ACCESS TO JUSTICE IN THE ARSI ZONE OF THE OROMIA REGIONAL STATE IN ETHIOPIA AND ITS ASSOCIATED CHALLENGES

Abstract

Different people face different legal problems. The legal needs in a poor rural community will be quite dissimilar to the legal needs of an affluent suburban community in Addis Ababa or Adama. Both sets of needs for a just resolution of the existing conflicts, however, could be equally important and pressing since they both have a deep impact on everyday life. More abstractly, access to justice is defined as a ‘commonly applied process that people address to cope with their legal problems’. A court procedure is an obvious example of access to justice. However, the definition includes both formal and informal procedures. This means that a mediation procedure, or a procedure before an informal Commission or another neutral third party, also qualifies as access to justice. An example of access to justice is a criminal procedure for a victim of a robbery. The beginning of the path may be calling the police and the end of the path may be a court verdict or a dropped case due to insufficient evidence. This research aims to measure the adequacy of the legal system to respond to the needs of individuals, communities, and societies in the Arsi zone of the Oromia region. The path to justice can be measured from the perspective of the user or the service provider. Holistic measurement of justice from the perspective of the users provides plenty of information on the performance and impact of the procedure. How many resources have the users spent attempting to obtain a resolution? Did they receive a resolution and is it seen as just? Are they satisfied with the quality of the procedure? These and other questions could be addressed using the data provided by the users. On the other hand, access to justice can be measured from the perspective of the service providers i.e. the courts, police, and the prosecutor’s office. In this regard, the cost of justice, the quality of the procedures in the institutions, and the quality of the outcome that users expect from the justice system are the typical tools to measure access to justice. 

In Ethiopia, access to justice is usually blocked by several factors i.e. lack of qualified manpower, budget, law moral, corruption, and the public’s attitude and understanding of the justice system. This problem is exacerbated in remote areas of the country like the study area of this research. However, the solutions seem to be elusive because there are no actual studies conducted on the extent of the problem. Thus, this study would begin the first step in understanding problems of access to justice in weredas of the Arsi Zone of Oromia Region, to come up with tangible recommendations.