Crime or cultural identity?
on the laws protecting women in Ethiopia
Hi there,
I hope you had a good weekend.
Today’s edition is a break from the never-ending news cycle to take a deeper look at the laws that protect women from violence in Ethiopia. The updates below are based on three selected chapters from the recently published book, Norms and Violence Against Women in Ethiopia. Highly recommend taking a look, even just the chapters that resonate with you - it’s open access!
My name is Maya Misikir, and I’m a freelance reporter based in Addis Abeba. I write Sifter, this newsletter where I send out the week’s top 5 human rights stories in Ethiopia.
Now, to the news.
State feminism: what’s that?
The first chapter I looked into for this edition is on how Ethiopian governments have dealt with women’s rights issues (‘Vanguardism: the limits of Ethiopia’s state feminism in combating violence’).
So what has that history looked like?
The chapter starts off with some grim realities. Ethiopia is a country with one of the highest rates of Female Genital Mutilation (23.8 million women affected!) and one of the top-rated countries where child marriage takes place. A place where violence against women has been normalized.
As far as regimes go, from the communist Derg regime (1974-1991), throughout the time of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front or EPRDF (1991-2018), and even since Prosperity Party (2018-present), Ethiopian women have been viewed as ‘a means to support broader development goals or secure political legitimacy’ instead of ‘political subjects with rights’.
Here’s an excerpt:
Women’s rights have persistently existed in the shadow of more dominant political narratives – patriarchy, class struggle, ethnic federalism, or regime legitimacy.
State feminisms: a look at the regimes
The Derg regime, which initially took on an intersectional view of the ‘women’s question’ (as workers and as women), later mobilized women only to ‘support its military endeavours’. But still, women stepped out of traditional domestic roles during this time, and the 1987 constitution was the first to include women’s rights and legal equality with men.
During EPRDF’s time, economic empowerment came first. The idea was that human rights would naturally follow. (Spoiler: they didn’t.) Under ethnic federalism, regional states, using the justification of cultural autonomy, applied family laws differently (some resisting the ban on Female Genital Mutilation, for example).
The era of the Prosperity Party brought gender reform and women occupying high-profile positions. But these moves were one of many ways to ‘bolster political legitimacy’ and were seen as a ‘benevolent gesture from the government’.
Here’s an excerpt:
Although civic space has contracted in recent years due to ongoing conflicts and insurgencies, there remains an opportunity for activism, particularly in gender advocacy.
Courts: are they following the law?
The second chapter I selected from the book is on how intimate partner violence is handled in courts (‘Global norms vs. local practices: the adjudication of intimate partner violence cases in Addis Ababa’).
Are Ethiopian courts dealing with cases that involve intimate partner violence using customary and religious laws or applying international laws that the country has ratified?
Courts are not applying ratified international laws very often, it seems.
Why is this? One reason is that judges believe that since Ethiopia has a criminal code, there’s no need to refer to the international instruments. Also, not all judges are aware of what these international laws are (language barriers), some are negligent, and others just don’t care.
Instead, in about 34 percent of the cases (the research looked at 97 cases in courts across Addis Abeba), judges have leaned into Shimgilina (local practice equivalent to mediation) as a way to deal with intimate partner violence against women. This has happened even in instances of severe violence.
Is this legal? Here’s an excerpt:
Ethiopia’s current legal framework lacks provisions authorizing police, prosecutors, or courts to refer cases to mediation.
It’s not that mediation isn’t valuable. In best case scenarios, mediation ‘positions survivors as active participants’, and without legal rigidity, both parties can collaboratively come up with solutions that fit their needs.
In the cases reviewed, however, survivors were pressured to forgive their partners in the name of god, for the sake of their children, or in light of the fact that the mediator in question ‘fell on her feet and pleaded extensively’.
The chapter goes into the process of how international laws are incorporated into local laws in general, and in Ethiopia in particular, as well as the details of the cases that were analyzed for this chapter.
Marital rape: the ongoing ‘global discourse’
The third chapter I included deals with marital rape law in Ethiopia (‘Unrecognized or silenced offence? Unveiling grassroots perceptions of marital rape and Ethiopia’s reluctance to criminalize marital rape).
Several studies show that a significant number of Ethiopian women are facing sexual violence by their partners and husbands. So, why is marital rape not a crime in Ethiopia?
One is a deeply embedded patriarchal system. Here is an excerpt on a study done by the Ethiopian Women Lawyers’ Association (EWLA):
A study conducted by EWLA showed one in two women in Addis Ababa believe that a husband is justified to beat his wife if she refuses to have sex with him.
But this issue is not just in Ethiopia. If you weren’t aware, there’s an ‘enduring global discourse’ on whether or not marital rape should be criminalized.
What’s the argument to not criminalize it?
Several, actually. One is the theory of implied consent, which states that once married, a woman is in a state of ‘irrevocable sexual consent’. The other theory is the unity of person; once married, a couple become one, ‘rendering marital rape inconceivable’. Yet another argument says that criminalizing marital rape ‘safeguards marriage as an institution’.
What’s the argument for criminalizing it?
Maybe the ‘the right to human dignity, and the right not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment’?
Women’s rights: incompatible with ‘culture’
What does the law say about rape in the Ethiopian context?
First, the law qualifies rape as happening ‘outside of wedlock’. The other is that rape is not defined ‘on the basis of lack of consent’ but requires, ‘both proof of compulsion and proof of resistance’.
Were there attempts to include marital rape during the criminal code’s revision? Yes, but it was rejected on several grounds. People said it would be an invasion of privacy on the couple, that it would violate the sanctity of the family, and…create animosity.
That criminalizing marital rape is culturally incompatible in the Ethiopian context is one of the major pushbacks documented in this chapter.
While ‘respect for time and technological advancements’ are good things to adopt from the West, said one interviewee, criminalizing marital rape is ‘losing cultural identity’.
That’s all for this week. I’ll catch you next Monday.
In the meantime, if you know someone who might be interested in this, share and let them know!