Ethiopia Passes Its First Stand-Alone Freedom of Information Law

On June 26, 2026, Ethiopia’s House of Peoples’ Representatives unanimously passed the country’s first stand-alone Freedom of Information Proclamation. Multiple outlets reported the vote and its registration as Proclamation No. 1427/2018 (E.C.). Early coverage indicates the version passed matches the draft last reviewed by the Democratic Affairs Standing Committee, with no dissent and no major amendments reported.

Our firm reviewed an earlier working version of this draft, and its official explanatory note directly. At present, this version and its explanatory note are available only in Amharic.

Full disclosure: Our own Mastewal Taddese Terefe, Esq. took an active role in the study, scoping, and early drafting of this proclamation during her time as a Legal Fellow with the Ethiopian Ministry of Justice in 2018–2019. Per the draft’s own explanatory note, this version builds directly on the draft first produced by the Ministry’s Media Study Working Group, which was formed in the aftermath of Ethiopia’s 2018 political transition to review repressive legal frameworks and was itself interrupted before it could complete the process. The Ethiopian Institution of the Ombudsman later picked up that unfinished work, forming its own committee to revise it against comparative international and African models before bringing it to Parliament.

What the Draft We Reviewed Provides

• It separates freedom of information from media law for the first time, repealing the access-to-information sections of the 2008 Mass Media and Freedom of Information Proclamation.

• It reaches private organizations engaged in public-related activity (like licensing, education, health, or transport services) or those with government financial or shareholding ties, putting them on the disclosing end of requests too; but only to the extent requested records are tied to that public-related activity or government stake.

• It establishes defined response windows and a structured appeals path—first internal, then to the Ombudsman, then to the courts.

• It protects good-faith whistleblowers who disclose information about an offense, corruption, or a serious threat to public health, safety, or the environment, and gives them a right to appeal to the courts if penalized anyway.

• It also imposes criminal exposure on officials who intentionally destroy, conceal, or falsify records; while anyone who circulates obtained information "in a distorted manner" is subject to a separate one-to-two-year imprisonment provision, with a good-faith defense.

• Its exemptions are broad and concerning—cabinet documents, commercial information held by public bodies, and a wide “national security” carve-out. Opposition MPs raised concerns in April that the security exemption’s “enemies and insurgents” language is too vague and could be used to shield ordinary misconduct rather than genuine threats.

Why This Law Could Matter Well Beyond Ethiopia’s Borders

The draft is not limited to Ethiopian nationals. As written, it grants “any person”—a term the draft defines to include both physical and juridical persons, with no citizenship or residency requirement—the right to seek, receive, and reuse information held by Ethiopian public bodies and by private organizations that perform public-related functions or carry government financial ties. If implemented as written, that reach extends to:

• Ethiopian civil society, journalists, and citizens, who gain a formal, enforceable channel—with statutory deadlines and a path to the courts—for information that has historically been discretionary.

• Foreign investors and international businesses operating in or with Ethiopia, particularly those in joint ventures, concessions, or regulated sectors with government equity or licensing ties, who may find themselves newly subject to disclosure obligations regardless of where they are based.

• Government agencies and officials themselves, who now face defined response deadlines, a formal appeals structure through the Ethiopian Institution of the Ombudsman, and—notably—criminal exposure for officials who destroy, conceal, or falsify records, or who ignore a binding Ombudsman order.

What This Means for Now

The Federal Negarit Gazeta has not yet published the final text, and neither has the Ministry of Justice’s legal database.

Once the law is formally in force, its efficacy will depend on a number of factors including the implementing regulations and the strength of the institution meant to enforce it.  While implementation will be a hard road, the passage of this law is, on its own terms, a significant win for civil society actors, journalists, and the broader goal of transparency and accountability in Ethiopia. The access-to-information provisions this law replaces sat buried inside the mass media proclamation and, by most accounts, remained largely dormant for most of their existence. That problem deepened in 2021, when Ethiopia enacted a new, separate media law but left the access-to-information provisions behind in the old 2008 statute—a legislative quagmire that left the constitutional guarantee of freedom of information in uncertainty for years, at precisely the moment Ethiopia’s civic space was already under significant strain. A clear, stand-alone, enforceable freedom of information law resolves that limbo and gives civil society and the press a powerful tool they have not meaningfully had in nearly two decades.

Sources

•           Fana Media Corporation—reported passage of Proclamation 1427/2018

•           Ethiopia Today—coverage of passage and criminal-penalty provisions

•           The Reporter Ethiopia—April 2026 committee-stage criticism of the security exemptions

•           Ministry of Justice—text of the outgoing Proclamation No. 590/2008, still in force pending gazette publication of the new law