The Language of Ethiopian Federalism: Language Policy, Group Identity and Indil'idual Rights

Abstract

Ethiopia is a home of diverse groups of people. Recently language has become
one among the key manifestations of group identily. Despite its lingllislic diversity,
the modern stale of Ethiopia was dominated by one language, Amharic,
which was the language of the ruling class. After many years of unslIccenful
homogenization and assimilation processes that provoked destructive and long
civil wars, Ethiopia in 1995 adopted a federal system of government with nine
constituent units mainly identified based on language. The £thiopianfederalism
is claimed to be designed to accommodate diversity. The federal SYSfem has so
far maintained fhe unity of the country intact while endeavoring fa accommodate
the diverse groups. However, from the language perspective, there is a huge
gap between the constitutionally-guaranteed right of every language group (nation,
nationality and people) to self-determination including secession and tJ~e
reality on the ground in that there are language groups which are not able to use
their languages/or education and self administration purposes even allhe lower
level of government. How are the grievances of the historically dominated language
groups addressed in the new federal system? 15 the current Ethiopian language
policy the right approach for dealing with linguistic diversity? flow can
group identities be preserved without violating individual rights? While dealing
with the above questions, the main purpose of this article is 10 analyze the
role language and language policies play in maintaining group identities and
their implication on individual rights. HaVing this objective in mind, this article
analyzes how Ethiopian federalism addresses language use at the federal, stale
and local levels. 1n doing so, this article draws some lessons from the experiences
of other federations with similar challenges related (0 linguistic diversity.