The Ethiopian society can be regarded as a “traditional, ancient and conservative one. “Horrendous” traditional practices, such as female genital mutilation, abduction, marital rape and early marriages would require an attitudinal change not only on the part of men, but also on the part of women.  Female genital mutilation, for example, has long been practiced in the country and is not unique to any religious group.  Throughout the ages, female genital mutilation, (a practice that affected some 80 per cent of the female population), had been endorsed by women.  In her view, education, the “great liberator”, would emancipate women from such harmful traditional practices. Some progress has been made despite great socio-economic, political and cultural odds. The minimum punishment for rape is five years, whereas previously it was the payment of a camel.  A new family code has been adopted by some of the regional states and a new criminal code has come into effect.  A growing grass-roots movement was working to bring women’s issues to the forefront.  Women’s rights had first been recognized as a result of their military contribution to fighting a fascist regime and further progress would only be realized by their continued hard work and toil.

Human Rights of Women: Ethiopia has ratified both the UN Charter adopted in 1948 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of 1949. Both these international instruments prohibit the negative discrimination of women based on their sex. The UDHR identifies targets and requires the promotion and protection of civil, political, economic, and social rights of people. Though the UDHR prohibits all forms of discrimination based on sex, an additional instrument was necessary, to accommodate the special situation and needs of women, and accelerate the process of closing the gap between men and women. Accordingly the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) was adopted in 1981. Ethiopia ratified the convention in the same year. CEDAW outlines a variety of political, social, economic, and legislative issues that States have to work on to eliminate discrimination against women and create equality between men and women. It also reiterates that state parties will adopt the necessary measures to achieve human rights of women identified in the Convention. CEDAW also discusses a procedure for reporting and follow up of the measures states have taken in order to eliminate discrimination against women.

The Constitution adopted in 1995 by the FDRE has amplified the provisions given to women, and assures women of equal rights with men in every sphere and affirmative actions would be taken in order to remedy the sufferings of women because of past inequalities. It also reiterates the rights of women to own and administer property. It sounds women’s right to family planning services and to paid pre-and post-delivery maternity leaves. Since the ratification of the 1995 Constitution, a number of strides have been made in the past few years in amending discriminatory laws. Now the pension benefits of women civil servants is given to their survivors, maternity leave has been extended from 45 days to 3 months, and the family law has been revised. However, there is still a lot to be done. For example, women who marry foreigners are still losing their Ethiopian nationality.

Beijing Plus Five: The United Nations Fourth World Conference, held in Beijing, in September 1995 came up with the Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action. The Platform showed a renewed commitment to the goals of equality, development, and peace for all women. It was divided into six chapters and identified 12 critical areas of concern that were thought to be the main barriers to the advancement of women. These were poverty, education and training, health, violence, armed conflict, economic participation, power sharing and decision-making; women focused institutions, human rights, mass media, environment, and the girl child. In October 1998, the UN Division for the Advancement of Women (UN/DAW) sent out a questionnaire to all United Nations Member States requesting a report on the implementation of the Beijing Platform. The responses showed that, except for a few isolated examples where women's lives have improved, in many cases progress has been slow.

Many of the concerns that were included in the Beijing Platform had been considered and placed at the priority list of the Ethiopian government. Attempts have been made to implement policies and proclamations aimed at bringing about gender equality though not much progress has been observed. The constraints include high illiteracy rate, deep-rooted gender stereotyped cultural beliefs and practices, and lack of resources including qualified human labor. In preparation for the Beijing Plus Five, countries the world developed ways of measuring their countries' progress for women. The UN held five preparatory meetings and at the meeting of March 2000, 'the outcome document' was produced. The document reaffirms the 12 areas of the Platform for Action, including measures to:

• •identify violence against women as a human rights violation;

address the issue of honor killings;

• monitor trafficking of women and condemn exploitation of women and girls for   economic and sexual purposes;
• •respond to the impact of HIV/AIDS on the health of women and girls

internationally, particularly in Africa;

• •expand entrepreneurship and credit availability, including micro-credit;
• •emphasize "gender mainstreaming" in all economic policies, institutions, and resource allocations;
• •promote women's role in conflict resolutions and peace-building, and the role of men in promoting gender equality.

The outcome document reaffirms human rights of women and the commitment of the international community to implement the Beijing Platform. Ethiopia has committed itself to take the measures included in the document. What needs to be assessed is the progress that the country is making in implementing the provisions outlined in the outcome document.

The Millennium Development Goal (MDG): The MDG is another instrument that Ethiopia ratified with the aim of reducing poverty. The goals include, among others, enabling all children, both boys and girls, in the world to complete full course of elementary school and eliminating the gender gap at all levels of education, by the year 2015. Though the goals are highly ambitious for most developing countries including Ethiopia, they would reinforce the implementation of CEDAW, Beijing Plus Five and other national instruments.

Labor Law Proclamation: The Civil Service Proclamation of January, 2002, cover issues of employment, salary, promotion, performance evaluation, training, leave and disciplinary measures. Under employment, it states that no discrimination shall be made on the basis of ethnic origin, sex, religion and political affiliation, and other grounds. In addition to this, the proclamation clearly stipulates that in the employment process, if two candidates a man and a woman have the qualification required for a position, preference will be given to the female candidate. There are also provisions given to female civil servants on maternity related issues. The proclamation states that a pregnant civil servant shall be entitled to paid leave for a medical examination before delivery if recommended by a doctor. She will also be entitled to a paid leave of 30 days before delivery and 60 days after delivery. Finally if she does not deliver on the presumed date she can get her annual leave after the 60 days of post-delivery leave. These provisions are supportive of female civil servants, but issues like training and promotion do not seem to take gender issues into account. The personnel statistics issued by the Civil Service Commission shows that, currently many of the training opportunities are utilized by men. These could be because female civil servants have less GPA upon graduation, a problem closely related to the economic, social, and cultural problems a woman encounters in attending and succeeding in education. Therefore, considering the gender related arrangement in our society, mechanisms need to be created to distribute promotions and training fairly among male and female civil servants. If gender issues are neglected in promotion and training the gender equality of the sexes that we are striving to attain will become a dream rather than reality.

Political Participation: In the Ethiopian context, for a woman to hold a key position in politics, economics, and administration is a difficult task. As a patriarchal society, the attitude of the majority of people towards women holding a high position, the way society and workplaces are structured, and the gender division of labor all poses a serious challenge. Women have a marginal position in accessing and succeeding in their education. As indicated earlier, the majority of women in the civil service are in clerical and manual jobs. Therefore, it is not surprising that we do not see many women in key positions both in politics and administration

National policies and inputs on promotion of gender equality

Policies

The Transitional Government and the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia have formulated several policies to rehabilitate the social and economic infrastructure and create an environment for sustainable development. These include the economic Policy along with its strategy, the Agricultural Development Led Industrialization (ADLI), the National Policy of Ethiopian Women, the National Population Policy, the Education and Training Policy, Health Policy, Developmental Social Welfare Policy, Environmental Policy, Culture Policy, Policy on Natural Resources and Environment, and others.

