Crimes Against Humanity and Transitional Justice in Ethiopia (1935–2020)

Abstract Ethiopia has experienced a gamut of mass atrocity violence over the last century. Colonial, political, and ethnic violence have been cyclical phenomena and have often escalated into mass atrocity crimes against civilians. By exhibiting a historical synopsis of mass atrocity violence in Ethiopia since 1935, this chapter demonstrates how the expression crimes against humanity can be operationalized to perceive, understand, and explain mass atrocity violence in diverse temporal, political, and socioeconomic contexts. Additionally, the chapter narrates an Ethiopian genealogy of transitional justice. The chapter concludes that crimes against humanity—as a judicial, scholarly, and historical framework—captures best the dynamics and nature of mass atrocity violence in Ethiopia. Simultaneously, we observe that Ethiopia has been spearheading trends in international law and transitional justice, but has done so on its own terms.