The Afar Customary Criminal Justice System: Towards its Better Accommodation

Ahmad, Osman (2017) The Afar Customary Criminal Justice System: Towards its Better Accommodation. Masters thesis, Addis Ababa University.

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Abstract

The state in Ethiopia is failed to enforce its laws effectively and it has also failed to recognize those customary practices officially and sufficiently, though there is a de facto accommodation of customary practices in most parts of the country such as the Afar region. This research has aimed at disclosing the problems of accommodating the customary criminal justice systems in Ethiopia, focusing on the ACCJS (mad'a) and recommending the possible solutions at the end. The research is a mixture of both doctrinal and none doctrinal and qualitative in nature. It has used both primary data collected through in-depth interviews using the purposive sampling method and also secondary data taken from varieties of books, journal articles, official documents, reports, etc. The research findings have disclosed that The ACCJS is a widely applicable traditional mode of justice and the community uses this system as a primary source for all legal disputes. The general publics' opinion of the Afar people towards their customary dispute resolution is highly supporting and favoring the preservation of the current practices. In addition to this, almost all of the informants support the side by side operation of the two systems, with collaboration of one with the other and the harmonization of the two systems to render better service to the general public in the region. Particularly, it is an ambition of the majority that the Afar customary criminal justice system is given official recognition by the formal justice sector employing the best modes of accommodation based on the country's context. At the same time, there are a number of conducive issues that can help the accommodation of mad'a by formal system such as the comprehensiveness, uniformity and regularity of mad'a and the de facto accommodation by the regional government, implicit tolerance by the federal state and some newly developed policies and draft laws at federal level, inclining to the authorization of the ADR system in criminal adjudications in the country, etc. Key Words: This research contains key words such as Ethiopia, Afar, legal pluralism, customary law, criminal justice system, accommodation.

Item Type: Thesis (Masters)
Subjects: K Law > K Law (General)
Divisions: Africana
Depositing User: Kabiru Wallace Ndung'u
Date Deposited: 03 Jul 2019 12:06
Last Modified: 03 Jul 2019 12:06
URI: http://thesisbank.jhia.ac.ke/id/eprint/9339

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