In Addis Abeba, Development Moves Faster Than Justice for Residents

In Addis Abeba, Development Moves Faster Than Justice for Residents

Jun 6 , 2026. By Daniel Fikadu ( Daniel Fikadu (LL.B, LL.M, MBA) Head Attorney at Law, Daniel Fikadu Law Office, and Partner at Legaltec Ethiopia Software. He can be reached at (Danielfikadulawoffice@yahoo.com) )

Legally, citizens facing state-enforced eviction possess explicit rights, including advance notice, fair and proportional compensation, alternative housing options, and a clear opportunity to contest the state's action before an impartial tribunal. The reliance on backroom instructions and localised administrative circulars erodes transparency, weakening public trust in the legal ecosystem's consistency. If the current administrative trend continues, access to justice risks becoming disconnected from reality for residents standing directly before state demolition equipment.

It was a Wednesday morning when an older man and his son arrived at my law office carrying an eviction notice. They had a look of someone who had run out of time.

Local Wereda and District officials had ordered them to leave their ancestral home immediately "for development purposes." The paper was brief, but the message they said they had heard from officials was clearer. They were compelled to sign "compensation" forms and disappear, or be swept aside.

The family was not alone as their neighbours, too, faced the same ordeal. They had gathered in fear, convinced that bulldozers could arrive before the law did. They rushed to grant me power of attorney, hoping the courts could do what the administration would not to slow the process, hear their claims and protect their home long enough for justice to mean something.

As a legal professional, I have always treated the courts as the last shield against state overreach. I drafted an urgent suit for cessation of interference, known in local parlance as "Huket Yiwogedlign," and filed it with a request for an emergency injunction to stop the demolition. With hours slipping away, I moved through the courthouse, asking secretaries, couriers, file clerks and registrars to push the file forward. At last, I reached the courtroom and argued before the presiding Judge.

His answer was calm, but it landed like a verdict on the system. The Judge reminded me of an amendment in Proclamation No. 1336/2016, Article 2(5). I had criticised it two years ago for the provision, as it changes the ordinary path of justice in development-induced displacement cases. It strips bench judges of the power to issue injunctions and places that authority only in the hands of the Court's President.

The Judge said, in effect, that his hands were tied. He rejected the urgent application and sent me away, telling me to take the matter to the President's Office.

However, that was not the only barrier. The dispute had arisen in a distant corner of one of Addis Abeba's Districts, but the local Court could not hear it. Because the defendant was the "Government," an internal circular, one many lawyers discover only when they are already litigating, requires such cases to be taken exclusively to the Federal First instance Court, A citizen threatened with immediate removal must, therefore, chase justice across the city, not because the law is clear, because power has been through quiet administrative instruction.

Seen through the lens of the Constitution, this arrangement should be troubling. Articles 78 and 79 of the Constitution vest judicial power in the courts. They do not place urgent protection of citizens' rights in the hands of a single administrative figure. A judge hearing a case is not a subordinate waiting for permission to apply the law. Granting an injunction is a judicial act. Article 2(5) turns it into an administrative bottleneck, limiting a judge's ability to restrain state action at the moment restraint may matter most.

The practical cost is borne by ordinary residents of Addis Abeba, a large, crowded, and unequal metropolitan area. Families in Akaki-Qality and Kolfe-Qeranio districts, or in other peripheral areas, cannot easily cross the city, find lawyers, search for their files, and wait for a single senior official to act while officials press them to leave. When every urgent displacement case is channelled away from available judges and onto one overworked desk, delay becomes more than an inconvenience but a denial of remedy. By then, the property may already be gone, and the case reduced to mere compensation paperwork.

The City Administration and the federal government have made it clear that they want to clear land quickly for large development projects. But speed cannot replace due process. Citizens facing eviction have the right to advance notice, fair and proportional compensation, alternative housing, and an opportunity to contest state action before an impartial tribunal. Those rights lose force when the institution meant to protect them is told to stand aside.

The law passed in 2016, in this context, works less like a safeguard than a legal bulldozer. It smooths the way for state action by weakening the judiciary's capacity to intervene before damage is done. While homes and neighborhoods are dismantled at lightning speed, ordinary judges are left watching violations unfold in silence.

The dependence on invisible circulars deepens the problem. Internal directives are subordinate to federal laws and the Constitution. They should not decide where citizens may sue the state. Nonetheless, these letters now shape access to justice in ways the public cannot see, test or predict. A legal system that depends on such backroom instructions loses transparency and public trust.

The lesson from my experience with the family is bleak. The law is drifting from a shield for citizens into a tool the state can use to carry out policy with limited judicial interference. Placing the property, livelihoods and dignity of Ethiopians on the signature of a single official is unjust and unsafe. Courts should not become instruments for executing executive policy. They should remain the final bastion for the protection of rights.

If this trend continues, "development" will become an exclusionary project imposed from above, and "access to justice" will sound like a cruel irony to those standing before the bulldozers.

PUBLISHED ON Jun 06,2026 [ VOL 27 , NO 1362]