A five-year-old girl from Belanbal kebele of Goro Dola woreda, west Guji, Oromia, is being held and tortured at an Ethiopian National Defense Force prison, as reported by OMN.
On Saturday, June 4, 2022, Ethiopian National Defence Forces (ENDF) traveled to the local school in Belanbal kebele, where five-year-old Biftu Jemal Birbirsa was studying. According to witnesses near the scene, the ENDF forces targeted the girl in order to intimidate her father, Jemal Birbirsa, who they believed was a fighter for the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) and had been unable to locate. According to reports by OMN, ENDF forces hoped that by imprisoning his daughter, they could force him to return, thus allowing the ENDF to arrest or kill him.
Upon arresting her, the ENDF reportedly began beating her, and a witness claimed that they were striking the girl and saying “We can do anything to her until her father comes back.” They then took her to the Goro Dola Administration Office, where she remains detained to this day.
According to reports, neither Biftu’s mother nor any other family members have been allowed to see her since her arrest. One family member told OMN that the ENDF would hit anybody who asks to see her and repeats, “We will release her if her father comes back.” Witnesses allege that Biftu has continued to face physical assaults while in custody.
International Law
In international law, conventions have a binding effect, which means an obligation to be applied. Different conventions are ratified by Ethiopia, creating an obligation for the State to apply it. One of the treaties that Ethiopia has ratified is the Convention on the Rights of the Child, one of the most important conventions in international law. There are multiple provisions in this treaty that apply to the above case. This includes article 2(2), which explicitly forbids the punishment of children for the “status, activities, expressed opinions, or beliefs of the child’s parents.” This would include detaining a child due to her father’s purported connections to the OLA.
Once detained, a child also has various rights, including due process rights, as noted under article 37 of the same Convention, as well as the prohibition on inhuman treatment (including torture or arbitrary deprivation of freedom). Arresting a five years old for her father’s actions is unlawful, and is a violation of Ethiopia’s international obligations towards children. Article 37(c) of the Convention also states that, while detained, children “have the right to maintain contact with his or her family through correspondence and visits, save in exceptional circumstances.” In this case, by forbidding the contacts between the mother and her daughter during her captivity, this right was violated.