Exactly fifty years ago the United Nations declared that all human beings are born free and equal and are entitled to live in a world free of want and fear. That assertion made in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has greatly influenced the international scene. It has shaped national laws and policies, and resulted in the elaboration of detailed rules, procedures and mechanisms for the protection of human rights. Adherence to the Declaration has now become a mark of civilization Jurists every where study and elucidate the Declaration and national and international instruments deriving from it.

And yet for the majority of the people living in the Third World, and Ethiopia, the Universal Declarations remains to be unknown and unknowable obscurity. The very precondition for the realization of the ideals of the Universal Declaration... the ability of every human person to be informed of his or her rights... is very far from being fulfilled. Consequently, human rights are elitist concerns that are not internalized and accepted by the vast majority of Ethiopians.

True over the past few years several important measures have been taken to promote and protect human rights in Ethiopia. The adoption of the Bill of Rights that reflects the advanced stage of development of international human rights law in the 1997 FDRE constitution, is one such measure. Judicial institutions for the protection of human rights as well as political systems to exercise human rights have been set-up. There is more concern and open discussion about human rights in Ethiopia today than ever before.

In APAP's views, however, laws and institutions are only parts of the whole. Obviously, laws and institutions are necessary to protect and promote human rights. However, human rights are not merely legal matters. Nor is their realization a matter of organization and management only. Human rights, enshrined in the constitution, are matters of morality of how one human person perceives and deals with another human person as a human person. They are also existential matters i.e. matters of how one defines one's being and relates with other beings. They are not mere matters of rules, and penalties which can be enforced by impersonal institutions alone as may be the case with other areas of law. They are rather positive moral values that need to be as much personally internalized by every one as being enforced by institutions to be fully realized. They signify and can only be achieved in the moral development of the human person as an individual and as a member of society.

The implications of this conception are rather simple. In APAP's view human rights cannot be realized for Ethiopians unless they are known and internalized by all Ethiopians in an on going process of moral education and development. This process to be effective and sustainable, however, needs to be one in which everyone is involved in an existential struggle of defining, promoting and protecting human rights. In other (and simpler words) the crucial issues of promoting and realizing human rights in Ethiopia as APAP sees them are those of

1) Creating the conditions for Ethiopians to be effectively informed of human rights, and

2) Creating the conditions for Ethiopians to

be actively involved in the task of defining, promoting, and protecting human rights.

these were the strategic issues that APAP based itself on in launching its two-year plan and programs of operations in 1998. The two-year plan and programs of operations consists of three major programs i.e. the Regional Human Rights Promotion and Protection Program which is to be conducted in the regions outside Addis Ababa, the Community Based Human Rights Promotion and Protection Program which is to be carried out in Addis Ababa, and the Institutional Capacity Building Program. All programs start from the position that the major social problem of both urban and rural Ethiopia is that of poverty. Poverty however, is not merely limited to the deprivation of material and financial resources. It is way of life in which the human person is degraded, denied (and unable to hold) values of respect, for the self or other, and accepts a defeatist and reactive attitude to change existing life conditions. In other words, poverty is also a denial of human rights. Consequently, addressing poverty calls for better and active awareness about human rights. Promoting human rights awareness abong ordinary Ethiopians and getting their active involvement in the realization of human rights is a crucial concern in addressing poverty, and in changing the life situation of the majority of Ethiopians. Based on this conception APAP defines the aims of its programs as those of promoting human rights awareness through education and the provision of legal services, and creating conditions for and encouraging the voluntary institutionalized involvement of Ethiopians in human rights promotion and protection.

These are also the long term aims of the regional program of APAP which is currently being implemented in three of the Federal Regions, Amhara, Oromiyaa, and the Southern peoples Region and will be extended to other regions in 1999. Specifically the program addresses the virtual non-existence of systematized human rights education and legal service provision programs and voluntary institutions in the regions outside Addis Ababa. Several specific causes are attributable for this situation of legal and other professionals in the regions who can take the lead in launching human rights programs. Institutions are limited in number, scattered and lack experience and expertise. Regional governmental agencies particularly in the judicial and law enforcement sectors suffer from serious constraints in expertise and capacity in promoting human rights and legal awareness. Relationships between human rights and legal aid NGOs and professionals and government agencies in the regions have been to say the least, distant and cool. There are no educational resources or services that are based on the needs of and relevant to the regions and their populace.

