COUNTRIES AT THE CROSSROADS GOVERNANCE BLOG

The Johnson-Sirleaf Allegations: A Bump in the Road to Liberian Reconstruction?

Photo Credit: Flickr user World Economic Forum

In early July, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, president of Liberia since January 2006 and the first democratically elected female head of state in Africa, was accused of having indirectly given funds to former president Charles Taylor, who is currently on trial for war crimes at The Hague. The allegation from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, an independent body established in 2005 to investigate Liberia’s bloody past, has caught the nation and its foreign backers off guard, as Johnson-Sirleaf is seen as the linchpin of the country’s stability. Even more disturbing is the commission’s recommendation that she be banned from holding public office for 30 years. She has previously admitted that she had formal ties with Charles Taylor as they both rose to prominence fighting Samuel Doe’s oppressive regime in the late 1980s. However, she has denied ever being a member of Taylor’s movement and says she regrets her involvement with Taylor. Considering Liberia’s record, the fact that an independent body could arrive at and publicize such a conclusion is cause for celebration. Nevertheless, removing Johnson-Sirleaf from office could deal a serious blow to her administration’s tangible successes in governance and reconstruction, though these have been tempered by consistent setbacks and lingering concerns.

Five years after the end of its brutal 14-year internal conflict, Liberia continues to suffer from a major governance deficit. The biggest challenge is security reform, entailing not just police and military training, but also the demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration of former combatants. There have been steady gains in the latter effort, with over 70,000 combatants disarmed between 1998 and 2002, and over 75 percent applying to join reintegration programs. Provisions for the return of 750,000 displaced civilians were also implemented quickly and efficiently, and both programs have assisted Liberians with job training and recruitment.

Police and military reform has made slower progress. The old military was deactivated in 2003, and responsibility for internal security was transferred to UNMIL (UN Mission in Liberia). The task of rebuilding the army fell to the United States, while the UN tackled police training. The U.S.-led military reform project was outsourced to the private contractors DynCorp and Pacific Architects and Engineers, whose culturally insensitive approach has complicated the process. Moreover, funding problems have delayed the vetting and recruitment of new soldiers and reduced training on human rights and civil-military relations. To the U.S. government’s credit, the mission has recently received more attention, and a number of Marine Corps advisers were deployed in January to step up training. And despite the delays, the final results have been generally satisfactory. According to a recent International Crisis Group report, army reform is considered “a provisional success,” given that 2,000 Liberian privates have now been trained.

Meanwhile, UNMIL’s police reforms have suffered from insufficient funding, flawed recruitment, and the lack of momentum associated with operations in which no single nation takes the lead. Today, the Liberian police continue to engage in deplorable and often criminal behavior, and have been generally unable to address the worsening internal security situation. The service is also apparently rife with corruption. As a result, the 13,000-strong UNMIL force has stayed on and even increased its numbers in recent years. The police therefore have little incentive to intensify training, which has been far less thorough than the army’s. The one real success story of the UNMIL effort has been the development of the new Emergency Response Unit as a dependable force.

Some have argued that Johnson-Sirleaf should be more actively involved in the reform process, and on some of the other rule of law issues for which the president is directly responsible, she has failed to make substantial headway. Notably, judicial reform has made little progress, and there have been a number of high-level cases in which the course of justice has been perverted. The country’s most prevalent judicial deficiencies include a paucity of trained legal personnel, a lack of infrastructure, and outdated rules of procedure. Impunity also continues to hamper reform, especially with respect to abuses committed during the internal conflict.

