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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores abolitionist approaches in Ethiopia since the 1940s. It focuses on the generations of civil and church activists, philanthropists, politicians, policymakers, and intellectuals who fought, and are still fighting, against slavery.

Paper long abstract:

Slavery died a slow death in Ethiopia. After 1942 most enslaved people ‘disappeared’ into a quasi-feudal agricultural sector, joined the informal workforces that fed the rising urban developments or vanished in their former master homesteads. Abolition in Ethiopia in the 1940s was a state-driven project with little to offer for slaves who sought to emancipate themselves from former ties of dependence. Following the criminalization of slavery, the land reform of 1975 marked a turning point in the history of emancipation. But although land became accessible to formerly enslaved persons and their descendants, and although their incorporation into Peasant Associations was supposed to dissolve social boundaries of class, slavery’s legacies were resilient. Today, NGOs and governments estimate that there are up to 400 000 ‘modern slaves’ in Ethiopia, which is also regarded as one of the biggest hubs for migrants vulnerable to extreme exploitation, possibly meeting the threshold of slavery. In this context, many Ethiopian actors have been mobilizing against enduring inequalities, some rooted in historical slavery, others in new forms of ‘modern slavery’. This paper explores their abolitionist approaches. It focuses on the generations of civil and church activists, philanthropists, politicians, policymakers, and intellectuals who fought, and are still fighting, against slavery. What are the main changes and continuities in this fight since Ethiopia’s legal abolition in 1942?