Ethiopian Criminal Law Network (ECLN) is created to provide users (students, researchers, judges, prosecutors and lawyers) with a comprehensive legal information on Ethiopian criminal justice system. Through establishing an open access to the documents, ECLN not only focuses on hugely reducing inaccessibility of the relevant information but also aims at building, in the long run, a network of criminal law scholars and researchers in and outside Ethiopia. The database contains:
- Legislations: chiefly, basic criminal laws (codes and proclamations) that have been enacted since 1930. All ‘other laws’ are included so that users will be able to search for numerous special laws of criminal nature in non-criminal-legislations, if needed.
- Cases: mainly a collection of criminal cases adjudicated by Federal and State courts. Selected decisions of the House of Federation of Ethiopia on matters of constitutional dispute are uploaded based on their significance to issues in the criminal justice system. The section further hosts cases, or links to cases, adjudicated by foreign courts concerning crimes committed in Ethiopia.
- Core crimes: Ethiopian laws and cases regarding the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. In addition to making basic ICL documents available here, the core crimes section continuously provides links for accessing public decisions of international/ized courts and tribunals.
- Transnational Organized Crimes: Ethiopian laws, cases and international conventions and agreements relevant to transnational organized crimes such as illicit trafficking (human, drug), money loundering, terrorism.
- Treaties: international conventions on the area of crime and justice ratified by Ethiopia as well as bilateral agreements on extradition and on mutual cooperation in criminal matters.
- Papers: publications and law school papers involving diverse topics in the country’s criminal justice system.
- Multimedia: audio and video documents when available.
- Other documents: such as travaux préparatoires and policy documents.
Besides, ECLN will observe selected trials and provide updates of the same in the ‘News and Trial Monitor’ section. Under its ‘ECLN Blogs’ section, ECLN anticipates informed discussion and lively debate about Ethiopian criminal justice system. As a complementary information and for ease of access, ECLN includes Suggested Links section where some general websites on Ethiopian laws, websites of Ethiopian school of laws, and of legal research institutes in Ethiopia are listed.
ECLN is created by T. S. Metekia as part of his PhD study at University of Groningen in the Netherlands (2013-2019). Mr. Metekia is very grateful to Taye Tolu for his help in designing and building this website.
