CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2018
| Author | Taye Wendmeneh Beyene |
|---|---|
| Title | The Role and Enforceability of Anti-discrimination Laws to the Promotion and Protection of Right to Employment of Persons with Disabilities: A Comparative Study of Ethiopian, South African and European Union Laws |
| Summary | The number of people with disabilities (hereafter PWDs) in the world is too huge to overlook it in the process of designing laws or policies. Despite this reality, the group continues experiencing exclusion from various aspects of life including employment. The past three decades however have illuminated positive changes to address the plight of PWDs through different mechanisms. Anti-discrimination laws are one of such mechanisms that have become the most appropriate tools in tackling discrimination in all spheres of life for PWDS including employment. Ethiopia has also been engaged in reforming its laws to make in line with changing conditions. One of the changes made is the enactment of Proclamation No. 568/2008 designed to realize equal opportunity of PWDs in employment. The proclamation has actually introduced vital transformations such as the obligation of reasonable accommodation, equality with its substantive context, prohibition of discrimination with its different forms, shifting burden of proof, setting up enforcement mechanism as well as provision of sanctions and remedies to the violation of right in the proclamation. In fact, mere enactment or existence of laws does not serve to achieve the purpose for which they are sought. Proclamation 568/2008 cannot escape from this assertion. The sanction against the employers is not sufficient to effectively tackle the prevalence of discrimination at work place; since the fine against the employers is minimal which would invite employers to make cost-benefit analysis of the punishment. If cost of reasonable accommodation is higher than the sanction, there is a tendency to pay the punishment rather than providing reasonable accommodation. Thus, the penalty has to be revised to embrace deterrence or dissuasiveness principle. If hiring assistant is an obligation upon the employer, which the law never wants to negotiate, the government also should share the burden through different schemes to increase employability of PWDs particularly in the private sector, which is not that much developed to facilitate such accommodation in Ethiopia’s case. Furthermore, the proclamation recognizes that discriminated job applicants with disabilities can be represented before the court of law by means of their association to which they associate. Fund restriction imposed by proclamation 621/2009 makes it more difficult the operation of association of PWDS. With respect to scope, the federal cassation division bench in the case of Teklu Mekkonenn v. Addis Ababa Justice Bureau ruled that appointees with disabilities could not bring a case by virtue of Proclamation 568/2008. The intention of the legislature is to combat objectively unjustified discrimination so that the error of cassation should be corrected by legislative means to include broader scope. |
| Supervisor | Csilla Kollonay Lehoczky |
| Department | Legal Studies LLM |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2018/beyene_wendmeneh.pdf |
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