The Regulation of Illicit Cultural Heritage Trafficking under Ethiopian Law:

Gizachew Silesh Chane; Tilahun Yazie Tibebu

doi:10.20372/bdujol.v10i1.1337

Gizachew Silesh Chane Editor-in-Chief
Tilahun Yazie Tibebu LLB, LLM, LLM, and Ph.D. Candidate (Lecturer in Law, Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia).

DOI: https://doi.org/10.20372/bdujol.v10i1.1337

Keywords: Ethiopiaâ€™s Criminal Law, Cultural Heritage Trafficking, Non-comprehensive Criminalization, Inconsistent Penalties, Network Model, Transnational and Organized Crime.

Abstract

The illicit cultural heritage trafficking belongs to the most profitable criminal activities alongside illicit drug and firearms trafficking. It is impoverishing the history, archeological context, culture, and similar resources of states. Furthermore, it has now become a security concern, and thus, the intervention of criminal law is highly required. To circumvent the problem, the Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage Proclamation of Ethiopia, Proclamation 209/2000, incorporates provisions that regulate crimes related to cultural heritage trafficking. Writers have indicated that the incorporation of criminal offenses within administrative legislations, including Proclamation 209/2000, may create a problem of over-criminalization. Specifically, the Proclamation has been criticized for prescribing a penalty in a way that could lead to over-criminalization. This article nonetheless explores another equally problematic dimension of the Proclamation related to inadequate criminalization. Accordingly, the article argued that the inadequacy of the law results from non-comprehensive criminalization and inconsistent penalties. Following doctrinal research methodology, the article critically examined relevant literatures, laws, policies, international conventions, and soft laws. Besides, the author employed the Four-stage Network Model to explain the nature of cultural heritage trafficking as a transnational and organized crime. Consequently, for the sake of triggering academic and policy debates, the article recommends that the UNODC non-binding guidelines and the UNTOC could be referred to as a guide to fill the gaps with due human rights safeguards.

Author Biography

Gizachew Silesh Chane, Editor-in-Chief

Gizachew Silesh Chane

Gizachew has earned LL.M in Maritime Law from University of Oslo (2017), LL.M in Business Law from Addis Ababa University (2010), LL.B degree from Addis Ababa University School of Law (2006), and BA degree in economics from Bahir Dar University (2015).

Gizachew is currently working as assistant professor of Business Law at Bahir Dar University, and as Consultant and attorney at Law. With over 15 years working experience in teaching and advisory services, he has been engaged in teaching and training activities extensively. He teaches law of business organizations, corporate governance and finance, alternative dispute resolution (ADR), and Law of Financial Institutions and Markets, among others. He also advises postgraduate students in different universities of Ethiopia on their dissertation.

Specifically for the last 3 years, as of October 2019, he is serving as director of legal service directorate for technology institutes of Bahir Dar University, responsible for advising the administration human resource management, training the staff and the administration on employment issues, among others. He has also undertaken problem solving research on legal matters in collaboration with NGOs, notably with USAID Ethiopia in which he won and delivered, together with associates, two successive researches in 2021 and 2022. Gizachew has published a number of research works in various areas of law.

The Regulation of Illicit Cultural Heritage Trafficking under Ethiopian Law

Analysis of the Problem of Non- comprehensive Criminalization and Inconsistent Penalties

Abstract

Author Biography