A/HRC/44/49/Add.1 IV. Main findings A. Legal reform process 14. For several years, the Government of Ethiopia tortured and jailed journalists and human rights defenders, labelling them as terrorists. 7 It restricted civil society organizations through repressive laws that severely limited their funding and activities. Media laws gave the Government broad, unchecked authority over licensing and registration requirements, and the ability to criminally prosecute journalists – provisions that were criticized for having a chilling effect on journalism. Despite legal guarantees to protect freedom of expression in the Constitution of Ethiopia, and even in some of the preambles to these laws, the laws themselves and their application imposed serious constraints on freedom of expression. 15. Since 2018, the Government of Ethiopia has taken significant steps to identify and reform laws that were historically used to restrict freedom of expression. In the past two years, the Government has initiated significant institutional reforms. Among these is the establishment of the Advisory Council for Legal and Justice Affairs to the Federal Attorney General’s Office, created in June 2018 to reform the justice and legal systems – which the Special Rapporteur considers a model for engagement by civil society actors, academics and others in the development of legislation. The Advisory Council has a three-year term to address a range of critical issues, including revising repressive laws. It is composed of independent legal professionals, academic experts, lawyers and journalists, some of whom were jailed or exiled under the laws they seek to reform, who voluntarily, independently and professionally review current laws and advise the Federal Attorney General on amendments to make. The Special Rapporteur encourages the Government to replicate these working methods at the regional level. 16. Additionally, the Advisory Council’s independence from the Government, while encouraged, means that there is no guarantee as to how Parliament will choose to consider the Advisory Council’s drafts and incorporate its recommendations. This concern was apparent in the process of enacting the hate speech legislation, which was developed by the Attorney General’s Office, but did not go through the Advisory Council. The Special Rapporteur appreciates the sense of urgency presented by the recent violence in Ethiopia, however he understands from his discussions with officials that the purpose of the Advisory Council is precisely to advise on the best way both to reform existing laws that threaten freedom of expression and to ensure that new laws do not interfere with the right to freedom of expression. Changing or failing to implement key reforms and recommendations of the Advisory Council, or bypassing the Advisory Council altogether, may result in the creation of new laws that pose the same threats to freedom of expression and will later need to be amended or repealed. The Special Rapporteur strongly encourages the Attorney General and Members of Parliament to keep the Advisory Council involved in all stages of the drafting process in order to guarantee the success of the legal reform process. 1. Organization of Civil Societies Proclamation 17. The first law to undergo the new reform process was the Organization of Civil Societies Proclamation, which repealed and replaced the repressive Charities and Societies Proclamation of 2009. The previous law had been criticized for giving the overseeing agency broad discretionary powers over organizations, for imposing strict budgetary limitations on charities which prohibited them from receiving more than 10 per cent of their funding from foreign sources, and for imposing criminal penalties for failing to comply with certain provisions. The Special Rapporteur, together with the Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association and the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, had previously expressed concerns over the 7 6 A/HRC/WG.6/33/ETH/1, paras. 35, 44 and 52. See also, for instance, ETH 2/2015 – the communication sent by the Special Rapporteur regarding the detention of nine bloggers and journalists charged under the Criminal Code and the 2009 Anti-Terrorism Proclamation, available at https://spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMResultsBase/DownLoadPublicCommunicationFile?gId=15476.