One of the major policies formulated by the Transitional Government of Ethiopia was the Economic Reform Policy. The main objectives of the policy were to:

• Øchange the centralized economy to free market economy;
• Øincrease the participation of the people in order to increase the economic activity of the regions by giving ownership;
• ØEnable  local industries to use local raw materials and supplies to strengthen the economy;
• ØCreating relationship and interdependence among the various sectors, especially between agriculture and industry, so as to reduce dependency on imported raw materials and supplies;
• Øgiving special attention to the agricultural sector since it is perceived to be the basis for the economic development

ADLI as a strategy is believed to have influence on those engaged in agriculture, which form the majority. It is considered to be the best alternative to revive and further develop the devastated economy. Productivity has to be improved in order for the agricultural sector to become both a supplier of food and raw materials for the industry, while creating a market for the output for the industrial sector. This can be accomplished by applying improved and modern way of farming, through the provision of extension services, agricultural inputs, and infrastructure and credit services to small farmers. In this endeavor, emphasis will be given to farmer with small lands holdings and to the establishment of large-scale farms, especially in the lowland areas. This way, it will be possible to get enough yields from limited farming activities and eventually transfer people from agriculture to the other sectors. ADLI also delineates the roles to be played by the government, the people, and the private sector in implementing the strategy. It also describes what needs to be done in the various areas such as industry, minerals, population growth and control, science and technology, infrastructure and social services.

One of the eight issues under the investment program is the participation of women. It indicates that women would be provided with credit services and inputs that would enable them to increase their productivity; conditions will be created and improved to enable women to attend schools and to persist in their education with a view to, improving their chance of holding decision making positions at various levels; and encouraging women's participation in modern economic activities. Though women are given some provisions in the strategy, women’s issue has not been mainstreamed in all the sectors. It is obvious that the issue of gender is central to all the sectors including education, health, population, and food security, and in fact women play an important role in agriculture, which is the main focus of the strategy. Therefore, gender needs to be mainstreamed in all the strategies and programs that will be worked out in order to realize ADLI instead of putting it as one of the issues to be taken up. The main objectives of the National Policy of Ethiopian Women include, creating and facilitating conditions for equality between men and women, creating conditions to make rural women beneficiaries of social services like education and health, and eliminating stereotypes, and discriminatory perception and practices that constrain the equality of women. A number of strategies have also been designed to achieve the above objectives, two of which are the participation of women in the formulation of policies, laws, rules and regulations, and ensuring the democratic and human right of women. The structures were clearly put delineating the responsibilities of the Women's Affairs Office (WAO) under the Prime Minister Office and the Regional and Zonal Women's Affairs Sectors, and the Women's Affairs Department (WAD) in the various Ministries. However, assessments done over the years show that both the (WAO) and the (WAD) in the sectoral ministries lack capacity: they have problems with resources and qualified personnel. In many cases WADs are marginalized and gender is not mainstreamed in many of the activities in the ministries. The structure has problems reaching the grassroots since it stops at the Woreda level, a problem that has limited the implementation of the policy.

The National Population Policy formulated in 1993 was an instrument aimed at harmonizing the rate of population growth with the capacity of the country. The Policy gives serious attention to the issue of gender and describes the important roles women play in controlling population growth. It clearly stipulates that the situation of women has direct bearings on the fertility level of any society and explains how their education, employment and the provisions in the laws given to women are related to their fertility and reproductive health. The goals, objectives and strategies give a central place to the situation and empowerment of women. The goals include raising the economic and social status of women, empowering vulnerable segments of the society such as young children and women, removing all legal and customary practices constraining women's economic and social development and the enjoyment of their rights. Many of the strategies revolve around empowering women through education, employment in both government and private sectors and eliminating cultural and legal barriers.

The Ethiopian Education and Training Policy also has some provisions given to women. One of the specific objectives in the Education and Training Policy is to introduce a system of education that would rectify the misconceptions and misunderstandings regarding the roles and benefits of female education. The policy indicates that the design and development of curriculum and books would give special attention to gender issues. It further states that equal attention would be given to female participants when selecting teachers; training them, and advancing their careers. It also  states that financial support would be given to students with promising potentials. A number of initiatives have been taken to implement the policy. For example, female teachers with less GPA than male teachers are selected and this has increased the number of female teachers in elementary schools. But a lot needs to be done at the high school level. The Women’s Affairs Department in the Ministry of Education has prepared a gender policy and it undertakes a number of activities to help close the gender gap in education. Five regions, Gambela, Benshangul-Gumuz, SNNPRA, Oromiyaa, and Somalia, are targeted because of the low enrollment and high dropout rates of girls. Capacity building of female teachers, guidance and counseling services for female students, and awareness creation in the community are some of the activities. The office also gives assertiveness training to female students at the various higher education institutes and organizes panel discussion on gender issues. Women’s focal points in regional bureaus get support from the WAD in the MOE. However, just like other WADs the office is understaffed and encounters shortage of resources.

The Health Policy was one of instruments designed by the Transitional Government of Ethiopia to improve the health status of people and to facilitate the provision of basic health services. Health is such an inter-sectoral matter that it can not be addressed by any one policy or plan of action. A statement in the health policy reflects this fact: "the government believes that health policy can not be considered in isolation from policies addressing population dynamics, food availability, acceptable living conditions, and other requisites essential for health improvement and shall therefore develop effective intersectorality for a comprehensive betterment of life".

The goal of the health policy is to restructure and expand the health care system and to make it responsive to the health needs of the less privileged rural population, which constitute the overwhelming majority of the population, and are the major productive forces of the nation. The policy supports the democratization and decentralization of the health service system, and strengthening intersectoral activities. The policy accords special attention to the health needs of the family, particularly women and children, and hitherto most neglected regions, the rural population, and pastoralists, as some of its priority areas. The implementation of public policy or government plan of action involves the translation of goals and objectives into concrete achievements through various programs.

The Health Sector Development Program (HSDP) formulated in 1996, is an implementation strategy for the National Health Policy. The Cultural Policy formulated in October 1997 views culture as incorporating the different social, economic, political, administrative, moral, religious, material and oral traditions, and practices of the various peoples and nationalities of Ethiopia. It also recognizes that for development efforts to be effective and sustainable, they have to take into considerations the cultures of people, which impact on the thinking and activities. The policy recognizes that the cultural behaviors, practices, and attitudes that support and promote stereotypes and prejudices against women, those that constrain the expansion of family planning services and the promotion of reproductive health should be slowly eliminated. Instead, situations should be created to promote the equality of the sexes. The content of the Policy clearly elaborates the unfavorable situation of women, and articulates the need for a change that ensures women's active participation in all cultural activities and guaranteeing those equal rights to the benefits. However the strategies outlined in the Policy document do not include in what ways the sector could achieve the gender equality indicated in the policy and the means to eliminate harmful practices.

The Development Social Welfare Policy was formulated by the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs in November 1996. The main objectives of the policy included studying the causes of social problems and designing preventive and rehabilitative programs with full participation of all stakeholders including the grassroots. The Policy acknowledges that war, famine, economic crises of the past decades have harmed vulnerable groups, i.e., women, the elderly, children, youth and the disabled, and makes these groups the Policy’s central focus. It also explains that women are underrepresented in every sphere including education, employment, politics, and other key decision making positions. It further mentions that one of the major causes of social problems is the economic dependence of women on men. However, talking about the various groups such as children, youth, elderly, and the disabled, it does not say anything about the special problems females encounter as children, parents, youth, the elderly, and the disabled, nor does it mention the measures that need to be taken to alleviate their problems. For example, such problems as harmful traditional practices that victimize female children, teenage pregnancy and abortion, the vulnerability of disabled women to various types of violence are not given attention. Community participation, partnership and coordination, capacity building of actors at various levels, advocacy and awareness creation, implementation of international conventions and other social welfare related laws, and the establishment of data bank system are outlined as some of the major strategies. The policy also articulates that the issues of gender will be mainstreamed in all programs, projects, and services in addressing the target groups mentioned in the policy.

