CARD at Five

A Journey with the Mission of Cultivating the Space for Human Rights and Democratization!

From raising New Generation of Human Rights Defenders to Advocacy for Peace in times of widespread conflicts, from embracing the digital age to empowering the youth with local wisdom under the Werdwet Research Fellowship scheme, from staying resilient in the face of a global pandemic, conflict imposed restrictions, and political pressure to empowering youth human rights defenders, media practitioners, and journalists associations, this is the story of CARD in its first five years.

The Center for Advancement of Rights and Democracy (CARD) is a non-profit organization dedicated to cultivating safe and vibrant civic, media and digital space for the protection of human rights and promotion of democratic mass culture in Ethiopia. Registered on July 24, 2019, CARD works to uphold human rights, democratization, and the culture of non-violence through advocacy, training, and research, and empowerment of individuals and communities to participate meaningfully in democratic processes, claim their rights, and have the agency. With a focus on building constituency for human rights and democratic movements, CARD strives to democratization process that communities build bottom-up.

On 24 July 2024, CARD marked five years since it was founded. 

This page presents the journey of CARD in the past five years. 

Making Sense of Our Tagline:

Making Democracy the Only Rule of the Game!

The people of Ethiopia have several socio-political questions that require urgent intervention and strategic responses. As a consequence to it, there are also many formal and informal organizations created to get answers to these questions through the assumption of political power. However, violence has often been considered a means to either assume or influence power and to maintain it. This culture of political violence has long claimed lives, destroyed infrastructure, deprived people of access to basic necessities and kept Ethiopians in a vicious cycle of repression and poverty.

At CARD, we believe that democratization, and democratization only, paves the way to non-violent and progressive means of responding to the questions Ethiopians long have. Therefore, our motto is also our counter narrative to any rhetoric that justifies violence.  

Our Programs

It is in CARD’s belief that working to enhance the capacity, safety and protection of, as well as the professional and ethical integrity of the human rights defenders, media practitioners, and digital influencers lay the foundation for democratization. Accordingly, CARD has identified four programs that guide the overall mission it has taken as a civil society actor. 

1. Civic Engagement: a program which intends to create dialogue platforms, builds capacities of civic groups to ensure their agency in civic affairs, targets human rights defenders in particular, youth and women in general, to build constituency for the promotion of human rights, ensure agency of communities, and cultivation of democratic mass culture. 

2. Media Space Advancement: a program which intends to promote media freedom and raise ethical and professional standards of journalists through advocacy, mobilization of media practitioners and their associations as well as capacity building activities to bring about the potential of the media as a fourth branch of the government. 

3. Digital Rights: a program which intends to empower citizens’ agency to express themselves, have access to information, organize and mobilize communities through advocacy for a safe and vibrant digital space through promotion of equitable accessibility of the Internet, prevention of internet shutdowns, and promotion of safety and protection for digital users by the platforms and policy makers.

4. Governance and Democratization: a program which intends to monitor and document progresses of democratization by autonomous administrations of Ethiopia. Accordingly, CARD assesses annual performance of regional states and federal city administrations in democratization attributes and indicators to help a constructive competition for democratization among the administrations and their own past performance. 

    

Our Theory of Change

As stipulated in our tagline, Making Democracy the Only Rule of the Game, CARD aspires to see Ethiopia where human rights are respected and democratic mass culture flourished. To this end, advancing a conducive civic, media, and digital space for the respect of human rights and cultivation of democratic mass culture in Ethiopia is our mission. At CARD, our basic theory of change is ensuring the agency of communities by building the capacities of youth leaders, human rights defenders, media practitioners, and digital influencers as a constituency for human rights and democratic movements in addition to advocating for the safety of the spaces they operate in. 

CARD’s four program areas are designed accordingly to fit this methodological philosophy. All of the programs strive for a better media, civic, and digital space, non-violent discipline and respect for the rule of law. Projects implemented at CARD are always aligned to these program areas and evaluated towards achieving programmatic and organizational objectives and vision.

Advocacy, partnership and collaboration, knowledge creation and awareness raising and building a social constituency for democratization are used in all of our project activities so that they contribute to the overarching vision.

Our Team

CARD is a board-led, non-governmental, non-profit organization. Accordingly, its highest authority is the Board of Directors composed of five people. Chaired by Cherer Aklilu, the board consists of Mahlet Teshome (deputy chair), Mubarek Jemal (Secretary), Soleyana Shimeles, and Yonas Ashine (Ph.D.). 