Nevertheless, Johnson-Sirleaf’s record is generally impressive when it comes to other pressing governance concerns. Last year, she laid out a three-year poverty reduction strategy with four pillars: peace and security, governance and the rule of law, infrastructure and basic services, and economic revitalization. While progress has been sluggish on rule of law issues, Johnson-Sirleaf has already made a substantial effort to deliver on her other promises. Indeed, in the 2008 Mo Ibrahim Index of African Governance, Liberia moved up six places between 2005 and 2006, placing it at 38th among sub-Saharan countries, with a score of 48.7 out of 100. The area where Liberia’s progress has been the most dramatic is economic development, and here Johnson-Sirleaf, a Harvard-trained economist and former finance minister, has proven instrumental. Recent progress has been fueled by foreign aid and investment, with many companies seeing great opportunities in the nation’s natural resources, which had been neglected during the civil wars. This financial stimulus has driven the rapid development of Liberia’s infrastructure, including schools and hospitals, and facilitated annual economic growth rates of about 8 percent. Johnson-Sirleaf made a campaign pledge to restore electricity to Monrovia by July 26, 2006, and this was accomplished, albeit with significantly less coverage than originally planned. Forest management has emerged as a way to both create jobs and earn export revenues in a transparent and sustainable manner. The president’s “zero-tolerance” approach to combating entrenched corruption has helped to remove an obstacle that had thwarted economic growth and denied Liberian citizens basic services for years. While several high-profile corruption scandals involving top officials have weighed down her efforts, the president successfully oversaw the creation of the country’s first Anti-Corruption Commission, along with the dismissal or arrest of numerous corrupt officials in 2008. On July 10 of this year, she signed a new transparency law aimed at eradicating corruption from the country’s lucrative extractive industries.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s work is of exceptional importance to Liberia’s post-conflict reconstruction process. However, the benefits of President Johnson-Sirleaf’s leadership, particularly with respect to development and governance improvements, are also undeniable. In this case, a line may need to be drawn between those who actively facilitated the civil war and those who were caught up in it and naturally took sides. Johnson-Sirleaf seems to belong to the latter group. Before ruling on the commission’s recommendation, the Liberian parliament should fully evaluate the gravity of the matter, and consider both the gains Johnson-Sirleaf has brought to Liberia and the losses that could accrue if she were forced out of the picture.

Note: This is an update of an entry that was initially posted at 11:27 AM.

Colombia's Ambivalence Towards Victims Raises Questions

Photo Credit: Flickr user ..:. ninu .:..

On July 14, the Colombian government rejected the “Ley de Fosas,” a law that would have created the “Bank of Genetic Profiles of the Disappeared.” This database would have collected both genetic information obtained from the exhumed remains of Colombian victims buried in mass graves and the genetic data of family members of the disappeared, in an effort to facilitate the identification process.  When justifying its decision, the government cited financial considerations, arguing that the law’s implementation would be unfeasible in light of Colombia’s current macroeconomic situation. Specifically, it noted that the cost of collecting and preserving the genetic data would reach over $91 billion pesos (roughly US$45 million), a significant expenditure given the nation’s current financial constraints. In response, Guillermo Rivera, one of the law’s coauthors, argued that the government was exaggerating the projected cost, noting that the law did not intend to initiate DNA testing in all cases. In addition, he reminded the government of its obligation to do everything possible to identify the victims of the 44-year internal conflict that continues to afflict Colombia today.

Unfortunately, this is one of several recent examples of the government acting intransigently in its attitude toward victims of the internal conflict. The “Ley de Victimas”(Victims’ Law), an initiative that establishes the reparations process for the conflict’s victims, is another. A version passed in the Senate in June 2008 with strong endorsements from both domestic and international human rights groups was extensively modified over the following year. It finally was passed by the Chamber of Representatives on June 16, but in a weakened state that was criticized by Guillermo Rivera, the original bill’s proposer, human rights organizations, and victims alike due to the fact that it discriminated between victims of guerrilla groups and victims of the state. In its modified form, the law allowed victims of guerrilla groups and paramilitaries to apply for compensation through administrative means, but required victims of state security forces to prove that a state official committed a crime acting beyond his authority before being eligible to receive compensation. Due to the slowness and inefficiency of Colombia’s judicial system, the discriminatory ramifications of this particular clause were considered especially pernicious.  Although the Chamber and Senate reconciliation committee approved the Senate version, Uribe allies knocked the bill down at the executive branch’s behest in the Senate reconciliation vote on June 18. As with the Ley de Fosas, financial hardship arguments were utilized to justify its actions.

In response to those who criticized its decision, the government announced that it would be willing to draft a new law, along the lines of the Chamber of Representatives bill, that addresses the concerns of the victims while staying within budget guidelines. Nevertheless, the decision to sink the original Senate version was considered an insult by many victims’ rights groups.  According to Senator Juan Fernando Cristo, the promoter of the Senate bill, “the Congress prefers to legislate in favor of the perpetrators instead of the victims.” The fact that state agents were implicated in a series of extrajudicial executions in 2008 made the government’s insistence on treating crimes by state agents differently all the more eyebrow-raising.