The Federal Policy on Natural Resources and the Environment was formulated in April 1996 with the overall goal of improving and enhancing the health and quality of life of Ethiopians and to promote sustainable social and economic development through the sound management and use of natural, man-made and cultural resources and the environment as a whole to meet the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The policy starts with a conceptual framework that contends that human resources are of great value in themselves and as creators and maintainers of natural resources have to be developed and cared for, if natural resources are to be developed and conserved. The policy gives importance to a participatory approach and the feeling of ownership in developing and conserving natural resources and an important place is given to gender.

It underlines the importance of the integration of social, cultural, and gender issues in sustainable resource and environmental management. Giving a high priority to raising the status of women by increasing female participation in the education system at all levels is indicated to be one of the strategies in the cross-sectoral issues. Increasing the number of women extension agents in natural resource and environmental management and designing programs that involve and benefit the most disadvantaged groups, particularly women, children, the disabled and the landless are considered important. The policy considers the disaggregating of data related to environment and to natural and man-made resource use and management, addressing gender issues by ensuring that energy plans adequately address fuel-wood requirement as two of the strategies in the development and conservation of biomass energy resources. In the area of mineral resource development one of the strategies is providing support to women in mineral development with special practical training and technical assistance particularly in small-scale and artisan mining. The policy gives a central place to institutionally supporting and establishing “Women in Development” desks at federal and regional government agencies concerned with natural resources development and environmental management. These desks would scrutinize projects, programs, policies, directives, rules, and regulations to ensure that gender issues are integrated. Capacity building for local communities to enable them to fully enfranchise their women, disables persons and, as appropriate, youth and children, to effectively participate in the planning and implementation of all development activities is also given importance. The policy is gender sensitive and it promotes highly the participation of vulnerable groups including women in conserving, sustaining, and managing the environment.

National Actors in Gender Equality and Competence Development In this section, only government machinery for the implementation of the women’s policy will be presented, as other national actors have been covered elsewhere in this materialt.

The Women’s Affairs Office (WAO)

The Women’s Affairs Office was established in October 1991, headed by a woman with the rank of a minister. It is charged with the responsibility of coordinating, facilitating and monitoring all government gender programs, particularly the implementation of the National Women’s Policy formulated in 1993. WAO is also responsible for creating a conducive environment for all implementations in the country.

Women’ Affairs Departments

The establishment of gender focal points in Federal ministries and regional councils is one of the main strategies for the implementation of gender and sectoral policies. It was also one of the initial activities undertaken by WAO, after the formulation of the Ethiopian National Policy on Women. The regional council women’s affairs department offices were opened up a little later.

Centre for Research Training and Information for Women in Development (CERTWID)

The CERTWID was established in 1991 with the financial assistance of UNFPA and Addis Ababa University. At the time of establishment CERTWID was placed under the Institute of Development Research. Currently, CERTWID has been upgraded and it is accountable to the office of the Associate Vice President for Research and Graduate studies. The center’s main goal is to enable women to empower themselves socially, culturally, economically and politically so as to be active participants as well as equal beneficiaries of the development process. This goal is realized through its research, training, and documentation activities. CERTWID undertakes its own research and sponsors other independent researchers and graduating BA and MA students to do their research on various issues related to gender. It also disseminates its findings through workshops and distribution of its publications for consumption by researchers, practitioners, and policy makers.

In its training component, CERTWID organizes various training workshops including gender sensitization, assertiveness, gender sensitive research methodology, and leadership. The Center's Documentation Unit serves a wide variety of patrons including Addis Ababa University staff, students, and employees of other governmental and nongovernmental organizations. It has an adequate collection of books, research reports, journals and other magazines published on gender. It can be said that CERTWID is making a great contribution in raising awareness about gender, providing information on gender issues and equipping researchers with knowledge and skills in gender sensitive research methodology. But the centre lacks human resources capacity.

Involvement of Men in Gender Equality Work

The ‘outcome document’ for the Beijing plus five contains the 12 areas of the platform “promote …. and the role of men in promoting gender equality. Gender refers to  both men and women, but is often taken to be women, because when we deal with gender the focus is on women. The reason for this is that up to the present time, it is women who suffer from the existing inequality between the sexes, and as such women have been the main actors to address the issue. This has probably brought about the feeling that gender is women’s issue to be handled by them. It is also true that, though not at a significant level, men are involved, in some instances showing more concern than some women do. In Addis Ababa, there are many consultancy firms managed by men and working on gender, including gender training, having themselves been trained. Many men make positive contributions in many forums. In some instances, especially in the rural setting, men have been seen to pose less resistance to changes that are introduced to achieve improved women’s status. The extent of men’s involvement and to what degree and in what ways they can contribute to gender equality,  is something that needs to be studied.

Poverty reduction strategy (PRS)

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) made a move in 1999 to encourage governments of low-income and heavily indebted countries to prepare poverty reduction strategies with a broad-based participation of various stakeholders. Ethiopia saw this as relevant, because poverty is deep-rooted and wide-spread, and the country seeks debt relief and plans to continue implementing economic reform programs in collaboration with the IMF and the WB. Further, PRS offers the opportunity for close dialogue between the government, the people and among the different stakeholders, contributing to improvements of the democratic process. The Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (I-PRSP) was drafted in September 2000 and submitted to the IMF and WB in November of the same year.

The aim of the interim paper was, to present a broad picture of the poverty reduction strategy that Ethiopia has pursued in recent years, and intended to refine the preparation of the PRSP. The adjustment policies that had been made in cooperation with Breton Wood Institutions had in the mid-1990s triggered Ethiopia to adopt a long-term strategy of Agricultural Development Led Industrialization (ADLI). ADLI envisages a growth process that is inherently poverty reducing, and makes it possible to assess the connection between policies and programs on the one hand and poverty reduction on the other. Generally the link between these two was indicated in the interim document by looking at the economic performances in the 1990s. The PRSP was accepted provisionally and the government offered a period of a year to prepare the PRSP. The PRSP is a tri-annually revised dynamic national strategy, with the goal of reducing poverty by 50% by 2015. The Ethiopian government invited the public to participate and subsequently launched the consultative process of the PRSP at Woreda and Regional levels in August 2001. The majority of Ethiopians live in rural areas and are engaged in farming, and thus ADLI was justified: Since poverty is worse there, it found on poverty reduction in the rural area. It is also understood that prioritization is required since PRSP cannot address each and every poverty issue.

The federal consultation was conducted at the African Conference Centre on 28-30 March 2002. Issues common for all regions were basic necessities, water, food, shelter, and health care; environmental degradation; infrastructure; capacity; peace and stability; empowerment; traditional practices that have negative impact; governance and human rights; and macro-economic stability. Interestingly all regions identified harmful tradition as being an impediment to the struggle against poverty. Secondly, good governance and human rights was an issue raised by several regions, and the need to promote and protect democracy and human rights was highlighted. 

Impact of globalization on women

Over the past two decades, globalization has created a tremendous impact on the lives of women in developing nations. Globalization can be defined as “a complex economic, political, cultural, and geographic process in which the mobility of capital, organizations, ideas, discourses, and peoples has taken a global or transnational form. With the establishment of international free trade policies, such as North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and GATT, transnational corporations are using the profit motive to guide their factories toward developing nations in search of “cheap” female labor. Corporations prefer female labor over male labor because women are considered to be “docile” workers, who are willing to obey production demands at any price. In developing nations, certain types of work, such as garment assembly, is considered to be an extension of female household roles. Therefore, cultural influences in developing nations also impacts employment stratification.