The Board observes the functions and operations of the Secretary in accordance to CARD's bylaws. CARD’s Secretariat is structured into two primary departments: Programs and Finance & Administration. Led by the Director, the Senior Management Team (SMT) comprises the Director, Head of Programs, and Head of Finance & Administration. Following a successful five-year tenure under the leadership of Befekadu Hailu, Atnafu Brhane, and Addisalem Gobena, CARD has transitioned to a new SMT composed of Moges Demissie (Ph.D.), Mengistu Assefa, and Eyerusalem Yoseph. 

With a dedicated team of 14 staff members, including nine women and nine program specialists, CARD has fostered a collaborative work environment where project ownership is shared among all staff. 

The Stories that Keep Us Moving

Over the past five years, CARD has implemented 55 projects across four core program areas, reaching approximately 10,000 human rights defenders, media practitioners, and digital influencers through over 150 trainings and workshops conducted nationwide. The organization has produced 24 research reports, 130+ social media monitoring reports, and seven training manuals. CARD has also been instrumental in establishing five local human rights organizations, forming a consortium of journalists’ associations for safety, and conducting human rights education for 920 high school students. Additionally, the organization has issued over 10 advocacy press releases independently and in collaboration with other civil society organizations. 

The Civic Engagement Program

Under this program, CARD has been implementing multiple project activities that are aimed at building social constituency for democratization. Some of the project activities include the following: 

• New Generation of Human Rights Defenders (NGHRDs) and the Human Rights Festival – this project is one of the flagship activities CARD is running annually since 2020. The aim of the activity is to build human rights constituency and consists of a series of training for high school students and incentivizing them to form human rights clubs in schools. At the end of the annual training sessions, the trainees gather to commemorate the international human rights day on December 10 – in a human rights festival that has networking opportunities with a side exhibition where human rights organizations demonstrate their works. Accordingly, CARD has so far trained 364 youth in high school in Addis Ababa in 2021, 370 youth in high school from Addis Ababa and 7 other cities in 2022, and 192 youth in high school  in Addis Ababa in 2023. Some of the trainees succeeded in establishing clubs in their respective schools. 

• Werdwet Fellowship – named after the legendary Yeqaqe Werdwet, this research fellowship was introduced in 2020 to provide young women and men the opportunity to peruse their research passion through fully sponsored research activity that is focused on local, human rights issues. This fellowship was given to about six youth and five of them produced the following researches: 

• The Role of Periodic Religious Gatherings in Psychosocial and Economic Empowerment of Women by Eyerusalem Belay

• The Gadaa System and Women Rights by Muluken Kassahun

• Double Burden by Hiwot Samuel

• Across the Thin Blue Line by Kalkidan Asmamaw

• Yakka by Netsebrak Tamene

• War and Child Marriage by Kulsma Nur

• Institutionalizing Activism – Concerned about the concentration of human rights organizations in Addis Ababa and among urban elites, CARD initiated a project activity that is intended to institutionalize personal initiatives and formalize informal groups. Accordingly, it created a curriculum that has three phases. The first one is a series of training provided to selected activists or human rights defenders, the second phase is engaging the trained youth movement leaders in pilot tour for civic engagement activity, and the final stage is providing financial and technical assistance to selected institutionalized groups created by the activity. This way, CARD helped the creation of different groups in Jigjia, Gambella, Bahir Dar, Shashemene, and five others coming this year in 2024. 
  

• Trials Monitoring – Monitoring, documentation, and reporting of court proceedings is one of CARD’s activities under the Civic Engagement Program. The monitoring activity aims to evaluate the proceedings of politically contentious court cases. With this objective, CARD monitored and published reports and summaries of proceedings of Post-Hachalu assassination court cases from pre-trial detention to trial until release. 

• Voters Education and Political Parties Debate Platforms – In the 2021 general elections, CARD engaged in multiple activities that helped prevent electoral violence, raise voters’ awareness on election laws and practices, and hosted platforms for debates among political parties. The voters’ education efforts targeted online citizens by producing animations showing the process voters’ pass through on election day and what happens post-election day. Political debates were hosted on the issues of human rights and countering hate speech. Additionally, multiple platforms of discussion were facilitated to discuss election issues and to prevent electoral violence and etc.

• Promoting Conflict-Sensitivity – As CARD becomes operational, conflicts were also wide spreading across the country. As peace is cross-cutting issue for CARD, it reshaped all of its engagements with conflict-sensitivity. Therefore, all projects under all programs did have conflict sensitivity in them. The concept was promoted through different sessions of training and a guideline for the conflict-sensitive youth civic engagement.

