As countries across the globe are desperately trying to control the COVID-19 pandemic, a rapidly increasing number of governments have started to impose severe restrictions on core civic freedoms. Although restrictions are currently necessary to save lives and protect health care from overburdening, these emergency measures must be proportional and strictly limited in time. It is crucial to monitor how restrictions are implemented to prevent governments from using the current crisis to justify new constraints on civic spaces, which have already  been shrinking in many places during the last 15 years.

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Die Erwartungen an die Entwicklungszusammenarbeit, zu Konfliktbearbeitung beizutragen, sind gestiegen. Eine neue Studie zeigt: Es fehlt nicht in erster Linie das Wissen dazu, was nötig wäre, damit Entwicklungszusammenarbeit zu Frieden beiträgt. Es mangelt an der Umsetzung – gerade beim Primat der Prävention und der uralten Frage nach der Politikkohärenz.

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Ethiopian Prime Minister Dr. Abiy Ahmed received the 100th Noble Peace Price for his efforts to achieve peace with Eritrea. Indeed, he should be recognized for this achievement. This peace deal opens doors to sustain peace in a region which is pinpointed as one of the most conflict-prone regions of the world. He stepped into re-building strained relationships between Eritrea and Djibouti, Eritrea and Somalia, as well as Eritrea and Sudan. Without diminishing these regional achievements, this post aims to highlight his work towards establishing peace in Ethiopia by introducing the “Medemer” concept – at a time when Ethiopia was on the verge of a civil war.

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This EDP Wire contribution summarizes the V-Dem Working Paper “Regime Legitimation Strategies (RLS), 1900 to 2018” that introduces new expert-coded measures of regime legitimation strategies for 179 countries in the world from 1900 up until 2018. The authors of the paper are EDP network member Johannes Gerschewski and his colleagues Marcus Tannenberg (University of Gothenburg), Michael Bernhard (University of Florida), Anna Lührmann (University of Gothenburg), and Christian von Soest (GIGA Institute). The paper is available as open access. The summary was prepared and edited by Nora Berger-Kern.

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This post details the major changes of the 2019 Organizations of Civil Society Proclamation No. 1113/2019 proclamation which aims to open space for CSOs to contribute to the country’s democracy and human right promotion. While the analysis ”Negotiating international civil society support: the case of Ethiopia’s 2009 Charities and Societies Proclamation” sheds light on the process of international negotiations of the old proclamation and outlines the consequences of the proclamation for international civil society support in Ethiopia, the current post presents the differences of the two laws. It concludes by looking forward to the upcoming 2020 general election of Ethiopia.

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