DEP field trip to Arba Minch, Ethiopia

Richard Carver writes:

I am writing this in Arba Minch in southern Ethiopia. A group of students from the Development and Emergency Practice Masters programme arrived yesterday at the start of a field trip. This is the latest, and biggest development, in the partnership between Oxford Brookes University and Arba Minch University.

First some history: the Law School at Arba Minch approached CENDEP in 2017 for support and advice in developing two human rights Masters programmes – an LLM in human rights law and an MA in human rights and security. We provided them with teaching materials and readings. When the programmes launched, I was invited to come and teach a module (on human rights and vulnerability) to students from both programmes. This is now my third visit to Arba Minch and I have been spending the last few days teaching the Ethiopian Masters students.

Richard Carver with Dr Sam Ponniah (left) and 2018 Arba Minch students

Last May the partnership took a big step forward with the signing of a formal memorandum of understanding between our two universities. The teaching collaboration will continue. In addition, we are looking to develop joint research projects. We are also looking at ways to bring members of the Arba Minch faculty to Oxford for doctoral studies. Arba Minch is one of the largest universities in Ethiopia, in the capital of the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region, and has expanded very rapidly. The law requires that all those teaching at postgraduate level must have doctoral degrees, and so far the expansion of the teaching programme has outpaced the number of lecturers with the proper qualification.

The latest fruit of this partnership is the current field trip. It is actually a joint programme in social research methods for human rights for both the Arba Minch students and the group from Oxford Brookes, taught by Dr Lisa Handley, visiting research academic at CENDEP, and myself. The joint student group will conduct field research to prepare a proposal for a capacity assessment of Arba Minch University’s legal aid programme. We hope that this proposal will help the legal aid programme to raise future funds. The students will interview legal aid providers, administrators and clients. After specialist training, they will also conduct a monitoring visit of a prison and police detention centre.

At the end of the visit, Lisa and I will deliver a public lecture on our own research into torture prevention.

We will update on developments over the coming days. Meanwhile, we are very grateful for the wonderful hospitality of Arba Minch University, particularly the Dean of the Law School, Dersolegn Yeneabat, and the programme leader of the Masters programmes, Dr Sam Ponniah.