Conflict Management and Resolution in the SNNPRS (Ethiopia). The Role of Council of Nationalities As Panacea?

Master's Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject Politics - Topic: Peace and Conflict, Security, grade: 3.50, Addis Ababa University (INSTITUTE FOR PEACE AND SECURITY), course: conflict resolution, language: English, abstract: After the collapse of the Derg regime in 1991, Ethiopia adopted, its first Federal Democratic Constitution in 1995. Since then, Ethiopia is declared as a federal state encompassing various ethno-linguistic groups. Accordingly, the federation has comprised nine regional states and two city administrations. One of the members of the federation is the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Regional State. The Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region witnessed interethnic disputes such as identity, border and resource conflicts that caused unnecessary consequence. In the 2001constitution adopted by the Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region, the Council of Nationalities was institutionalized with a number of constitutional mandates of which dispute management and resolution is the prominent one. It is in light of this power that aims at examining how the Council fulfils this constitutional mandate.

For the accomplishment of the objective of the study, largely secondary data and primary data obtained through unstructured interviews were used. In doing so, some cases entertained by the Council of Nationalities is analysed. The Council of Nationalities entertained a number of interethnic conflicts and resolved them accordingly. With regard to this, the Council of Nationalities engaged in numerous inter-ethnics conflict resolutions submitted to it by the respective contending ethnic groups. The conflicts have been managed and resolved mainly through deploying security force and round the table discussion in collaboration with indigenous conflict resolution institutions. But when we see its achievement in discharging its mandate properly, delays to make decision timely, late to intervene in conflicts, and absence of early warning system to provide information timely are some among the failures of CoN. Therefore, though there are some achievements in rendering peace education in some parts of the region, the Council of Nationalities has deficiencies in discharging its duties; conflict management and resolution aspects of its responsibilities in particular.