Access to Justice for Persons with Hearing Impairment During Criminal Proceeding in Ethiopia: Legal Analysis and Challenges in East Hararge Zone Courts in Oromia Region

Abstract

Ethiopia ratified Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability in 2010. The Convention under article 13 provides rights of effective access to justice for persons with disabilities in an equal basis with others. The Ethiopian laws, policies and strategies to ensure the participation of persons with disabilities on an equal basis with others in the justice administration, including in their role as judges, witnesses, jurors, lawyers or any other active party is not effective inlight with its obligation under the convention. For instance, the convention provides member states obligation to ensure effective access to justice for persons with disabilities, recognize and promote the use of sign languages. However, there exist no specific statute requiring for the mandatory appointment of sign language interpreters for accused with hearing impairment, they are not guaranteed to exercise their Constitutional right to be informed in their understanding sign language, confrontation and cross examine witness during criminal proceedings in Ethiopia. As Ethiopia has signed the Convention, it must refrain from acts which would defeat the object and purpose of the Convention to ‘promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity’ as envisaged from cummulative interpretation of preamble, objective, article 13 of CRPDs vis-a-vis Art. 18 of Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. The main objective of this article is to evaluate the compatibility of Ethiopian legal frameworks and judicial practices in study area vis-à-vis states obligation under CRPD to ensure effective access to justice for PwHI during criminal proceeding and forward a concrete recommendation. The author has employed doctrinal legal analysis and qualitative method of data collectio to complete study in this article accordingly.