• Promoting the Culture of Dialogue – CARD has been engaging the youth to ensure their participation in fundamental issues. As part of it, CARD has run a Youth Dialogue Forum. The forum invites youth to contribute articles on fundamental issues of Ethiopia and the articles are published on CARD’s forum of website in five languages. Then, the writers have a debate on a telegram channel created for this purpose, and finally hold a face-to-face conferences. Additionally, under an overarching title, Under the Ethiopian Sky, CARD also produced a series of dialogue on contentious issues by basing on academic literature and by adding youth voice to it. 

• Promoting Inclusivity in Societies – This project is intended to promote inclusivity of sections of society in different aspects and is under implementation by seven local CSOs with the lead of CARD. The implementing partners in this project are Setaweet, Ethiopian Human Rights Defenders Center (EHRDC), Association of Human Rights in Ethiopia (AHRE), Initiative for Peace and Development (IPD), Ethiopian Initiative for Human Rights (EIHR), CARD, in addition to leading the coalition, it is responsible to the implementation of the project component that is concerned with promoting inclusion in media. 

• Voice for Guji – this project is intended to strengthen the capacity of media practitioners, human rights defenders, and researchers in human rights investigation while at the same time collecting human rights violation case stories to show case the impact of conflicts on human rights in one of the most conflict prone areas of Ethiopia, the Guji zones. Accordingly, in a training and reporting, CARD was able to raise the voice of Guji civilians. 

The Media Space Advancement Program

Under this program, CARD has been implementing projects to building capacities of media practitioners, to enable associations of journalists collaborate for safety, to raise the professional standards of journalists, and to counter hate speech and disinformation. Major project activities that have been implemented under this project include: 

• Supporting Journalists’ Associations for a Coalition Formation – CARD brought journalists associations together to help them form a Consortium of for the Safety of Journalists; this process started in 2022 and lasted for two years when seven of the associations have the founding general assembly in August 2023. The Consortium is still processing its registration and will be the primary voice of journalists in Ethiopia. 

• Countering Hate Speech and Disinformation – In an effort to counter proliferation of disinformation and hate speech in digital and traditional media, CARD has undergone multiple awareness raising activities that include panel discussions, training/workshops, and online and offline campaigns. Additionally, CARD has partnered with Peace Tech Lab to produce Ethiopian Hate Speech Lexicon which was shared to social media platforms to counter hate speech. We have also developed various training manuals and guidelines to counter disinformation. 

• Social Media Sensitivity Monitoring and Reporting – To understand the relationship between online conversations and offline conflicts as well as to observe the trend of tensions that might lead to violent conflicts, CARD also monitored the social media for more than four years. The monitoring activity helped CARD to produce more than 130 reports fortnightly that were circulated among stakeholders in addition to publicized reports that helped raise awareness about active conflicts for intervention initiatives.

• Promoting Conflict-sensitivity – CARD advocated for conflict-sensitivity during conflict time engagements by media, CSOs, and others. In one of its acclaimed projects to model conflict-sensitive editorial policies, CARD has commissioned studies to assess the editorial policies of media outlets, have had a training manual for conflict-sensitive reporting developed, and provided a series of training for journalists in practice. CARD also developed model conflict-sensitivity editorial policy and advised media outlets to adopt and practice it. CARD also conducted series of workshops to raise awareness of stakeholders on conflict-sensitivity in Addis Ababa, Debre Berhan, and Dire Dawa cities.  

CARD also conducted and published researches to fill the gap in knowledge under the MSA program. These researches include but not limited to:

• Post-2018 Ethiopian Media Landscape Review

• Assessment of Conflict-sensitivity in the Editorial Policies of Ethiopian Media

• The Media Space and the State of Media Associations

• New Media Legislations and their Implementations

The Digital Rights Program

The Digital Rights program is one of the programs we believe would take CARD to its utopia of creating a democratic mass culture where human rights are respected through advocacy for rights of access to information, freedom of expression, mobilization, and organization along with safety of online citizens. The two pillars of the program are access and safety. 

