Abebe Alemu (Law) – Deaf Access to the Criminal Justice System in Ethiopia

The Ethiopian criminal justice system relies on spoken language and written communication for its day-to-day business. In principle, the system is supposed to serve everyone equally without any discrimination based on legally prohibited grounds. In Ethiopia, there are about 2.5 million Deaf and hard-of-hearing people most of whom rely on either sign language or other methods of communication other than spoken language for their communication. This begs the question of how these groups of people meaningfully interact with the criminal justice system (police, prosecution, judges) as victims of crime, suspects/accused, or witnesses. For upcoming interviews check out the Grad Chat webpage on Queen’s University School of Graduate Studies & Postdoctoral Affairs website – https://www.queensu.ca/grad-postdoc/research/share/grad-chat