A lawsuit filed with the Federal High Court by Human Rights First Ethiopia in November 2025 has now been adjourned more than ten times, with proceedings yet to meaningfully begin, according to the organization.<\/p>\n
The case filed by the local civil society organization, which seeks legal remedy for millions of internally displaced persons (IDPs), has faced repeated postponements, at times merely to issue a summons, Tesfalem Berhe, director of HRF told The Reporter<\/em>.<\/p>\n The lawsuit itself, filed before the Federal High Court\u2019s Fundamental Human Rights Protection Bench, names the Council of Ministers, the Ministry of Peace, the Tigray Interim Administration, and the Amhara and Oromia regional governments as defendants. It seeks court orders compelling authorities to ensure the safe return, security, and sustainable reintegration of displaced populations.<\/p>\n However, court proceedings have been repeatedly delayed. In January 2026, the Federal High Court postponed a scheduled hearing for the fifth time after court administrators cited a shortage of judges. The postponement at the beginning of the year came as Parliament appointed 34 new federal judges, who had formally entered service but had not yet been assigned to hear cases.<\/p>\n Lawyers representing the plaintiffs at the time told The Reporter <\/em>that they were informed that the case would eventually be heard by a panel of three judges within 15 days. However, this marked yet another delay in a case that has struggled to move forward since its filing.<\/p>\n Since January 2026, court records and administrative tracking documents reviewed by The Reporter<\/em> further underscore the extent of procedural delays, showing multiple scheduled dates repeatedly entered and deferred without substantive progress.<\/p>\n The petition before the court outlines the scale and severity of internal displacement in Ethiopia, tracing its origins to the outbreak of war in the Tigray region on December 3, 2020. According to case documents, citizens of Tigrayan origin were displaced from areas including Western Tigray Zone and Shehet Woreda in the Afar Region.<\/p>\n More than one million displaced persons remain unable to return to their homes, the filing states, with many currently living in temporary shelters or with host communities across the Tigray region. Areas identified include Shiraro, Shire, Axum, Adwa, Tembien, Adigrat, and Mekelle.<\/p>\n The lawsuit also highlights displacement beyond Tigray. Nearly 520,000 individuals from Oromia are reportedly sheltering in Debre Birhan and the North Wollo Zone of the Amhara region. An additional 84,000 IDPs within Oromia remain displaced in temporary settings.<\/p>\n Human Rights First Ethiopia contends that these populations continue to endure harsh living conditions due to the absence of durable solutions and coordinated government action. The organization argues that the prolonged displacement constitutes a violation of constitutional and international obligations, attributing responsibility to both federal and regional authorities.<\/p>\n Beyond the specifics of the case, the organization frames the issue as part of a broader institutional challenge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A lawsuit filed with the Federal High Court by Human Rights First Ethiopia in November 2025 has now been adjourned more than ten times, with proceedings yet to meaningfully begin, according to the organization. The case filed by the local civil society organization, which seeks legal remedy for millions of internally displaced persons (IDPs), has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":50378,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"editor_plus_copied_stylings":"{}","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1960,13],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-50377","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-latest-news-in-ethiopia","8":"category-latest-ethiopian-political-news"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}