NAIROBI, Kenya — There is no love lost between Amnesty International and the leadership of Ethiopia, and this latest report titled "Stifling human rights work: The impact of civil society legislation in Ethiopia" is not going to patch up the relationship.

"Rather than creating an enabling environment for human rights defenders to work in, the government has implemented a law which has crippled human rights work in Ethiopia. The space to make legitimate criticism is more restricted than ever," said Amnesty's Deputy Africa Director Michelle Kagari.

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It's not news, really, as the report looks at the impact of a piece of legislation from 2009 but a few years down the line it's now possible to see the impact of the "Charities and Societies Proclamation" that was brought in ahead of the last round of elections.

It was a smart law on the part of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's government because it doesn't outright ban human rights groups — that would trigger outrage and might even force the hand of supportive foreign donors like the US — it just makes life really hard for them.

The law has "changed the face of civil society in Ethiopia," according to Amnesty. "Human rights organizations have shrunk in number and in size, having to cut programs, close offices and lay off staff. The law has been used by the government to freeze financial assets of more than US$1 million belonging to the country’s two leading human rights organizations," the group says.

If you believe that governments should be accountable to their people, however vulnerable, downtrodden or marginalized, then this is bad news. But don't expect any change in Ethiopia.

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BOSTON — The 18th African Union summit ended Monday but in the end, it did not accomplish much unity.

Despite two days of discussion and three rounds of voting, the 40 heads of state and government representatives in attendance failed to choose a new chairman for the AU Commission, according to Al Jazeera.

Neither the incumbent, Jean Ping of Gabon who has served as AU chairman since 2008, nor his challenger Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, South Africa’s home minister and ex-wife of South African President Jacob Zuma, secured enough votes to win, reported the New York Times. 

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The NYT article explains:

South Africa’s government had hoped that Ms. Dlamini-Zuma would help give the African Union a more effective international voice. But other major African nations, like Nigeria and Kenya, had reservations about giving so much power to South Africa, and smaller nations fretted that their interests would be neglected.

These tensions surrounding the battle for the AU's top leadership position show that unity is still a distant goal.

Neither Dlamini-Zuma nor Ping succeeded in securing a two-thirds majority required to win. A new election is scheduled for the next summit in June, but under African Union rules, neither Dlamini-Zuma nor Ping will be eligible to run for election then, according to the NYT. 

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Ping has been given a six-month extension, but he is a leader without a mandate. In a time during which Africa can use a unified voice, the AU remains in a leadership limbo, the Christian Science Monitor reported. 

This year's AU summit, held in its new $200 million Chinese-built headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, was dominated by talks regarding increasing tensions between Sudan and South Sudan, bloody war and famine in Somalia, and lack of trade between member states.

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Here's a video on AU's extended mandate:

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