The government’s obstinacy is especially disheartening considering the fact that the conflict is by no means over. Although urban security has improved tremendously, with the number of homicides and kidnappings related to the armed conflict decreasing substantially as a result of paramilitary demobilization and gains by state security forces, the number of victims continues to mount as additional Colombians suffer arbitrary killings, displacement, and other abuses. According to Amnesty International’s 2009 report, more than 1,515 civilians were killed from June 2007-June 2008, whereas 1,348 were killed in the previous 12-month period. In addition, the organization recently reported that 380,000 people were displaced in Colombia in 2008, which represents a 24% increase from 2007 and makes the number of displaced people in Colombia among the highest in the world.  As Marco Pollack, AI’s Americas director, notes, “The Colombian government is lying when it says that violence is part of the past. The reality is very different.” It is clear that the war continues to rage on; in fact, Human Rights Watch has reported that the demobilized paramilitary groups have been replaced with new armed groups.

This all comes in the context of the broader peace process, which, given continued fighting between guerrillas and the state, has centered on paramilitary demobilization. Although the government made an attempt to address this issue by passing the 2005 Justice and Peace Law, which sets out demobilization procedures and offers lighter punishments for full and truthful confessions, and the 2006 amendments to the law that followed a Constitutional Court decision insisting that the law’s treatment of the perpetrators be made more stringent, the justice process has lagged since this time. Paramilitaries have often failed to cooperate, while victims testifying against the defendants have been threatened and killed.  Of particular concern is the fact that several of the rights workers who have been harmed are those working on the specific issue of land reform, which is one of the most sensitive elements of the concurrent truth and reparations processes. The level of displacement has resulted in an enormous transfer of land from the rural poor to powerful actors, many of whom are paramilitaries or are linked to them. Determining what land was stolen in this “counter-reform” and returning it to its rightful possessors is one of the most important tests for Colombian justice. Again, unfortunately, progress here has been extremely slow.

Even as the above controversies rage, President Alvaro Uribe has recently visited rural municipalities and personally overseen the distribution of reparations to some victims of non-state actors.  The administration takes pride in the security gains it has brought the country and the boost to Colombia’s international reputation. However, it has also made erroneous assertions that Colombia’s internal conflict is a thing of the past, a position that may shine some light on the apparent reluctance to embrace victims’ rights. Instead of demanding a full accounting of the conflict’s atrocities, the administration seems to favor a superficial form of “reconciliation” over “truth,” possibly in order to be able to claim victory and cement both its legacy and the continuity of its policies (regardless of whether Uribe or someone else occupies the presidency next year, which is a different question). However, without full truth and complete reparations, real reconciliation is impossible.  An inconsistent stance toward the conflict’s victims is the wrong way to proceed, and may thwart the nation’s progress rather than expedite it. In order for Colombia to have a chance at sustained justice and progress, persecution of illegal armed actors must be accompanied by a demonstration that the government respects the deep grievances underlying the conflict and is willing to address them in full—even if it seems expensive.

Egypt and the Death Penalty: Recipe for Injustice?

Photo Credit: Flick user cbonney

In mid-June, human rights organizations reported that 209 death sentences had been handed down in Egypt since January of this year. Later that month, an article in Egypt’s Al Dustour daily newspaper reported that this number had increased to 230, with 50 sentences being handed down during the week of June 14 alone. While the death sentence is by no means a rare recourse in Egypt’s judicial system, this soaring number of death sentences is unparalleled in Egypt’s history. According to local experts, the surge has been brought about by the country’s skyrocketing violent crime rates. Egypt’s increasingly dire economic situation has brought about a spike in unemployment and poverty, which has in turn fueled a rise in despair-driven crime. This situation has been exacerbated by general dissatisfaction with government institutions, especially the judicial system.  In recent months, the violence has spiraled out of control. As journalist Khairy Ramadan explained, “The danger is everywhere, and killing has been taking place lately for the most trivial reasons…killing has become a daily routine.” In light of this situation, the rise in death sentences is widely perceived as the government’s attempt to deter further crime.

While capital punishment is a hotly contested issue in all corners of the globe, it is hardly controversial to assert that the grave nature of such a penalty requires that strong due process protections be put in place to ensure that no innocent person is ever executed. However, this question is highly contentious in Egypt due to serious deficiencies in the country’s judicial system. Although the number of death sentences that have been recently handed down is itself enough to raise the concern of human rights defenders, the unjust process through which verdicts are found creates yet greater reason for alarm. As the 2007 Countries at the Crossroads Report on Egypt notes, Egypt has consistently failed to observe citizens’ due process rights, despite the fact that these rights are formally enshrined in the constitution. This is largely a result of Egypt’s decades-old state of emergency, which the parliament extended for an additional 2 year period in May 2008. The emergency laws effectively suspend basic legal rights by permitting indefinite pre-trial detention without charge or trial and rescinding fair trial guarantees. According to the State Department’s 2008 Human Rights Report, several Egyptian detainees alleged that they were either completely denied access to counsel or were only granted access at the time of trial over the course of the past year. In addition, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has noted that confessions obtained under duress continue to be accepted in court.