Bringing a high demand of employment opportunities for women in developing nations creates an instantaneous change within the social structure of these societies. Although the demand for female employment brings about an array of opportunities and a sense of independence, the glass ceiling continues to exist with the “feminization of poverty”. Researchers in the fields of Sociology, Anthropology, and Economics have collected empirical data that shows the consequences of globalization on the lives of women and their families in developing nations. Given these circumstances and the empirical evidence collected in the various studies, does globalization have an overall positive or negative impact on the live of women in developing nations?

The impact of globalization is different from country to country whether it is positive impact or negative impact. But the difference is highly significant between developed (industrialized) and developing countries. Its positive impacts:

• Employment opportunities for women especially in developed countries. It has created economic and job opportunities for women at all levels.
• Education and knowledge which constitutes a huge advancement in the empowerment of women especially in terms of sharing information.

How globalization has affected women in Ethiopia?

To look into how women are impacted by globalization, it is better to see how globalization is taken or brought to the people. It is brought by government policies or other channels. Wrong impact of globalization implies wrong utilization of the process. For example access to information may be misused by traffickers and drug dealers when poor women seeking job get information from such people. In Ethiopia there are three major constraints to women specifically and the society can generally benefit from globalization. These are:

• lack of proper infrastructure or other communication channel
• low level of education and
• language barrier

There are policies guiding governments to subsidies from public service such as education and public health. In the free market system, where market controls everything, people are forced to pay for services. Applying these policies in poor countries like Ethiopia, it is the poor who are going to be affected.

An environmental crisis (climatic change) is the result of the depletion of Ozone. Climatic change, resulting flooding and drought, has affected the production system where women are in turn affected.

1. Gender defined

Gender is a social attribute ascribing some characteristics or norms and modes of behavior to the female and other to the male sex. The gender of a person is determined by the society and by its way of upbringing children. Gender is, therefore, the result of the interplay of culture, religion, and similar factor of a society. It refers to historically defined identities, roles and behaviors of different groups such as men-women, girls-boys, old men-old women, etc. The female and male sexes are socialized into being one of these groups. The differences among these groups brought about by socio-cultural factors are often mistaken for natural differences between the sexes or considered as a God-given phenomena.

Sex is a natural attribute helping us to identify a person as male or female. A male person biologically differs from a female. This is evident in that while males have mustache, women do not; while women have big breasts that may produce milk, men do not; they also differ in their reproductive organs and their roles in child bearing. Being a male or female is, therefore, a natural phenomenon that we cannot change since the two sexes are born different.

Gender roles refer to the expected duties and responsibilities, rights and privileges of men-women, girls-boys, etc. that are specified by socio-religious and cultural factors. The interplay of these factors determines what kind of clothing is appropriate for the female and for the male sex. It also decides on the amount of food necessary for each, the type of work they perform, the time and the type of place they are supposed to be at, the type of grouping they can join, etc.

2.Global and historical perspective on the legal status of women

2.1 Historical Perspective

The four global women’s conferences 1975-1995

Four world conferences on women convened by the United Nations in the past quarter of the century have been instrumental in elevating the cause of gender equality to the very centre of the global agenda. The conferences have united the international community behind a set of common objectives with an effective plan of action for the advancement of women everywhere, in all spheres of public and private life.

 The struggle for gender equality was still in its early stages at the inception of the United Nations in 1945.  Of the original 51 member states, only 30 allowed women equal voting rights with men or permitted them to hold public office. Nevertheless, the drafters of the United Nation Charter had the foresight to deliberately refer to the "equal rights of men and women" as they declared the Organization's "faith in fundamental human rights" and the "dignity and worth of the human person". No previous international legal document had so forcefully affirmed the equality of all human beings, or specifically targeted sex as a basis for discrimination.  At that moment, it became clear that women's rights would be central to the work that lay ahead.

During the first three decades, the work of the United Nations on behalf of women focused primarily on the codification of women's legal and civil rights, and the gathering of data on the status of women around the world. With time, however, it became increasingly apparent that laws, in and of them, were not enough to ensure the equal rights of women.

The struggle for equality entered a second stage with the convening of four world conferences by the United Nations to develop strategies and plans of action for the advancement of women. The efforts undertaken have gone through several phases and transformations

• from regarding women almost exclusively in terms of their development needs,
•  to recognizing their essential contributions to the entire development process,
•  to seeking their empowerment and
•  the promotion of their right to full participation at all levels of human activity.

2.1.1 The Mexico City conference: Dialogue is open

The first world conference on the status of women was convened in Mexico City to coincide with the 1975 International Women's Year, observed to remind the international community that discrimination against women continued to be a persistent problem in much of the world. The Conference, along with the United Nations Decade for Women (1976-1985) proclaimed by the General Assembly five months later at the urging of the Conference, launched a new era in global efforts to promote the advancement of women by opening a worldwide dialogue on gender equality. A process was set in motion ” a process of learning ” that would involve deliberation, negotiation, setting objectives, identifying obstacles and reviewing the progress made.

The Mexico City Conference was called for by the United Nations General Assembly to focus international attention on the need to develop future oriented goals, effective strategies and plans of action for the advancement of women.  To this end, the General Assembly identified three key objectives that would become the basis for the work of the United Nations on behalf of women:

• Full gender equality and the elimination of gender discrimination;
• The integration and full participation of women in development;
• An increased contribution by women in the strengthening of world peace

The Conference responded by adopting a World Plan of Action, a document that offered guidelines for governments and the international community to follow for the next ten years in pursuit of the three key objectives set by the General Assembly. The Plan of Action set minimum targets, to be met by 1980, that focused on securing equal access for women to resources such as education, employment opportunities, political participation, health services, housing, nutrition and family planning.

 This approach marked a change, which had started to take shape in the early 1970s, in the way that women were perceived.  Whereas previously women had been seen as passive recipients of support and assistance, they were now viewed as full and equal partners with men, with equal rights to resources and opportunities. A similar transformation was taking place in the approach to development, with a shift from an earlier belief that development served to advance women, to a new consensus that development was not possible without the full participation of women.

 The Conference called upon governments to formulate national strategies and identify targets and priorities in their effort to promote the equal participation of women. By the end of the United Nations Decade for Women, 127 Member States had responded by establishing some form of national machinery, institutions dealing with the promotion of policy, research and programs aimed at women's advancement and participation in development.

Within the United Nations system, in addition to the already existing Branch (now Division) for the Advancement of Women, the Mexico City Conference led to the establishment of the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW) and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) to provide the institutional framework for research, training and operational activities in the area of women and development.

An important facet of the meeting in Mexico City was that women themselves played an instrumental role in shaping the discussion. Of the 133 Member State delegations gathered there, 113 were headed by women. Women also organized a parallel NGO Forum, the International Women's Year Tribune, which attracted approximately 4,000 participants.

 Sharp differences emerged among the women gathered at the Forum, reflecting the political and economic realities of the times.  Women from the countries of the Eastern Block, for instance, were most interested in issues of peace, while women from the West emphasized equality and those from the developing world placed priority on development.  Nevertheless, the Forum played an important role in bringing together women and men from different cultures and backgrounds to share information and opinions and to set in motion a process that would help unite the women's movement, which by the end of the Decade for Women would become truly international. The Forum was also instrumental in opening up the United Nations to NGOs, who provided access for the voices of women to the Organization's policy-making process.

