An Insight on Ethiopia’s reporting to the Committee on the Rights of the Child

Abstract

Implementation of human rights treaties by state parties is subject to international monitoring. Evaluation of state reports and forwarding recommendations is the primary human rights monitoring tool employed by treaty bodies. All core human rights treaties adopted this procedure. This piece is aimed at appraising Ethiopia’s performance in fulfilling its obligations with regard to the reporting procedure. Particularly, the article will examine participation of Ethiopia in reporting to the Committee on the Rights of the Child concerning the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its two Optional Protocols. With a place for improvement, Ethiopia has recorded impressive experience of complying with the periodicity requirement in reporting to the Committee. Compliance to the reporting obligations on child and women rights treaties is better than performance in other treaties. But, preparation of State reports to the Committee was not comprehensively participatory. Participation of Non-Governmental Organizations in submitting their shadow report to the Committee and commenting on State reports was nominal. Diversity in composition of Ethiopian government delegation to the dialogue with the Committee varied from one report to another. The practice of dissemination of recommendations of the Committee is also unorganized.