While rights are oftentimes violated in cases tried in civil courts, the situation is far worse in the country’s military court system, a parallel judicial system created by emergency legislation. Emergency laws grant Egypt the right to try civilians who have committed national security crimes such as terrorism in military courts. In addition, a 2007 amendment provides the state with the authority to refer defendants to any judicial body authorized by the law, which has allowed Egypt to violate its citizens’ right to equality before the law by referring civil rights activists, political dissidents, feminists, and homosexuals to military courts. These trials are grossly unfair in a wide variety of ways. By trying civilians for non-military crimes in military tribunals, denying defendants access to lawyers during the pre-trial period, extracting evidence through the use of torture, and banning trial observers from attending military trials, Egypt has repeatedly violated its citizens’ right to “a public hearing by competent, independent, and impartial tribunal established by the law.” Last year’s high-profile conviction of leading members of the Muslim Brotherhood is particularly illustrative of the unjust nature of the military courts. In February 2007, President Hosni Mubarak transferred these men’s cases, along with 23 others, to a military tribunal after a civilian criminal court had initially acquitted them. Unsurprisingly, 25 men, 7 of them in absentia, were sentenced to prison terms of up to 10 years by the military tribunal.

Most alarmingly, the punishment that accompanies these unjust verdicts is oftentimes quite extreme considering the nature of the crime. In Egypt, the death sentence is not restricted to the most violent crimes. On the contrary, it can be handed down as a punishment for 90 different crimes according to Egyptian law. In addition to premeditated murder, these crimes include rape, kidnapping, terrorism, and espionage, along with such lesser crimes as drug-related offenses and various “political crimes.” Due to the fact that many of these offenses, most notably acts of terrorism and “political offenses,” can be tried in the notoriously unfair military court system, the recent spike in death sentences is especially ominous.

In order for this grave situation to be addressed, Egypt’s state of emergency must be revoked. Unfortunately, the recent draft law on anti-terrorism, which is meant to eventually replace emergency legislation, continues to include provisions that will allow the basic rights of Egyptians to be violated.  While the restrictive security laws remain in place, due process guarantees will continue to be ignored, with sometimes fatal consequences. Unfortunately, Egypt’s judicial shortfalls have other multifaceted ramifications. A recent article noted that the perceived lack of justice in Egypt, and more specifically the slow pace of legal proceedings and the lack of implementation of verdicts, has partially driven the increase in violent crime and the resultant rise in death sentences by compelling Egyptians to take justice into their own hands. Thus, judicial weaknesses are doubly responsible for permeating a deadly cycle of violence that will only be stopped when the legal rights of Egyptians are unconditionally observed.

Can a Concert Kill Cambodian Corruption?

Photo: Billboard depicting the official symbol of the Cambodian Coalition of Civil Society Organizations Against Corruption's 1 Million Signatures Campaign; Photo Credit: Flickr user chrislang

On May 30, Cambodian nongovernmental organizations including Pact Cambodia and members of the Coalition of Civil Society Organizations Against Corruption joined together to put on the “Clean Hands Concert,” an event that was geared towards raising awareness of the country’s grave corruption problem. Roughly 50,000 people attended the event, an enormous turnout for such an event.  The concert took place on the 1 year anniversary of the 1 Million Signatures Campaign, a movement that was geared towards garnering support and political will for the passage of an anticorruption law. In the opening speech, U.S. Ambassador Carol Rodley claimed that corruption was a major impediment to economic growth in the country. She argued that corruption costs Cambodia up to $500 million per year in lost revenue. In response, the Cambodian government vehemently denied these claims.  Hor Nambora, the Cambodian ambassador to the United Kingdom, stated that Rodley had joined forces with such anticorruption agencies as Global Witness, “which continually engages in virulent and malicious campaigns against the Royal Government of Cambodia.”

