Being a home to more than 80 ethnic groups, Ethiopia has to balance normative diversity with efforts to implement state law across its territory. This volume explores the co-existence of state, customary, and religious legal forums from the perspective of legal practitioners and local justice seekers. It shows how the various stakeholders' use of negotiation, and their strategic application of law can lead to unwanted confusion, but also to sustainable conflict resolution, innovative new procedures and hybrid norms. The book thus generates important knowledge on the conditions necessary for stimulating a cooperative co-existence of different legal systems.

The United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Right to Development in 1986. The Declaration recognizes that development is an inalienable human right, and describes development as a comprehensive process leading to the well-being of all people. All states are called upon to cooperate internationally and work nationally to ensure that this comprehensive process in which all human rights can be realized is undertaken without discrimination, and that all people may participate fully and equally in this process. This paper provides an elaboration of the content of the right to development by drawing on international law. It addresses the obligations of states, particularly with regard to international cooperation, and considers the application of obligations of conduct, as well as those of result, in giving this right meaning. This paper also details the rights of minorities and indigenous peoples and how they relate to the right to development. The creation of conditions that enable a state to develop will not necessarily lead to the realization of the right to development by the individuals within that state. Traditionally marginalized groups – notably, minorities and indigenous peoples – may not benefit from this development or may be harmed by it. Even where the right to development is being realized by the majority, the rights of minorities and indigenous peoples could be violated if the process undertaken does not take account of their rights. The authors discuss the need to have in place the standards to ensure that the protection and promotion of minority and indigenous rights are fully integrated into policies designed to fulfil the right to development. Written in cooperation with the UN Independent Expert on the right to development, this work builds on his contribution to the mandated objectives of the inter-state UN Working Group on the Right to Development. It provides an important contribution to the scope of rights and obligations in this area, and the implications that stem from them, particularly for minorities and indigenous peoples.

After the fall of the Berlin wall and the disintegration of the former USSR and Yugoslavia, it has widely been assumed that socialist federations have become a thing of the past. Ethiopia’s ethnic federal system however is essentially a socialist federal system based on the notion of the ’right to self-determination of nationalities’ and a Marxist-Leninist organization of the state and party. This book assesses the Ethiopian ethnic federal system from the perspective of the principles of socialist federations and other Marxist oriented policies pursued by the ruling Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). Exploring how the application of these ideological principles has impacted on the structure and function of the Ethiopian federal system, the research examines the ways in which these ideological policies of the ruling party affect national consensus, protection of human rights, the rights of minority groups, separation of power principles and the relationship between the federal and regional governments. It also explores the extent to which ideological principles have had an impact on the democratization process, rule of law and in building up institutions such as parliamentary democracy, the judiciary, the media and civil society organizations in the country. Approaching the Ethiopian federal system from the perspective of the fundamental ideological principles of the party in power allows a deeper insight into the structure and function of the ethnic federal system.