Abstract
The charity and society proclamation was adopted in 2009 by the House of Peoples Representative of the FDRE. This law prohibits the Ethiopian resident and foreign charities from engaging in human right issues and requiring judicial review of administrative decisions. It also put fund raising restriction on Ethiopian charities and societies. Additionally, the laws provide the 70/30 rule of budget allocation and the duty to keep accounting record and strict reporting requirement to the charity and society agency. This research therefore tries to assess the challenge and prospects this law on the civil society sector through qualitative research methods by interview of three charities and societies officials along with assessment of the charities and societies law and other literatures. After conducting serious analysis, the writer has, eventually, reached to the following findings. The prohibition of the Ethiopian resident and foreign charities from engaging in human rights issues and the fund raising restriction on the Ethiopian charities and societies creates a challenge for the promotion and protection of human rights. Additionally, the prohibition of requiring judicial review of administrative decisions of the Ethiopian resident and foreign charities creates a challenge for them to reverse the unjust and arbitrary decisions of administrative bodies. Moreover, the 70/30 rule of budget allocation is important for the beneficiaries to receive more benefits from the projects of the charities and societies. Finally, the duty of accounting records and strict reporting requirement is important to avoid or reduce corruption and to create accountability and transparency on the charities and societies sector. Based on these finding the researcher recommend the necessity of amendment of the fund raising restriction, the prohibition of Ethiopian resident and foreign charities from the involvement of human rights issues, the inclusion of transport cost used to implement and supervise the project of the organizations, costs for wages of employees, fuel costs and costs that is incurred to attend the agency’s meeting in the operational cost or increase the administrative cost to 40% and making the ratio of operational and administrative cost 60%/ 40 and the denial of appeal rights.
Keywords: Charities, societies, civil society organization, NGOs
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