Both the concert’s high turn-out and the government’s harsh rhetorical response to the concert speak volumes about the immense magnitude of Cambodia’s corruption problem. The 2006 Countries at the Crossroads Report on Cambodia echoes Ambassador Rodley’s recent claim, noting that roughly 10% of Cambodia’s GDP is lost to corruption. The report explains that the possibilities for graft are endless in the country’s “cumbersome, politicized, and unregulated” bureaucracy. In addition, it notes that corruption permeates all of Cambodia’s institutions, especially the judiciary. Over the past few years, the scourge of corruption has continued unchecked. In a recent report, Global Witness argues that Cambodia is run by a kleptocratic elite that clandestinely and corruptly allocates rights to oil, gas, and mineral exploitation. Unsurprisingly, Transparency International also ranked Cambodia  a dismal 166th out of 180 countries in its 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index. Furthermore, in Transparency’s 2009 Corruption Barometer, fully 47% of Cambodian respondents reported paying a bribe in the last 12 months.

Despite the clearly negative consequences created by the problem, the administration of Prime Minister Hun Sen has been extremely recalcitrant on the issue of anticorruption measures. Sen, a former Khmer Rouge and key leader of the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) who became Prime Minister after staging a coup in 1997, has not succeeded in passing any notable anticorruption legislation. The long-awaited Anticorruption Law, which was first drafted in 1994, has remained in the hands of the Council of Ministers since 2006. Although the Coalition against Corruption presented the government with a petition signed by more than 1 million citizens requesting the enforcement of the anticorruption law, little further progress has been made on the matter. While several Cambodian parties responded to the group’s request, the ruling CPP remained entirely silent. As a result, there are still no functioning independent anticorruption bodies. In addition, even if this law is eventually passed, it presently falls short of international standards.

While an effective response to Cambodian corruption lags, several developments have at least served to bring increased domestic and international attention to the issue. The signature campaign and the concert underscore the strength of the country’s anticorruption civil society movement, along with the high level of domestic support for anticorruption measures. In addition, a high-profile judicial corruption case has increased international awareness of the pervasive corruption plaguing the country’s judicial system. The UN is currently investigating charges that Cambodian personnel employed by the UN-backed Khmer Rouge Tribunal, were forced to pay kickbacks in order to obtain and retain their positions. While this case certainly made the problem more apparent to international actors, it also highlighted the immensely graft-ridden nature of Cambodian government and society.

Unfortunately, instead of acknowledging the problem and working with both the domestic and international civil society movement to combat corruption, the Cambodian government has assumed the defensive. Since the Clean Hands Concert, the government has frequently claimed that anticorruption organizations are united in a struggle to undermine the Cambodian government with false and disparaging remarks. On June 6, popular comedian Chy Koy characterized anticorruption NGOs as “money hungry fabricators of non-existent corruption” when he appeared on the CPP-owned television station. This NGO-related conspiracy theory is one of many contrived by the Cambodian government of late. Nevertheless, the mere fact that the government allows these NGOs to operate relatively freely, and in this case to organize a high-profile concert aimed at chiding the government for its inaction on corruption, provides some evidence that the environment in Cambodia is not entirely repressive.   

Unfortunately, however, the government's tolerance for civil society and criticism seems to be waning. In September of 2008, Sen exclaimed that "Cambodia has been a heaven for NGOs for too long...the NGOs are out of control...". At the same time,he called for the revival of a restrictive NGO law.  In addition, the government's verbal attacks on anti-corruption NGOs are being carried out alongside agreater campaign against government criticism. For example, the government has used criminal defamation laws to intimidate and imprison activists, union leaders, and journalists alike.  In this inauspicious climate, it seems unlikely that the Cambodia will engage in a dialogue with the government-critical anticorruption movement. The fight against graft officially remains a high-priority government issue for the 2008-2013 mandate. Nevertheless, the government’s past reluctance and present state of denial seem to spell further delays, and even setbacks, in the effort to rid Cambodia of this governance scourge.

Dawn in the Horn?Judicial Reform in Ethiopia

On June 30, Human Rights Watch urged Ethiopia to amend its proposed Anti-Terrorism Law.  According to HRW, the draft counterterrorism law would create myriad possibilities for human rights violations. Specifically, the law includes both an extremely broad definition of terrorism and a multitude of pernicious provisions regulating the state’s response to “acts of terrorism.” If passed, the law will provide police with the right to search and arrest individuals without judicial oversight and to detain suspects for months without charge. What’s more, this law is being proposed at a time when Ethiopia is already being extensively criticized by the international human rights community for committing offenses including harassment, arbitrary arrest, and prolonged detention of political activists and independent journalists. As the country’s human rights climate appears increasingly uncertain, the state of the country’s judicial system will become a critical issue. At this venture, it is important to investigate the health of the legal system that dissidents, “terrorists,” and ordinary citizens alike rely upon for justice.