Our works in the past five years under this program included: 

• #KeepItOn, #KeepItSafe Campaign - we are a member of the #KeepItOn coalition led by AccessNow and we join advocacy against shutdowns but we also advocate for the accessible platforms be safe for users; so, we use #KeepItSafe phrase along with the keep it on. In this campaign, we have advocated for all shutdowns and for more access for years we have been alive. We also have a brochure to distribute on events on the general digital rights and more particular ones like Technology Facilitated Gender Based Violence. We regularly issue press statements and co-sign them in many calls for respect of digital rights as well as standing awareness raising boards in some towns of Ethiopia. One of the campaigns under this theme interactively highlighted the digital-divide in Ethiopia by presenting how lack of internet access limits Ethiopia's potential in a uniquely data driven online campaign. 
  
  

• Raising Awareness and Advocacy for Personal Data Protection - CARD also did a lot of activities before the adoption of the data protection proclamation in raising awareness and advocacy for a comprehensive and independent protection. These activities included the issuance of Position Paper on the draft bill, Policy Brief on the importance of making the regulator independent from all actors, and a televised documentary to raise about why we need to be concerned about data protection. Our recent letter to CBE is amongst the continued advocacy. 

This program also contributed highly in researches: 

• Equitability of Access to the Internet - a research-based advocacy to raise awareness about the digital divide in Ethiopia.

• Rights Deplumed: The Impact of Internet Shutdowns on Human Rights in Ethiopia - this is a research that demonstrates the overall impact of full or partial internet shutdowns in either exacerbating or covering human rights violations by state actors (or non-state actors)

• Rights Trampled: Demystifying The Impact of Internet Shutdowns on Start-up Businesses in Ethiopia - this is a research in an attempt to raise the interest of the government by showing the economic impact of shutdowns.

• Protect Yourself: A Guide for Social Media Users - this is one of the many resources we have produced to help online users learn how to protect themselves. Additionally, we produced other materials to raise awareness about the concepts of disinformation and hate speech in Amharic and Afaan Oromoo (the English here). We also have an online learning tool at learnwithcard.com (previously we worked with DPS on a similar educational game). Additionally, we have produced some educational animations.

Governance and Democratization Program

The primary goal of this project is to monitor, document, and report the legal, institutional, and practical efforts towards democratization by regional and federal city administrations of Ethiopia. By doing so, CARD intends to encourage authorities and leaders enter into competition by democratization in addition to being able to identify the gaps in democratization and craft intervention areas of advocacy. 

• Awramba Index – is an annual assessment report that evaluates the democratization efforts of the regional and federal city administrations. The index assesses democratization using six attributes (civil liberties, elections and political pluralism, socio-economic rights, government effectiveness, protection of minorities and vulnerable groups, and checks and balances) which have five indicators each, totaling 30 indicators. According to the cumulative sum of the assessment scores, the administrations are categorized by the Index into three: Progressive, Stagnant, and Regressive. 

Challenges 

CARD came to presence immediately after the repressive civil society law of Ethiopia was repealed and a new, progressive report was introduced in 2019. The political context it was founded was highly optimist; however, it soon changed to unprecedented wave of violent context. The wide-spreading of violence has caused major challenges to the works of CARD as a young and growing organization. Two state of emergencies were declared due to conflicts that has shrunk the civic space for us to reach our target audiences, to freely advocate our cause, and to call for accountability. In addition to the existing challenges for human rights and democratization, the conflicts – in and of themselves – and the subsequent response of the government including the declaration of state of emergencies limited our role, impact and growth. Furthermore, our adaptive and intervention on the conflicts have been received with negative reactions from authorities. Nonetheless, other actors who were supporters of fighting parties run smear campaigns against CARD burdening us to justify our loyalty for peace and non-violence. 

Regardless, CARD has been collaboratively advocating for peace and accountability. CARD has been one of the local CSOs that coordinated, now the annual “Peace Call” since the start of Tigray war on the eve of Ethiopian New Year. So far, CARD and its local partners have issued 3 New Year calls for peace and many more measures for rule of law and order. 

However, local conflicts were not the only challenge CARD faced in its short life. The first challenge came when we were only 7 months old, COVID pandemic. The pandemic posed a great challenge to our work which requires meetings and movements. The state of emergency to respond to this health emergency, also restricted our ability to operate. It also triggered political tensions that led to many violent incidents and even contributing the devastating war in the northern part of Ethiopia, while denying us the ability to respond. 

Additionally, the fast changing relationship in the world, the start of Ukraine War, the war on Gaza, and other global crises have shifted the focus away from Ethiopia limiting resources for us to operate. 

Our Partners

In the past five years, we built big network of partnership. International partners provided to us resources to implement our ideas and projects in addition to standing with us in solidarity. Local partners provided us a big home of collaboration towards our goals. 

The following are the few of our partners from local to international: