Ethiopia is the epicentre for migrant smuggling and human trafficking in East Africa. It is also a major source and transit country for other transnational organised crime (TOC). It is the gateway for trafficking drugs into Africa and endangered species out of Africa. Ethiopia is also one of the countries with the highest rates of illicit financial flows.
The 2021 iteration of the Global Organized Crime Index found that the armed conflict in northern Ethiopia might have shifted authorities’ attention away from the organised crime threat. Besides the focus on tackling the immediate threat of violence posed by insurgencies and armed conflicts, institutional and structural factors impede Ethiopia’s capacity to prosecute transnational organised crimes more effectively.
In Ethiopia, the prosecution of TOC falls within the jurisdiction of the federal government. These crimes include migrant smuggling, human, arms and drug trafficking, cybercrimes and illicit financial flows.
The Ministry of Justice, also known as the Office of the Attorney General, is responsible for prosecuting all crimes within the federal jurisdiction. Within the ministry, TOC-related crimes are prosecuted through the Organized and Transnational Crimes Prosecution Directorate-General, which also handles the country’s most serious crimes that carry a sentence of capital punishment.
The Directorate-General has two sub-divisions. The Transnational Organised Crime Prosecution Coordinating Unit which prosecutes organised crimes such as arms, drug and human trafficking, smuggling of migrants, cybercrimes and the dissemination of false information. While the Terrorism and Related Crimes Prosecution Coordinating Unit prosecutes crimes such as terrorism, treason, genocide, war crimes and political crimes, usually referred to as crimes against the state and the country’s federal structure. The Directorate-General usually delegates its prosecutorial powers to prosecution offices established and managed by regional governments. The current institutional structure of the Directorate-General poses several challenges.
Firstly, merging the prosecution of TOC together with crimes arising from communal/political violence or armed conflict is problematic. Since 2018, the Directorate-General has overwhelmingly focused on investigating and prosecuting crimes related to the political instability that has dominated the country since 2015. Meheretu Kumelachew, general director in the Directorate-General, explains that, as a result, his office now only investigates organised crimes such as human trafficking and smuggling of migrants when complaints are lodged by victims.
Secondly, specialist prosecutorial expertise in TOC is lacking. Within the TOC Prosecution Coordinating Unit, ENACT research shows that there is no separate treatment of different crimes and no prosecutors are specialised in particular TOCs. There is also no practice of allocating resources and experts to the prosecution of organised crime on a long-term basis.
The absence of specialised units also presents a barrier to ensuring TOC-specific technical and needs-based training. Temesgen Lapiso, the former general director of the Directorate-General, told ENACT that training courses at the Directorate-General were mostly unsolicited and provided to prosecutors randomly and on a rotational basis.
He said prosecutors responsible for leading investigations on TOCs seemed less experienced than their counterparts from the Federal Police Commission, who benefited from working in specialised units for different types of TOCs. Given that Ethiopia follows a prosecution-led investigation model, such a mismatch undermines the quality of the investigation and prosecution of such crimes.
Thirdly, the current institutional structure has led to some prosecutors feeling dissatisfied, contributing to a high staff turnover. This is especially the case among those who joined the Directorate-General with the aim of acquiring specialised knowledge and skills on TOCs. Lapiso said some prosecutors resigned because they had expected a better organised and more stable work environment instead of being randomly assigned to investigate and prosecute all types of crimes.
Ideally, making the decisions to overcome these structural problems by establishing, adequately resourcing and capacitating specialised units within the Directorate-General would be the first step. However, this requires an acknowledgement of the current gaps in the system, which would provide a clearer idea of possible solutions both in the short term, such as ongoing and targeted training, and longer-term system-wide changes.
The organisation of prosecution services is mostly needs-based and country-specific. Some countries, such as Kenya, combine the prosecution of international crimes and TOC under one division. At the same time, crimes such human and wildlife trafficking have their own separate prosecution units. In other countries, such as the Netherlands, there are specialised investigation and prosecution units for TOCs and international crimes.
Th effective prosecution of TOCs also requires creating and maintaining interdepartmental cooperation so that experts from different units can work together in investigating and prosecuting these crimes, which are usually complex. For instance, an expert prosecuting human trafficking might need to work alongside prosecutors specialising in money laundering and terrorism financing.
Lapiso suggests that a key solution would be to prosecute serious crimes through regional offices, such as the one that was established and managed directly by the federal Ministry of Justice in Hawassa.
Establishing and empowering more regional offices would reduce the burden on the centre, saving the time and resources it takes to continually send prosecutors and investigators from Addis Ababa to the regions. That would leave the Directorate-General with more time and resources to focus on investigating and prosecuting TOCs more effectively.
Alternatively, the Ministry of Justice could establish a separate and specialised investigation and prosecution unit for international crimes arising from communal/political violence and armed conflict. Doing so may mean that resources and experts can be appropriately allocated to ensure an adequate focus on the prosecution of TOCs.
Tadesse Simie Metekia, Senior Researcher, ENACT Addis Ababa