Ethiopia is one of the oldest and largest countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, and is unique in that it largely escaped the 19th-century European race to annex territory on the continent. However, it remains an extremely poor and rural country, with over 80 percent of the population living off subsistence farming. A Marxist-Leninist military junta called the Derg overthrew the emperor in 1974, and was likewise overthrown in 1991 by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) as the Soviet Union withdrew financial aid from its allies in Africa. Four years later, a constitution had been agreed upon and Ethiopia’s first multiparty elections occurred. It was then that the incumbent prime minister, Meles Zenawi came to power pledging reform and decentralization.

There were a number of largely uncoordinated though vigorous reform efforts during the 1990s. However, the pace quickened dramatically in 2005 with the implementation of the Public Sector Capacity Building Programme (PSCAP), encompassing civil service reform, district level decentralization, and tax and justice reform. The Justice System Reform Programme (JSRP) in particular has drawn considerable attention. The Ethiopian legal system is complicated due to the country’s federal nature: each of the nine regional states has its own legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, in addition to the national government. Although the successes of the various judicial reform initiatives have been somewhat limited, the strong political support behind the programme – recognised as vital for eventual success – has not lagged.

Some of the main hurdles to judicial reform arise from the issues associated with the end of communism and the post-1995 restructuring. One long-term characteristic of the nation that impedes deeper systemic attempts at reform is previous monarchical and communist regimes’ centralized government authority and the current subjugation of the federal judiciary to the executive, which has maintained a weak judicial branch with insufficient capability of exercising independent action in order to avoid challenges to Zenawi’s government.

One of the most immediate post-revolution issues affecting the Ethiopian judicial system was the total loss of experienced legal personnel who fled when the Derg were overthrown. This in turn resulted in a severe lack of staff in every district, and also forced the government to lower the requirements for posts across the sector. The ramifications of this exodus of talented personnel continue to plague Ethiopia’s judicial system today, especially at the lower levels. As the 2007 Countries at the Crossroads report on Ethiopia explains, judges at the local level are still generally uneducated and oftentimes unacquainted with Ethiopian laws. In addition, the as-yet-incomplete process of decentralization (the inter-ethnic relations angle of which was examined in a previous blog post) continues to complicate matters, partly owing to a lack of communication between the higher and lower courts that has created a situation in which many local officials believe themselves to be unaccountable to higher powers.

There are a number of further issues that require attention. The most prominent is judicial independence. As the 2007 Crossroads report noted, the president draws up the lists of judicial appointees for parliament to (theoretically) scrutinise, which is problematic in as executive-dominant environment as Ethiopia’s; worse yet, the government often interferes in trials by threatening judges, especially when high-profile defendants are involved. Both of these measures limit independent judicial decisions, a situation most prominently criticised by Teshale Aberra, a former president of the Oromo Supreme Court who fled to the UK in 2006. The following year Human Rights Watch reinforced her condemnation of the system. In addition, defense lawyers are attacked for representing unfavourable clients.

The prospects for judicial reform are not entirely bleak. Ethiopia has made progress and has secured a solid core of devoted donor partners. As the 2007 Crossroads Report explains, the general culture of impunity has slightly improved as a result of the JSRP. For example, in 2007, several former members of the deposed Marxist-Leninist regime including Mengistu Haile Mariam, the most prominent officer of the Derg, were accused of crimes against humanity and genocide committed during the Red Terror of the 1970s (though it is important to note that few prosecutions of EPRDF members have occurred, despite ample evidence of human rights and other abuses). In addition, courts in states such as Oromia have also increased their efficiency in the past few years by reducing backlogs and delays and implementing a judicial training program.  At least some of the reforms have enduring significance for the broader region, with the Kenyan Chief Justice visiting Ethiopia last year to learn about the JSRP, specifically its ICT modernization.

Merely incremental progress, marked by occasional missteps, is inevitable considering the very low starting point.  If the Zenawi government maintains the impetus of its reforms, change will be evident over time. Nevertheless, human rights abuses such as the ones listed above can hardly coexist with an effective and just legal system. In the end, there is no question that real change will require political will and a willingness to yield some measure of control, factors that have been in small supply recently.