Mr. Kumlachew Dagne Chekol (LLB, Addis Ababa University, LLM-University of Michigan Law School), is a prominent business and human rights lawyer with 23 years of experience in the Ethiopian academia and legal practice where he taught electoral law, federalism and human rights. Kumlachew specializes in corporate and investment law in multimillion dollar mergers and acquisitions as well as privatization transactions.
Kumlachew is widely known for his active engagement on human rights and civil society issues. For more than a decade, Kumlachew has worked as a program manager and governance consultant for InterAfrica Group. He is currently the Board Chair of InterAfrica Group-Ethiopia. Kumlachew was also chair of the Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO), the only human rights monitoring CSO in Ethiopia, from 2015-2017. He founded the Consortium of Ethiopian Human Rights Organizations (CEHRO), and was the principal co-drafter of CSO Ethiopia’s parallel reports during Ethiopia’s Universal Periodic Review at the UN Human Rights Council in 2009 and 2014. He has written several CSO parallel reports which were submitted to the UN High Commissioner’s Office for Human Rights that provided comprehensive analysis on the implementation of human rights conventions in Ethiopia. Kumlachew has worked with Freedom House and NED to support the capacity of local human rights CSOs through research, advisory support and internship programs.
He is one of the principal drafters of the Civil Society Proclamation No. 1113/2011, and has actively participated in the Working Groups set up to reform Civil Society, media and anti-terrorism laws. Since November 2018, Kumlachew is presently working as Ethiopia Programming consultant to Open Society Initiative for East Africa (OSIEA). He is also a member of the Legal and Justice Affairs Advisory Council, a panel of 13 senior Ethiopian lawyers working on legal and institutional reform in Ethiopia.
He can be contacted at kume74@gmail.com or kumlachew@kumeassociates.com. He is also available on +251911018394 (local and whatsapp)