2.1.2  The Copenhagen: The Review Process begins

There was a general consensus that significant progress had been made as representatives of 145 Member States met in Copenhagen in 1980 for the second world conference on women to review and appraise the 1975 World Plan of Action. Governments and the international community had made strides toward achieving the targets set out in Mexico City five years earlier.

 An important milestone had been the adoption by the General Assembly in December 1979 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, one of the most powerful instruments for women's equality.  The Convention, which has been termed ”the bill of rights for women", now legally binds 165 States, which have become States parties and obligates them to report within one year of ratification, and subsequently every four years, on the steps they have taken to remove obstacles they face in implementing the Convention. An Optional Protocol to the Convention, enabling women victims of sex discrimination to submit complaints to an international treaty body, was opened for signature on Human Rights Day, 10 December 1999. Upon its entry into force, it will put the Convention on an equal footing with other international human rights instruments having individual complaints procedures.

Despite the progress made, the Copenhagen Conference recognized that signs of disparity were beginning to emerge between rights secured and women's ability to exercise these rights. To address this concern, the Conference pinpointed three areas where specific, highly focused action was essential if the broad goals of equality, development and peace, identified by the Mexico City Conference, were to be reached. These three areas were equal access to education, employment opportunities and adequate health care services.

The deliberations at the Copenhagen Conference took place in the shadow of political tensions, some of them carried over from the Mexico City Conference. Nevertheless, the Conference came to a close with the adoption of a Program of Action, albeit not by consensus, which cited a variety of factors for the discrepancy between legal rights and women's ability to exercise these rights, including:

• Lack of sufficient involvement of men in improving women's role in society;
• Insufficient political will;
• Lack of recognition of the value of women's contributions to society;
• Lack of attention to the particular needs of women in planning;
• A shortage of women in decision-making positions;
• Insufficient services to support the role of women in national life, such as co-operatives, day-care centers and credit facilities;
• Overall lack of necessary financial resources;
• Lack of awareness among women about the opportunities available to them.

To address these concerns, the Copenhagen Program of Action called for, among other things, stronger national measures to ensure women's ownership and control of property, as well as improvements in women's rights to inheritance, child custody and loss of nationality. Delegates at the Conference also urged an end to stereotyped attitudes towards women.

2.1.3 Nairobi: "The Birth of Global Feminism"

The movement for gender equality had gained true global recognition as the third world conference on women, The World Conference to Review and Appraise the Achievements of the United Nations Decade for Women: Equality, Development and Peace, was convened in Nairobi in 1985.  With 15,000 representatives of non-governmental organizations attending the parallel NGO Forum, many referred to the Conference as the "birth of global feminism". The women's movement, divided by world politics and economic realities at the Mexico Conference, had now become an international force unified under the banner of equality, development and peace. Behind this milestone, lay a decade of work. A lot of information, knowledge and experience had been gathered through the process of discussion, negotiation and revision.

At the same time, delegates were confronted with shocking reports. Data gathered by the United Nations revealed that improvements in the status of women and efforts to reduce discrimination had benefited only a small minority of women. Improvements in the situation of women in the developing world had been marginal at best. In short, the objectives of the second half of the United Nations Decade for Women had not been met.

This realization demanded that a new approach be adopted.  The Nairobi Conference was given the mandate to seek new ways to overcome the obstacles to achieving the Decade's goals” equality, development and peace.

The Nairobi Forward-Looking Strategies to the Year 2000, the strategy developed and adopted by consensus by the 157 participating governments, was an updated blueprint for the future of women to the end of the century.  It broke new ground as it declared all issues to be women's issues. Women's participation in decision-making and the handling of all human affairs was recognized not only as their legitimate right but as a social and political necessity that would have to be incorporated in all institutions of society.

At the heart of the document was a series of measures for achieving equality at the national level.  Governments were to set their own priorities, based on their development policies and resource capabilities.

Three basic categories of measures were identified:

• Constitutional and legal steps;
• Equality in social participation;
• Equality in political participation and decision-making.

In keeping with the view that all issues were women's issues, the measures recommended by the Nairobi Forward-Looking Strategies covered a wide range of subjects, from employment, health, education and social services, to industry, science, communications and the environment. In addition, guidelines for national measures to promote women's participation in efforts to promote peace, as well as to assist women in special situations of distress, were proposed.

Accordingly, the Nairobi Conference urged governments to delegate responsibilities for women's issues to all institutional offices and programs. Moreover, following the Conference, the General Assembly asked the United Nations to establish, where they did not already exist, focal points on women's issues in all sectors of the work of the Organization.

The Nairobi Conference had introduced a wider approach to the advancement of women.  It was now recognized that women's equality, far from being an isolated issue, encompassed every sphere of human activity.  Therefore, women's perspective and active involvement on all issues, not only women's issues, was essential if the goals and objectives of the Decade for Women were to be attained.

2.1.3        Beijing:  Legacy of Success

While the efforts of the previous two decades, starting with the Mexico City Conference in 1975, had helped to improve women's conditions and access to resources, they had not been able to change the basic structure of inequality in the relationship between men and women. Decisions that affected all people's lives were still being made mostly by men. Ways had to be sought to empower women so that they could bring their own priorities and values as equal partners with men in decision-making processes at all levels.

Recognition of the need to involve women in decision-making had begun to emerge during the course of the series of global conferences held by the United Nations in the early 1990s on various aspects of development such as the environment, human rights, population and social development. All the conferences had stressed the importance of women's full participation in decision-making, and women's perspectives were incorporated into the deliberations and the documents that were adopted.

 However, it was with the next in the series of conferences, the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995, that a new chapter in the struggle for gender equality can truly be said to have begun.

The fundamental transformation that took place in Beijing was the recognition of the need to shift the focus from women to the concept of gender, recognizing that the entire structure of society, and all relations between men and women within it, had to be re-evaluated. Only by such a fundamental restructuring of society and its institutions could women be fully empowered to take their rightful place as equal partners with men in all aspects of life. This change represented a strong reaffirmation that women's rights were human rights and that gender equality was an issue of universal concern, benefiting all.

The legacy of the Beijing Conference was to be that it sparked a renewed global commitment to the empowerment of women everywhere and drew unprecedented international attention. The Conference unanimously adopted the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which was in essence an agenda for women's empowerment and stands as a milestone for the advancement of women in the twenty-first century. The Platform for Action specified twelve critical areas of concern considered to represent the main obstacles to women's advancement and which required concrete action by Governments and civil society:

• Women and poverty
• Education and training of women;
• Women and health;
• Violence against women;
• Women and armed conflict;
• Women and the economy;
• Women in power and decision-making;
• Institutional mechanisms for the advancement of women;
• Human rights of women;
• Women and the media;
• Women and the environment;
• The girl child.

By adopting the Beijing Platform for Action, governments committed themselves to the effective inclusion of a gender dimension throughout all their institutions, policies, planning and decision-making. What this in effect meant was that before decisions were to be made or plans to be implemented, an analysis should always be made of the effects on, and needs of, both women and men.  For example, instead of striving to make an existing educational system gradually more accessible to women, gender mainstreaming would call for a reconstruction of the system so that it would suit the needs of women and men equally.

