“The Right to Participation: a critical examination of the Development Army’s public wing in Ethiopia” – under this thought-provoking title, Abdulatif Kedir, IDRIS lecturer at the Center for Human Rights in of Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, offered insights into his current research. Ethiopia aspires to build a ‘democratic developmental state, utilizing a three-pronged structure in the implementation of development strategies and programmes, dubbed “Development Army”. In addition to the party and government wings of public affairs, this structure requires all public institutions to organize their civil society stakeholders in ‘public wings’. For all practical purposes, citizen participation is facilitated through these structures.
The lunch lecture critically examined the standards of participation through these public wing measures. The event took place on 17 October 2017, was moderated by Prof. Wolfgang Benedek and was part of Kedir’s four-week research trip to Graz. The visiting scholar conducted research at the Institute for International Law of the KFU Graz and at the European Training and Research Center for Human Rights and Democracy of the University of Graz (UNI-ETC), used the resources of the University’s library and made contacts with the scientific staff of the University.
The research visit was part of the AAPLHRE (Advanced Academic Partnership for Legal and Human Rights Education) project which is funded by APPEAR, a programme of the Austrian Development Agency (ADA).
