Compensating Victims of Crime in Ethiopia: A Reflective Analysis of Legislative Paradigm and Spirit

Abstract

Ethiopia, one of the populous and poorest states in Africa, does not have a comprehensive statutory or administrative scheme for compensating victims of crime. Nevertheless, the idea of pecuniary compensation to victims of crime finds place in its Criminal Code and Criminal Procedure Code. The paper delves deep into the three approaches to compensating crime victims reflected in these statutes and highlights inbuilt weaknesses. Given the socio-economic conditions prevailing in Ethiopia and the state compensatory schemes emerging in Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, and South Africa, it assesses the feasibility of a state compensatory scheme in Ethiopia. It not only pleads for the removal of the inbuilt structural and operational bottlenecks of the existing fragmented statutory compensatory scheme but also offers certain viable proposals for the setting up of a state compensatory scheme in Ethiopia.

Offender and state compensation for victims of crime

“…25 Compensation by the state Establishing and justifying state compensation schemes. In common with developments in offender compensation and reparation, publicly funded state criminal injury compensation schemes were also the product of initiatives taken during the 1960s and the 1970s (Miers, 2014), though some of them remain rudimentary or otherwise incomplete (Ljungwald and Hollander, 2009;Vibhute, 2010). Based, with a few exceptions, on common law personal and fatal injury actions, the first British scheme, made in 1964, constituted a model that was initially followed in Australia and Canada.…”