The Ethiopian Land Justice Guidelines

The Ethiopian Land Justice Guidelines provide actionable ways for users and practitioners to reach solutions when resolving land disputes.

The Ethiopian Ministry of Justice developed a three-year justice sector transformation plan to improve justice delivery across the nation. Many of the daily justice issues in Ethiopia are resolved outside of the formal system. As part of their strategic plan, the Ethiopian Ministry of Justice aims to scale up customary courts, specifically by validating community elders and strengthening the provision of justice at community level.

Justice guidelines can help with integrating and standardising best practices and are meant to support justice practitioners in their daily work. In the case of customary courts, the practitioners are primarily community elders (shimagillé), but also other judges, mediators, police, lawyers and other professionals who directly engage with people around land justice problems may benefit from the recommendations in these guidelines.

Guidelines

Guidelines are inspired by the medical sector and consist of clear and actionable best practices on how to deal with justice issues. They help practitioners with communication techniques, tools for de-escalation, mediation methods and other useful (soft) skills that are essential in dispute resolution. Guidelines combine practice-based evidence (experiences from practitioners across Ethiopia) and evidence-based practice (recommended interventions from international and local research) into recommendations and best practices. Guidelines are living documents, meaning that with new information, as well as responses from practitioners and users, they should continually improve through an iterative process.

More information on evidence-based guidelines can be found on the Justice Dashboard.

Committee of Experts

The Ethiopian Land Justice Guidelines have been developed together with a group of diverse stakeholders that together form a Committee of Experts.  The Committee of Experts has played a fundamental role in the development of these guidelines. They have supported in gathering and evaluating the best practices and evidence on which the guidelines are founded. In addition they have been instrumental in ensuring the local Ethiopian context is taken into account for all the recommendations and best practices.