Front Line is deeply concerned about the provisions of the forthcoming Charities and Societies Proclamation (draft law) which according to reports received is scheduled for discussion in the Ethiopian parliament on 24 December 2008. This is the fifth draft of a law to regulate all domestic and international civil society organisations (CSOs) operating in the country. The provisions of the new law would seriously curtail the already-limited work of human rights defenders in Ethiopia and would drastically reduce their ability to criticise or act independently of the government, through the imposition of arbitrary restrictions on their work, complex bureaucratic procedures, severe criminal penalties and escalated government surveillance of their activities.

According to several reports from human rights organisations in Ethiopia, the new legislation would effectively make it impossible for any CSO to carry out work that the government does not approve of, thus contravening fundamental human rights guaranteed by international law and by Ethiopia's constitution. Critically, any human rights-related work carried out by non-Ethiopian organisations would be criminalised under the new law, while the work national human rights organisations would be seriously restricted.

International and domestic pressure has resulted in the delay of the bill and multiple revisions have taken place since the original law was drafted. Despite these revisions, however, the new text is in many ways more repressive than the original. The bill would greatly expand the range of areas of work that foreign and foreign-funded organisations are forbidden to work on such as gender issues, children's rights and the rights of disabled people. Foreign-funded Ethiopian organisations are now explicitly considered “foreign” and are thereby also banned from working in human rights, governance, gender and other issues. The new draft also does not eliminate liability for breaches of the law's provisions but stipulates that any violation of the law's provisions will be “punishable in accordance with the provisions of the criminal code.” Furthermore, the bill provides for the creation of the Charities and Societies Agency (CSA) to oversee the management and general conduct of all CSOs in Ethiopia. The CSA would have enormous discretionary powers to refuse legal recognition to CSOs on extremely broad discretionary grounds, to disband those CSOs which have already been given legal status and to subject CSOs to intrusive surveillance.

Front Line considers the provisions of the Charities and Societies Bill part of an ongoing pattern of repression of human rights defenders in Ethiopia.