Ethiopia: EWLA director Mahdere defects - Addis journal
(Arefe) The Executive Director of the Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association (EWLA), Mahdere Paulos has reportedly gone into hiding.
According to Ethio-Chanel, a pro-government newspaper, Mahdere is currently in Kenya and might have fled the country after the government accused her organization of providing ‘false information’ to American State Department, whose human right record report enraged the Ethiopian government.
The paper disclosed that Mahdere sent one of her family members to EWLA’s office on July 6 to present her resignation letter and to give back the office vehicle that she has been using. EWLA called an emergency meeting on the next day and has replaced Mahdere by the Legal and Counseling head, Woizero Shewaye.
The former High Court judge Mahdere has served the Association for three years.She was appointed judge at barely twenty three years of age.
EWLA is an independent woman’s organization working to defend women’s rights and improve civil society throughout Ethiopia. In September 2001, the government abruptly terminated EWLA’s work and froze its bank accounts. To date, the government has not provided any substantive reasons for suspending the organization.
The recently passed Charities and Societies Proclamation has also hurt many NGOs through out the country. The new law classifies Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) whose contributions from abroad make up more than 10 percent of their budget as international NGOs and restricts them from working in various fields like gender. EWLA has offices in ten places in Addis Ababa as well as in 6 regions with 56 branch offices. Money collected locally covers at a maximum 1.8% of the organization's cost.
“Although we greatly depend on the goodwill of our members and other volunteers whose time we haven’t quantified in terms of cost and minimize our cost by using office space we get from various government organizations and women’s affairs bureaus, none of the money we get locally is enough. It is not even enough to cover 10 % our cost let alone 90%,” says EWLA director Mahdere Paulos. (Reporter)