In the past few months, since the launching of the regional program APAP has managed to address these and similar problems in the three regions it has started to carry out its operations. In repeated visits and discussions with regional governmental agencies and professionals in the regions, APAP has successfully lobbied for the involvement of these institutions and professionals in human rights education and legal aid provision activities. Several indicators may be cited to prove this statement. In the Amhara Regional state, APAP will provide legal aid to the poor, women and children as well as persons accused of serious crimes in cooperation with the regional supreme court. The regional supreme court and justice Bureau will also be working with APAP to train more than 2000 social court judges from two of the zones of the region. In Oromiaa, APAP has trained police trainers and justice Bureau officials as human rights and legal trainers. The justice bureau and APAP are now working together to organize the training of more than 500 individuals by these trained trainers. APAP is also working with the regional labour and social Affairs Bureau to organize a human rights and legal training of trainers program for trade unions in Eastern Shoa zone. In the Southern Peoples Region, APAP, the Justice Bureau and the Supreme Court have jointly trained more than 90 judges of Wereda courts to act as trainers of social courts. From these and the open and direct communication that it has with governmental agencies and professionals in these regions, APAP claims to be successful not only in initiating the former in human rights work but also in giving a new content.................... that of partnership.. to the relationship between indigenous human rights NGOs on the one hand and government agencies and professionals in the regions on the other.

For APAP, however, carrying out these specific activities of human rights education organizing workshops, training programs and legal aid is not an end in it self. It is APAP's firm conviction that human rights education activities in the regions can be sustainable if only they get the active, voluntary and institutionalized involvement of local professionals. Poetically stated, the regional program may be said to aim at the flowering of hundreds of human rights organizations in the regions. These are places which have been forsaken for long, which did not get a fair allocation of resources, and whose educated children have flocked away. In these places organizing civil society institutions of human rights is an extremely daunting task made even more so by the overall weakness of civil society institutions in general and the lack of a culture of active involvement in non-traditional voluntary institutions. APAP has tried to address these problems of lack of expertise, resources and institutional involvement and arrangements in the past few months too. All training programs conducted in the past months have been designed with the explicitly purpose of building the capacity of local institutions and professionals to carry out human rights education programs by themselves. To facilitate this, tailor made educational resource materials for use by trained trainers have been designed and availed to all participants of training programs. In fact, APAP is proud to note that on several occasions, participants in its training programs have clearly demonstrated their capability not only in using the training manuals APAP provided them with but also in design and carrying out their own programs.

Through formal and informal contacts, and organizing consultation workshops on human rights education and legal aid, APAP has also managed to mobilize professionals in the regions to be voluntarily involved in human rights education and legal aid work. What are termed regional groupings, consisting of voluntary professionals, have been formed in all regions in which APAP presently operates. Over the past months these groupings have been increasingly involved in designing and carrying out human rights education and legal aid activities of APAP in their respective regions. The importance of this lies not only in providing APAP with feedback and the participation of stakeholders in its programs. More significant is the fact that this involvement will provide the groupings with expertise and experience in designing, organizing and carrying out human rights and legal aid programs. In the coming year, APAP's focus in the regional program will be that of strengthening these regional groupings and helping them to become autonomous and formal voluntary institutions of human rights which are active and constructive civil society members. Human rights education and legal aid activities of APAP will be carried out with these groupings and in collaboration with regional governmental agencies. Training in organizing voluntary human rights education and legal aid programs will be given to the groupings. Limited financial support will also be extended to assist the groupings to develop a more formal institutionalized and legally recognized structure. The past few months have been ones in which the regional program of APAP scored impressive results. That was not achieved without price. We also expect the coming year to move us closer to the realization of our cherished aim...that of resounding the bells of human rights and freedom for those who have not yet hear them.