Opening Speech delivered by H.E. W/ro Meaza Ashenafi
President of the FDRE Supreme Court
Wednesday Oct 12th 2022
Skylight Hotel
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Honorable Lady Justice Imani D Aboud, President of the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights, Vice President of the Court and other Honorable Judges of the court.
Honorable Vice President of the Federal Supreme Court Ato Solomon Areda and Honorable Presidents and Vice Presidents of the Federal High Court and Federal First Instance Court, Representatives of our national institutions,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Welcome to this event!
Madam President,
Congratulations on a successful sensitization visit to Addis Ababa.
I hope the rest of your stay in Addis was pleasant and worthwhile.
I would also like to thank the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission for
facilitating your visit and creating the opportunity for all of us to meet
and embark on a constructive engagement.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We had the opportunity to discuss about the collaboration of our two courts and I am pleased that we are gathered here today to embark on
this journey.
Today, we will be signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between our two courts signifying the start of something new for the future of our courts and beyond.
The Federal Courts’ Five Years Strategic Plan includes fostering excellence in strategic partnerships with national and international stakeholders as one of the core focal areas. As such, this MoU is
intended to initiate engagement with the African court.
With this MoU, we hope to enhance our cooperation among our regional and national judicial organs. We hope this will contribute towards achieving excellence in judicial services especially through research, publications, trainings, national and international conferences, workshops, experience sharing and exchange programs.
This collaboration in turn will not only benefit our judges who will be gaining skills through trainings and experience sharing, but it will also benefit the African Court to have a partner to work closely with on areas of common interest such as capacity building, improving service delivery of our courts and access to justice for our people.
As this is the first-ever MOU that the African Court will be signing with a national judicial organ of a sovereign country in Africa, it will certainly serve as an inspiration for other courts to take a similar step. It
is important for national courts to open up their judiciaries for regional collaboration.
This collaboration will be further enhanced with the future ratification of the protocol to the African Charter by Ethiopia. From the information that I gather, our government will consider the ratification in due course.
Madam President;
Thank you for making this collaboration possible in such a short time.
Women make things happen!
I also thank our respective teams involved in the preparation of the
MOU and organization of this event.
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is my hope that this collaboration will be useful for both parties and it
is my absolute pleasure to be here for the launch of this important event.
Thank you