The introduction of gender mainstreaming called for the re-examination of society in its entirety and its basic structure of inequality.  The focus was, therefore, no longer limited to women and their status in society but was committed to restructuring institutions and political and economic decision-making in society as a whole.

In endorsing the Platform for Action, the United Nations General Assembly called upon all States, the UN system and other international organizations, as well as NGOs and the private sector to take action to implement its recommendations. Within Member States, national machineries that had been established to promote the status of women were assigned a new function as the central policy-coordinating unit to mainstream a gender perspective throughout all institutions and programs. Within the United Nations system, the Secretary-General designated a senior official to serve as his Special Adviser on Gender Issues, whose role was to ensure system-wide implementation of the gender perspective in all aspects of the work of the United Nations. The Organization was also assigned a key role in the monitoring of the Platform.

The Beijing Conference was considered a great success, both in terms of its size and its outcome.  It was the largest gathering of government and NGO representatives ever held, with 17,000 in attendance, including representatives of 189 governments. The NGO Forum held parallel to the Conference also broke all records, bringing the combined number of participants to over 47,000.

The presence and influence of NGOs, one of the most active forces in the drive for gender equality, had increased dramatically since the Mexico City Conference in 1975. In Beijing, NGOs had directly influenced the content of the Platform for Action and they would play an important role in holding their national leaders accountable for the commitments they had made to implement the Platform.

INTRODUCTION

This short paper which is divided into two main parts, an introduction and a conclusion, aims to discuss the issue of corporal punishment on children with special emphasis given to a criminal case decided by a court in Ethiopia in 2012. The first part concerns itself with the events leading to the beginning of the case devoting itself to the backgrounds of the case and preceding to discuss the trial stage until its decision.

In the second part the paper will discuss the legality of corporal punishment in light of the convention to protect the right of the child, the African charter on rights and welfare of the child and domestic laws applicable in Ethiopia, it would further try to reflect on the decision given on the case discussed in part One in relation to basic principles enshrined in the convention and the criminal code of Ethiopia. In the end the Conclusion part would raise a few points by way of finalizing and putting forward general recommendations with regards to the issues discussed in the paper.

a)   Back ground of the case

On march 2012 a video posted on Youtube went viral after so many of the local community in Ethiopia shared and commented on it on social networks such as facebook and other blogs, the 6 minute footage showed  a child being beaten senselessly by an elder woman who seemingly was punishing the helpless child for crying in school. Another person who is recording the action is heard laughing in the background.

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Feelings of disgust and shock were echoed from all parts of the country as the video racked up thousands of views and stirred an online outrage. Cruel, appalling, beyond inhumane , heartbreaking, traumatising – those were just some of the reactions from those who have watched the video posted online.

People who watched the video said they were deeply shocked by the fact that the child remained impassive, throughout the whole episode, the girl doesn’t fight back, resist the attack or even cry, leading to speculations that the child may be used to such abuse even before this incident took place. Many were also disturbed by the audible laughs that can be heard from the background by the video taper as the abuse persisted.

As a result of the video the issue of child abuse in Ethiopia was for once brought to the frontline resulting in the launching of several online campaigns dedicated to the cause. Local media outlets also took notice of the developing story and started running it on radio stations and private news papers which soon led a local website owner to put forward a reward of  10,000 Ethiopian birr(about US$600) for anyone with information leading to the arrest of the abusive woman who was taught to be the mother of the child , shortly after which the woman who filmed the video Meron Asnake came forward and identified the woman as W/ro Halimat Mohammed, a janitor at the Addis Ababa city administration office.

The child in the video was also identified as Bemnet Kasaye who was now 7 years old and a kindergarten student. It was shortly known that the woman was the grandmother of the child who was in charge of raising the little girl. One of the local newspapers, the Ethiopian reporter, which was reporting the matter even before the identity of the individuals was known, got a hold of the woman at her house around Gulele Subcity in the capital and sat her down for her first interview since the video was posted.

The grandmother who gave her first interview wearing a T-shirt with the motto  “in the new millennium the safety of children is our common responsibility” plainly printed in Amharic, stated that the alleged incident happened more than 3 years ago because the child misbehaved at school and she become angry.

The response of the general public after this was mixed, The local community at first expressed their delight for the identification of the women and called for justice to be served, yet many expressed their views that they couldn’t believe the video was more than 3 years old as suggested by the women perpetrators, citing that the seven year old Bemnet kassaye now identified as the victim doesn’t look much older than what she looked like in the video.

The increasing public outrage by the video soon led to the arrest of both the grandmother and the young woman who recorded the video with her mobile phone but they were soon released on bail pending the filing of a formal charge by the public prosecutor.

b)  Trial

On the 20th of March, 2012 the federal prosecutor filed a criminal charge against W/o Halimat Mohammed in the Arada first instance court, alleging that the accused violated Article 556(2)c of the FDRE criminal code and committed  a crime of common wilful injury against a victim who is incapable of defending herself due to her small age, the charge further stated that the alleged crime was committed  when the child was 3 years old more than 3 years before the video was uploaded on the internet and that the child suffered minor injuries as a result of the actions of the accused.

The list of evidences cited by the public prosecutor in support of the charge included the child victim Bemnet Kasaye and the girl that filmed the incident on her mobile phone who was previously arrested in connection to this very event but was later changed to a witness. The video that brought this whole episode into the limelight was also included as evidence.

On the day set for the hearing of the case, the defendant admitted that she has beaten the child as specified on the charge but entered a plea of Not Guilty because she did not cause any injury to the child and was only trying to discipline the child so she will not grow up to be ill-mannered.

The court after recording the statement given by the accused ordered the prosecution to call their witnesses. Accordingly both witnesses took an oath to tell the truth and were called to the stand respectively.

The first witness to testify was Bemnet Kasaye the 7 year old child victim who started her testimony by stating that the accused was her grandmother who raised her. The child who was still living with her grandmother, told the court that the defendant punished her only when she is at fault, and hesitatingly admitted that she felt pain when her grandmother does that. The child testified that the defendant usually pinches and slaps her to discipline her; she further stated that although she felt pain at the time she wasn’t injured and didn’t even suffer bruising.

The second witness Meron Asnake, who stated that she was almost like a family to the defendant, told the court that she was the one who recorded the incident on her mobile phone more than three years ago and that the defendant was punishing the child because she ate from somebody else’s lunchbox and lied about it. The witness also stated that no injury was caused as a result of the beating and that the defendant slapped and shoved the child no more than three times.

After the testimonies the defendant told the court that she doesn’t wish to cross-examine either of the witnesses because all that was said was true and thus the court proceeded to give its ruling.

The judge’s final decision stated that the prosecution was able to prove that the accused did beat the child, a fact which wasn’t denied by the defendant from the start. But further stated that it wasn’t able to prove that the victim suffered injuries serious enough to invoke Article 556. As there was no medical evidence suggesting the extent of the injuries suffered by the victim and the victim herself has stated under oath that she didn’t suffer any injuries or bruising as a result of the beating, the defendant can only be held accountable for the crime of assault as per Art 560 of the criminal code which applies in cases where the victim suffered the lowest levels of trespasses to his/her body and health and thus only experienced transient aches and pains.

After the judgement was read in open court, the prosecution was asked if there is anything they would like to say with regard to sentencing, to which the prosecutor raised the shocking and inhuman nature of the assault and asked the court to pass a punishment capable of rehabilitating the offender and warn others from committing similar wrongs. The defendant on the other hand asked for a mitigated sentence for the reason that she committed the crime in anger and mentioning that she has since asked for forgiveness.

