THIS IS AN EXTRACT FROM THE RESEARCH DONE BY YESHIWAS DEGU BELAY, CONCERNING THE CURRENT STATUS OF KEMNAT PEOPLE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS QUEST: IDENTITY AND SELF-DETERMINATION RECOGNITION. This research has provided a glance to the Kemant people’s quest for recognition in multi-ethnic Ethiopian polity. It has employed contemporary recognition theoretical stands developed by Charles Taylor, Axel Honneth and Nancy Fraser. The main research question was exploring the kind of recognition demands that the Kemant people seek to achieve. The study has explored the development of Kemant people’s political movement since the early 1990s. The findings, summarised in this chapter precisely, are organized around some crucial points pertaining to demands made by minority groups in multicultural society. Kemant’s quest for recognition is deeply rooted in the injustice made during the period of “modern” Ethiopian state-formation, started in the mid-19th century. The history of oppression and forced assimilation, a sense of sociocultural and religious deprivation, the continued mistreatment and neglect under the current regime have contributed to the rise of demands for recognition. Although there had been covert dissatisfaction and grievances and sporadic political activities by urban and educated individuals since the early 1990s, politically organized and publicised struggle for recognition has started in 2007 immediately after the national population census. The census misrecognized the people and declared that Kemant don’t constitute a distinct ethnic identity, and hence officially ceased to exist. By considering it virtually as institutional practice of “silent identity genocide”, political activists began to mobilize the people under the banner of claim for “Kemant Nationality”. In May 2009, The Kemant People’s Claim for Identity and self-rule Coordinating Committee (also known as the Interim Committee)and its key organs- the Central Executive Committee and the Council- were established to continue the struggle in a more coordinated and democratic manner. The Interim Committee is a sole political actor to present demands and to negotiate with the state. By ex-tending its institutional structure to woreda and kebele levels the committee has made itself more visible in urban and rural areas and managed to gain substantial support from the people and local government administrations. And hence it has, perhaps legitimized and, consolidated its’ quest for recognition. In this sense, the study revealed that the quest for recognition is a dynamic political process driven by urban, educated and politically aware Kemant people. As the Kemant case illustrates, demands for recognition are diverse and varied overtime. Analytically, three broad demands underlie their quest for recognition: (1) identity reclaiming, (2) a quest for constitutionally enshrined rights and (3) the demand for self-determination. In the early 1990s, the prevailing political demand was recognition and respect of the hitherto stigmatized and demeaned Kemant identity. The demand for constitutional rights such as equality and non-discrimination has been raised by earlier political activists individually and collectively. Since the late 2007 their demand has been pro-longed and “radicalised” to the level of quest for self-determination. Currently, they aspire to be recognized as a distinct “nationality”, and to have equal legal status, that which may or may not automatically translate itself in to a political autonomy. The former is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to achieve their quest for self-determination including political representation in both the federal and regional governments.
Posted on: Sat, 01 Mar 2014 11:52:51 +0000
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