Police Reform and Human Rights Protection in Ethiopia: The Case of Federal Police Crime Investigation Bureau

The primary objective of this article is to assess the Ethiopian federal police reform in relation to Human Rights protection during criminal investigation process since 2015. To conduct the study, the qualitative method and explorative research design has been employed with purposive sampling technique. By using semi-structured in-depth interview with 30 participants from police and attorney, human rights commission, civil societies, and United Nations organization, observation and document analysis as instruments of data collection, the author investigated the ongoing reform processes about human rights protection during criminal investigation. Accordingly, the findings of the study indicated that there are improvements (in terms of decreasing in the incidence of physical torture; allowing human rights experts and researchers to visit police stations and custodies; closing of some police stations where citizen’s human rights were subjected for violations such as Meakelawi. However, some violations such as lack of speedy trial and compelling suspects to produce illegal confessions by putting them at dark places were continued during Criminal investigation process. Finally, the study recommended that the government should re-evaluate police compliance in the process of sustaining police reform to give more focus to Human Rights promotion in allocating conducive environments such as Human Rights related complaints receiving mechanisms and mainstreaming Human Rights in police organizations, especially in the police training centers through developing human rights curricula. Furthermore, the government should set a policy to hold police members accountable for violating Human Rights within the Federal Crime Investigation Bureau.