On July 7, 2012 the court finally sentenced W/ro Halimat Mohammed to a fine of 300 Ethiopian birr (less than $20 US dollars) for the crime of assault closing the case of Bemnet Kassa roughly three months after she entered into the hearts and minds of the Ethiopian people.

c)   Corporal punishment : legality

The committee on the rights of the Child noted in its general comment 8 that “corporal” or “physical” punishment defined as “any punishment in which physical force is used and intended to cause some degree of pain or discomfort, however light” violated the right of the child in the convention and was not in line with the obligation of states to protect children from all forms of violence as enshrined therein.

The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child to which Ethiopia is a signatory to, also requires states· to “take all appropriate measures to ensure that a child who is subjected to school or parental discipline shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity

of the child and in conformity with the present Charter” ; and even though the ACRWC‘s Article 20 provides for domestic discipline methods that are consistent with the inherent dignity of the child, It should be noted that the charter also emphasises “Nothing in this Charter shall affect any provisions that are more conducive to the realization of the rights and welfare of the child contained in the law of a State Party or in any other international Convention or agreement in force in that State.” thereby allowing the application of the convention’s provisions which are more favourable in this regard.

Whatever the case, the insensitive beatings inflicted on Bemnet Kassaye by her grandmother could not by any stretch of the provisions be taken as in line with the spirit of either the convention or the charter

With regard to affording protection against corporal punishment to children, Ethiopian domestic laws fall short of the international standards set by the committee which advices all signatory states to ban physical punishment at home, school and other settings

Corporal punishment is explicitly prohibited in schools by article 36 of the Constitution, which states that “every child has the right to be free of corporal punishment or cruel and inhuman treatment in schools and other institutions responsible for the care of children”. It is also not among the permitted disciplinary measures in the school administration regulation issued by the Ministry of Education in 1998.

Corporal punishment is however lawful in the home. Article 576 of the Criminal Code (2005) punishes maltreatment of children but states in sub-article 3: “The taking, by parents or other persons having similar responsibilities, of a disciplinary measure that does not contravene the law, for the purposes of proper upbringing, is not subject to this provision.” In addition Article  68  of the same code under the title “lawful acts justifiable acts and excuses” states that  “acts reasonably done in exercising the right of correction or discipline do not constitute a punishable crime thus in effect legalizing corporal punishment on children. The Revised Family Code (2000) also states that “the guardian may take the necessary disciplinary measures for the purpose of ensuring the upbringing of the minor.”Thus the provisions against violence and abuse in the Constitution (1995), the Criminal Code and the Revised Family Code in their present form are far from enough to protect children like Bemnet from physical abuse by guardians.

d)  Case analysis

Coming back to the case, the first thing that one observes on seeing the charge of W/ro Halimat Mohammed is that there is a mismatch between the crime cited and the act that was committed. The provision which is more special and thus applicable to the said incident was obviously Article 576 dealing with maltreatment of minors.

The public prosecutor however chose to bring a charge on account of Article 556(2)c treating the child as any regular person who needs special protection, the reason for this is most likely because the more than 3 years time gap between the commission of the crime and the instituting of the charge made it impossible to indict the accused on the relevant criminal provision because of the statue of limitation has already passed. Even though their where suspicions as to whether the video was indeed as old as the defendant claimed it to be, since there was no way of verifying the truth, the prosecution had to rely on the account of the defendant and her family with regard to when the said incident happened.

The obligations set under the convention involve not only the executive and legislative parts of the government but also the judiciary which is expected to uphold the best interests of the child in all actions. Thus the remaining portion of this paper would concern itself with the decision of the Arada court in light of its duties as prescribed in international instruments and domestic law.

Even though the laws in Ethiopia have not yet recognized the absolute right of the child to be free from corporal punishments in the home setting, once the court has passed a guilty verdict on the defendant, there certainly were a couple of extra measures the court could have taken, using the laws already in force, in order to ensure the best interests of the child.

First of all the final sentence given in the case, which is a fine of 300 birr, is too little a penalty for such a grave violation and thus not in line with the purpose of criminal law. In any case the decision could not be considered as holding the best interests of the child into account; a prison sentence could have sent the message that inflicting physical pain on children is a crime entailing serious consequences. As the aim of criminal law is not only to rehabilitate criminals but also to deter other individuals from committing similar crimes by giving notice of the illegality of an action, a prison sentence in a case such as this, which has captured the public eye may have had a better chance in sending the clear message that such punishments are crimes.

The court could also have ordered the convicted grandmother to enter a guarantee of good conduct as per article 135 of the criminal code. Considering the horrific images of the video and the level of violence, a guarantee of recognizance, which according to Ethiopian law could extend to a time as long as 5 years, may have had positive effects in protecting the child from further abuse in the future.

Its also the opinion of the writer that the court shouldn’t have limited its final decisions on  a simple fine which is even less than half of what the accused had secured for bail earlier. Rather the court should have also imposed secondary measures so as to ensure the best interests of the child. The FDRE criminal code allows the court to temporarily or permanently deprive convicted persons of their family rights where they have shown themselves to be unworthy of exercising such rights The video clearly shows that the woman can not in any way be considered fit to take care of any child, thus such a deprivation measure could have had a better chance of guaranteeing the safety of the child more than any imprisonment or other kind of punishment that could have been imposed in a court of law.

Conclusion

Researches done on the issue of corporal punishment in Ethiopia suggest that a very high percentage of children experience what can be considered as cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by their parents or at school. The Committee on the Rights of the Child itself has expressed concern at the widespread use of corporal punishment in the home, schools and other settings, and recommended explicit prohibition following the state party’s third report in 2006.

It is the opinion of the writer that the case of Bemnet is not an isolated incident in a country where child disciplining is synonymous with physical punishment, yet it could have been a golden opportunity for the state machinery to change the attitudes of a society whose culture accepts corporal punishment, mainly because of the media coverage it received. Reforms in the law and public education about alternative ways of disciplining are urgently needed so there wouldn’t be another Bemnet and another missed opportunity.

Since time immemorial, states and peoples have entered into formal relationships with each other. Over the ages, traditions have developed on how such relationships are conducted. These are the traditions that make up modern ‘international law’. Like domestic law, international law covers a wide range of subjects such as security, diplomatic relations, trade, culture and human rights, but it differs from domestic legal systems in a number of important ways. In international law there is no single legislature, nor is there a single enforcing institution. Consequently, international law can only be established with the consent of states and is primarily dependent on self-enforcement by the same states. In cases of non-compliance there is no supra-national institution; enforcement can only take place by means of individual or collective actions of other states.

This consent, from which the rules of international law are derived, may be expressed in various ways. The obvious mode is an explicit treaty, imposing obligations on the states parties. Such ‘treaty law’ constitutes a dominant part of modern international law. Besides treaties, other documents and agreements serve as guidelines for the behaviour of states, although they may not be legally binding. Consent may also be inferred from established and consistent practice of states in conducting their relationships with each other. The sources of international law are many and states commit to them to different degrees. The internationally accepted classification of sources of international law is formulated in Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice. Forming one of the regimes of international law, human rights law has the same source with the former.

a) International conventions, whether general or particular;

b) International custom, as evidence of general practice accepted as law;

c) The general principles of law recognised by civilised nations;

d) Subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law such as judicial

decisions and teachings of the most highly qualified publicists.

These sources will be analysed below.

