4. The right to self-determination, including secession, of every Nation,
Nationality and People shall come into effect:
(a) When a demand for secession has been approved by a two-thirds majority
of the members of the Legislative Council of the Nation, Nationality or People
concerned;
(b) When the Federal Government has organized a referendum which must
take place within three years from the time it received the concerned council’s
decision for secession;
(c) When the demand for secession is supported by majority vote in the
referendum;
(d) When the Federal Government will have transferred its powers to the
council of the Nation, Nationality or People who has voted to secede; and
(e) When the division of assets is effected in a manner prescribed by law.
5. A "Nation, Nationality or People" for the purpose of this Constitution , is a
group of people who have or share large measure of a common culture or
similar customs, mutual intelligibility of language, belief in a common or
related identities, a common psychological make-up, and who inhabit an
identifiable, predominantly contiguous territory.
Article 40
The Right to Property
1. Every Ethiopian citizen has the right to the ownership of private property.
Unless prescribed otherwise by law on account of public interest, this right
shall include the right to acquire, to use and, in a manner compatible with the
rights of other citizens, to dispose of such property by sale or bequest or to
transfer it otherwise.
2. "Private property", for the purpose of this Article, shall mean any tangible or
intangible product which has value and is produced by the labour, creativity,
enterprise or capital of an individual citizen, associations which enjoy juridical
personality under the law, or in appropriate circumstances, by communities
specifically empowered by law to own property in common.
3. The right to ownership of rural and urban land, as well as of all natural
resources, is exclusively vested in the State and in the peoples of Ethiopia.
Land is a common property of the Nations, Nationalities and Peoples of
Ethiopia and shall not be subject to sale or to other means of exchange.
4. Ethiopian peasants have right to obtain land without payment and the
protection against eviction from their possession. The implementation of this
provision shall be specified by law.
5. Ethiopian pastoralists have the right to free land for grazing and cultivation as
well as the right not to be displaced from their own lands. The implementation
shall be specified by law.
6. Without prejudice to the right of Ethiopian Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples
to the ownership of land, government shall ensure the right of private investors
to the use of land on the basis of payment arrangements established by law.
Particulars shall be determined by law.
7. Every Ethiopian shall have the full right to the immovable property he builds
and to the permanent improvements he brings about on the land by his labour