Defining ‘Hate Speech’ under the Hate Speech Suppression Proclamation in Ethiopia: A Sisyphean exercise?

Abstract

This article seeks to interrogate how ‘hate speech’ is defined under the Proclamation and its compatibility with the country’s legal reform measures. In February 2020, the Ethiopian parliament passed a Proclamation aimed at countering hate speech and defines ‘hate speech’ as any speech that deliberately promotes hatred, discrimination or attack against a person or group — based on protected status. However, this definition is still vague and susceptible to subjectivity because it fails to define the term ‘hatred’, which is one of the major ingredients of hate speech. The article questions how its vagueness could in practice enable officials at the federal and regional level to exercise unrestrained discretion to determine whom to investigate and indict for hate speech. This again casts doubt on the legality requirement under Ethiopian laws and international human rights law. In practice, there is a deep social fissure, absence of historical collective memory and disagreement on state building. All these are becoming a debacle for the hate speech legislative intervention. As such, defining hate speech without working on national reconciliation, and dialogue would be a meaningless legislative exercise. The article argues that in Ethiopia — where judicial review is not clearly provided in the Constitution — and courts are invariably oblivious to international human rights standards, legislating a Proclamation and defining hate speech in this way would shackle freedom of expression and result in a chilling effect on journalistic activities. The article suggests that defining hate speech remains to be an elusive exercise since any definition of hate speech should use specific examples and contexts.