A. International Conventions

International treaties are contracts signed between states. They are legally binding and impose mutual obligations on the states that are party to any particular treaty (states parties). The main particularity of human rights treaties is that they impose obligations on states about the manner in which they treat all individuals within their jurisdiction.

Even though the sources of international law are not hierarchical, treaties have some degree of primacy. Nowadays, more than forty major international conventions for the protection of human rights have been adopted. International human rights treaties bear various titles, including ‘covenant’, ‘convention’ and ‘protocol’; but what they have in commone are the explicit indication of states parties to be bound by their terms.

Human rights treaties have been adopted at the universal level (within the framework of the United Nations and its specialised agencies, for instance, the ILO and UNESCO) as well as under the auspices of regional organisations, such as the Council of Europe (CoE), the Organisation of American States (OAS) and the African Union (AU) (formerly the Organisation of African Unity (OAU)). These organisations have greatly contributed to the codification of a comprehensive and consistent body of human rights law. 

UNIVERSAL CONVENTIONS FOR THE PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Human rights had already found expression in the Covenant of the League of Nations, which led, inter alia, to the creation of the International Labour Organisation. At the San Francisco Conference in 1945, held to draft the Charter of the United Nations, a proposal to adopt a ‘Declaration on the Essential Rights of Man’ was put forward but was not examined because it required more detailed consideration than was possible at the time. Nonetheless, the UN Charter clearly  speaks of ‘promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion’ (Article 1, para. 3). The idea of promulgating an ‘international bill of rights’ was developed immediately afterwards and led to the adoption in 1948 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

The UDHR, adopted by a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), although not a treaty, is the earliest comprehensive human rights instrument adopted by the international community. On the same may that it adopted the Universal Declaration, the UNGA requested the UN Commission on Human Rights to prepare, as a matter of priority, a legally binding human rights convention. Wide differences in economic and social philosophies hampered efforts to achieve agreement on a single instrument, but in 1954 two draft conventions were completed and submitted to the UNGA for consideration. Twelve years later, in 1966, the International Covenant on Economic, Social 21 and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) were adopted, as well as the First Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, which established an individual complaints procedure. Both Covenants and the Optional Protocol entered into force in 1976. A Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, on the abolition of the death penalty, was adopted in 1989 and entered into force in 1991.

The ‘International Bill of Human Rights’ consists of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ICESCR, and the ICCPR and its two Optional Protocols. The International Bill of Rights is the basis for numerous conventions and national constitutions.

Besides the International Bill of Human Rights, a number of other instruments have been adopted under the auspices of the UN and other international agencies. They may be divided into three groups:

a) Conventions elaborating on certain rights, inter alia:

• The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948)
• ILO 98 concerning the Right to Organise and to Bargain Collectively (1949)

b) Conventions dealing with certain categories of persons who may need special protection, inter alia:

• The Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951), and the 1967 Protocol thereto
• The Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989)
• Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflicts (2000)
• The International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (2000)

c) Conventions seeking to eliminate discrimination

• ILO 111 concerning Discrimination in respect of Employment and Occupation (1958)
• UNESCO Convention against Discrimination in Education (1960)
• The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965)
• International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (1973)
• The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979) and its Optional Protocol (2000) 

The UN Charter encourages the adoption of regional instruments for the establishment of human rights obligations, many of which have been of crucial importance for the development of international human rights law. The Council of Europe adopted in 1950 the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, supplemented by the European Social Charter in 1961, the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in 1987, and the Framework Convention on National Minorities in 1994.

The American Convention on Human Rights was adopted in 1969, under the auspices of the Organisation of American States. This Convention has been complemented by two protocols, the 1988 Protocol of San Salvador on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights and the 1990 Protocol to Abolish the Death Penalty. Other Inter-American Conventions include the Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture (1985), the Convention on the Forced Disappearances of Persons (1994), and the Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women   (1995).

In 1981, the Organisation of African Unity, now the African Union, adopted the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Two protocols to the Charter have been adopted: the Additional Protocol on the Establishment of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (1998), and the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa    (2003). Other African instruments include the Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa (1969), and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (1990).

 B. International custom

Customary international law plays a crucial role in international human rights law. The Statute of the International Court of Justice refers to ‘general practice accepted as law’. In order to become international customary law, the ‘general practice’ needs to represent a broad consensus in terms of content and applicability, deriving from a sense that the practice is obligatory (opinio juris et necessitatis). Customary law is binding on all states (except those that may have objected to it during its formation), whether or not they have ratified any relevant treaty.

One of the important features of customary international law is that customary law may, under certain circumstances, lead to universal jurisdiction or application, so that any national court may hear extra-territorial claims brought under international law. In addition, there also exists a class of customary international law, jus cogens, or peremptory norms of general international law, which are norms accepted and recognised by the international community of states as a whole as norms from which no derogation is permitted. Under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) any treaty which conflicts with a peremptory norm is void.

Many scholars argue that some standards laid down in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which in formal terms is only a resolution of the UNGA and as such not legally binding) have become part of customary international law as a result of subsequent practice; therefore they would be binding upon all states. Within the realm of human rights law the distinction between concepts of customary law, treaty law, and general principles of law are often unclear.

The Human Rights Committee in its General Comment 24 (1994) has summed up the rights which can be assumed to belong to this part of international law which is binding on all states, irrespective of whether they have ratified relevant conventions, and to which no reservations are allowed:

[A] State may not reserve the right to engage in slavery, to torture, to subject persons to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, to arbitrarily deprive persons of their lives, to arbitrarily arrest and detain persons, to deny freedom of thought, conscience and religion, to presume a person guilty unless he proves his innocence, to execute pregnant women and children, to permit the advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred, to deny to persons of marriageable age the right to marry, or to deny to minorities the right to enjoy their own culture, profess their own religion, or use their own language. And [...] the right to a fair trial [...].

Although this list is subject to debate and could possibly be extended with other rights not in the field of civil and political rights (for instance, genocide and large parts of the Four Geneva Conventions on International Humanitarian Law), the Committee underlines that there is a set of human rights which de jure are beyond the (politically oriented) debate on the universality of human rights.

 C. General principles of law

In the application of both national and international law, general or guiding principles are used. In international law, they have been defined as ‘logical propositions resulting from judicial reasoning on the basis of existing pieces of international law’. At the international level, general principles of law occupy an important place in case-law regarding human rights. A clear example is the principle of proportionality, which is important for human rights supervisory mechanisms in assessing whether interference with a human right may be justified. Why are general principles used? No legislation is able to provide answers to every question and to every possible situation that arises. Therefore, rules of law or principles that enable decision-makers and members of the executive and judicial branches to decide on the issues before them are needed.

General principles of law play two important roles: on the one hand, they provide guidelines for judges, in particular, in deciding in individual cases; on the other hand, they limit the discretionary power of judges and of members of the executive in their decisions in individual cases.

 D. Subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law

According to Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice, judicial decisions and the teachings of the most qualified publicists are ‘subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law’. Therefore, they are not, strictly speaking, formal sources, but they are regarded as evidence of the state of the law. As for the judicial decisions, Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court is not confined to international decisions (such as the judgements of the International Court of Justice, the Inter-American Court, the European Court and the future African Court on Human Rights); decisions of national tribunals relating to human rights are also subsidiary sources of law. The writings of scholars contribute to the development and analysis of human rights law. Compared to the formal standard setting of international organs the impact is indirect. Nevertheless, influential contributions have been made by scholars and experts working in human rights fora, for instance, in the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, as well as by highly regarded NGOs, such as Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists.