 Legal Aid Provided by NGOs

2.3.3.1 Legal Aid Centers

The provision of legal aid services by NGOs needs to be placed in an

2.3.3.2 Public interest litigation

2.3.3.3 Paralegal Programs

sensitization and capacity building strategies. Typically, the actual provision of

- Paralegal programs are potentially more sustainable in terms of enabling

2.3.3.4 Informal justice mechanisms

2.4 Legal Basis for Legal Aid in Ethiopia

PDO, established by proclamation No. 25/1996 is administratively under the Federal

- The obligation of law enforcement officials to inform the suspect or the

The Criminal Procedure Code provides for an interpreter whenever necessary

2.4.2.4 National Human Rights Action Plan

2.4.3 Institutional Mandates

Part Three: Findings

3.2 Profile of Legal Aid Service Providers

The number of beneficiaries in 2010 in 9 public universities in Ethiopia 127

3.3 Accessibility of Legal Aid Services

3.3.1 Legal Awareness

program delivered using the Haramaya University Community Radio (HUFM). It