The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) welcomes the recently published List of Issues (LoIs) adopted by the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (the Committee) in September this year in relation to its planned review of Ethiopia’s compliance with and implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Based on Ethiopia’s combined second and third periodic reports under the CRPD, the Committee adopted LoIs featuring a set of questions addressed to the State party with a view to further clarifying the information contained in its combined reports.
In compliance with their obligations under the CRPD, the ICJ calls on the Ethiopian authorities to reply comprehensively and concretely to each question featured in the LoIs to enhance the effectiveness of the dialogue between the Committee and the State party.
“The ICJ urges Ethiopia to respond fully to the LoIs, and to take concrete and time-bound measures to bring its legal and institutional framework into conformity with the CRPD, including so that persons with disabilities enjoy equal access to justice on an equal basis with others,” said Kaajal Ramjathan-Keogh, ICJ’s Africa Regional Director.
Ethiopia submitted its combined second and third periodic reports in January 2023, almost three years after they were due in 2020. The ICJ regrets this delay which, together with the heavy workload and limited resources of the UN treaty body system, means that the Committee’s review of Ethiopia is currently not expected until March 2030.[1] Persons with disabilities should not have to wait that long: Ethiopia should act now on the LoIs and the Committee’s 2016 recommendations, without waiting for the review in 2030.
The Committee’s LoIs reflects many of the human rights concerns raised in the ICJ submission to the Committee of 20 July 2026, which is based on the ICJ’s forthcoming report assessing the legal, institutional, and practical barriers to access to justice faced by persons with disabilities in Ethiopia.
In its LoIs, the Committee has requested more information from Ethiopia, in particular, on:
- Measures to harmonize the country’s laws, including the Civil Code, with the CRPD;
- Measures to develop a comprehensive disability law, and to ratify the Optional Protocol to the CRPD and the African Disability Protocol;
- The status of the proposed disability law, including its provisions on equality and non-discrimination, and measures to provide reasonable accommodation and to recognize its denial as a form of disability-based discrimination;
- The timeframe and resources for reviewing civil and family laws with a view to repealing laws that restrict the legal capacity of persons with disabilities and for developing a system of supported decision-making, instead;
- Measures to ensure that courts and other judicial institutions are accessible to all persons with disabilities, and that persons with disabilities have access to Ethiopian sign language interpreters, Braille, Easy Read, and other accessible modes of communication in administrative and judicial proceedings;
- Measures to provide persons with disabilities with procedural accommodations at all stages of investigations and proceedings,
- Measures to ensure access to legal aid for persons with disabilities; and
- Progress in repealing laws that permit deprivation of liberty based on real or purported impairment, and the number and situation of persons with disabilities detained in forensic wards after being declared unfit to stand trial.
Crucially, in the Ethiopian context, the Committee’s LoIs also ask for more information from the Ethiopian authorities about persons with disabilities in areas of the country affected by armed conflict, including Tigray.
“Ethiopia ratified the CRPD more than 16 years ago, and the Committee made its initial recommendations to the Ethiopian authorities following its review of the country’s initial report under the Convention a decade ago, yet laws that deny persons with disabilities their legal capacity, their right to access to justice, and their liberty remain in force”, said Kaajal Ramjathan-Keogh.
“The Committee’s LoIs, and the broader reporting process to the Committee of which the LoI is part, are an opportunity for Ethiopia to explain to both the Committee and persons with disabilities how it intends to act to meaningfully give effect to their human rights as guaranteed by the CRPD and other international human rights law and standards”, she added.
The ICJ also urges Ethiopia to address other concerns raised in its submission to the CRPD Committee, including the lack of intermediary services; lack of legislation regulating admission to, treatment in and discharge from mental health facilities; and the continued exclusion of lawyers who are blind or otherwise visually impaired from judicial appointments despite a 2016 House of Federation ruling that such exclusion was unconstitutional.
Ethiopia’s recently enacted Criminal Procedure and Evidence Code, which retains an impairment-based approach to fitness to stand trial and to the competence of witnesses, makes it all the more urgent to act upon the LoIs and the Committee’s earlier recommendations.
Background
The ICJ was one of the organizations that made submissions to the Committee ahead of its 35th session (12 to 27 August 2026), at which the Committee considered and adopted a LoIs relating to the combined second and third periodic reports of Ethiopia under the CRPD.
In its submission, drawing on its forthcoming research report to be published later this month, the ICJ called on the CRPD Committee to examine Ethiopia’s compliance with the CRPD, particularly regarding the rights to equality and non-discrimination (Article 5), equal recognition before the law (Article 12), access to justice (Article 13), and liberty and security of the person (Article 14).
Resources
List of Issues adopted by the CRPD Committee on 4 November 2026
The ICJ’s submission to the CRPD Committee, and also available on the website of the CRPD Committee here.
