Clear your calendar – Breaking The Cycle forum kicks off on November 15th, and you’re sincerely invited to take part in a day of honest & productive conversations. Come one, come all, bring a guest, and give voice to our beautiful people; you would be doing justice to our humanity. Knowing the truth is overcoming the first obstacle to freedom!
Because we are all human beings—even if we are all flawed—we must first respect the dignity and value of the humanity of every person before anything else! The quality of our society can be judged on this basis alone—how we treat the most vulnerable and weak among us! If we succeed in this, we will eliminate the worst of what is destroying us as a country and as a people.
Please encourage your friends to invite their friends!!
Obang Metho, Executive Director, Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia
SMNE Forum Agenda
Saturday, November 15, 2014
Morning Session: Dysfunctional Institutions in Ethiopia
10:00 Welcome: Obang Metho, Executive Director, Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia
10:05 Comments from the Moderator: Hamrawit Tesfa
10:10 The Art of Propaganda and the Hidden Mechanics of TPLF/EPRDF Institutional Control: Ermias Legesse; Former Ethiopian Deputy Minister of Communications for the EPRDF
10:25 How the Justice System Manipulates its Laws, Advances Injustice, Perpetrates Terrorism in the Name of Others, and Creates Instability in Ethiopia: What Can Be Done to Reform the Justice System?: Fayisa Israel Itansa; Former Supreme Court Judge in Oromia Regional State of Ethiopia, previously involved in leading many judicial reform initiatives
10:40 The Silencing of Civil Society through the Charities and Societies Proclamation:How Do we Reclaim Our Voice?: Soleyana Shimeles, LLB, MA: Lawyer, Human Rights Activist and founding member of Zone9
10:55 Ethiopia’s Double Digit Economic Growth: what’s Real, What’s Fantasy? How Can Good Governance and Accountability Encourage Authentic Economic Growth and Foreign Investment?: Dr. Fekadu Bekele, PhD, Economics and Development Economics, lecturer at the Free University, the School of Economics and at the University of Applied Sciences: area of expertise: International Economic Relations, world market and currency, and development theory/policy (via Skype)
11:10 The Inter-Relationship between a Free and Independent Media and Respect for Human Rights: Felix Horne, Human Rights Watch, Researcher for Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the Horn of Africa
11:25 Q & A Panel Discussion
12:00 Lunch Break