The Ethiopian Parliament has recently passed a law, the ‘Proclamation for the Registration and Regulation of Charities and Societies’, banning foreign NGOs and charities from working within Ethiopia.

Banned are those that promote democracy, human rights, law enforcement, ethnic gender and religious equality or conflict resolution and receive more than 10 percent of their funding from overseas.  Effectively 95 % of NGOs operating in Ethiopia depend heavily on foreign funding, not even the largest Human Rights Group can raise enough money domestically.  “This law goes far beyond any normal effort to regulate civil society,” said Leslie Lefkow, a researcher in the Africa division of New York-based Human Rights Watch “It’s really an instrument of repression.”

The only NGOs that are entirely funded domestically are the so-called mass associations, known as ‘gongos’, which are dismissed by critics as “impostors of democracy” because they are essentially ruling party or government-run organisations. The law was passed by a large majority in the Ethiopian Parliament, which is dominated by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front. Members of the opposition party regard the law as Zenawi`s attempt to keep dissent under control. Zenawi who has been ruling Ethiopia from 1991 is accused of having rigged the 2005 elections, sparking riots in Addis Ababa.

A judicial investigation after the protest revealed that 193 opposition supporters had been killed by government forces. In addition, more than a dozen of one of Ethiopia’s most active NGOs, the Ethiopian Human Rights Council, were arrested. This NGO is one that could now be banned from operating under the new law, since it receives 99 percent of the 1,500-member group’s 4 million birr ($400,000) annual budget from foreign sources.

Justice Minister Berhanu Hailu has protested that, “No NGOs will be closed as a result of this. They just have to raise funds locally. This is not a closing of political space. We are not undermining civil society in Ethiopia, but their duty area is clearly specified.” In addition, the government justified its law with the urgent need to regulate the high number of NGOs working in Ethiopia. It sees the law as in line with the Ethiopian constitution, forbidding foreigners from engaging in domestic political activities.

On the other hand, as the EHRCO secretary-general Mulugeta says, “Who watches when the government violates human rights? In many countries the government is the biggest violator of human rights. There needs to be independent watchers.”