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The Center for Human Rights Studies (CHR), one of the constituent units of the College of Law and Governance Studies, is a human rights institute engaged in teaching, research and community services in an interdisciplinary setting. Initially, the program was designed as a joint program in Peace, Federalism and Human Rights in collaboration with the Center for Federal Studies and the Institute of Peace and Security Studies.

Through the PhD program, the Center aims to meet the needs of national development through the provision of independent researches of high international calibre pursued in accordance with recognized scientific and ethical principles in the field of human rights. Accordingly, the Program provides a well-planned teaching and learning package and has the objective of qualifying candidates for research and other works requiring focused, rigorous and high levels of scientific insight and analytical thinking in the field of interdisciplinary human rights.

Since its launch in 2011, the Center enrolled 43 PhD students (in 10 rounds). It has also graduated 13 number of students. Currently, 20 number of students are enrolled. In meeting with the spirit of Article 66 of the AAU Senate Legislation, the Center for Human Rights has reorganized the PhD program. The newly redeveloped program was launched in 2017.

The Center for Human Rights has been delivering MA in Human Rights program since 2009. The program sets the goal of becoming an interdisciplinary graduate degree program of excellence in the field of human rights.
In this program, the Center aspires to produce graduates who are excellent in the field of interdisciplinary human rights. The MA program is designed to enable students develop their knowledge and analytical skills on interdisciplinary human rights issues of local and global nature. To such end, the program engages academics and researchers from various disciplines including law, political science, philosophy, sociology and economics.

The Center for Human Rights introduced Master of Arts in Children’s Rights which is the first of its kind in Ethiopia. The Center aims to prepare students to work in different sectors to address the challenges facing children in Ethiopia.

The program offers rigorous graduate-level training in children’s rights studies drawing on diverse academic disciplines including human rights, law, sociology, social work, psychology, and development students. Through this interdisciplinary approach, participants gain a nuanced understanding of the multifaceted challenges affecting children in Ethiopia and beyond.

By fostering critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and practical application, the program empowers graduates to become catalysts for positive change in the lives of children.

The short-term postgraduate training courses aim to increase the capacity of high and mid-level government officials  so as to support them better respect human rights and protect the rights of  such vulnerable groups of people as  women , children, persons with disabilities , refugees and/ IDPs , the elderlies and workers. The training is also given to leaders of CSOs with the intent of empowering them to promote human rights and contribute to respecting the human rights of vulnerable groups of people. The training courses target high and mid –level government officials and leadership of CSOs.  The themes of the training are designed to address timely and prevalent human rights issues existing in the country and span for five –days. Upon completion of the five –days training courses, participants are issued a post-graduate level certificate by the Center.

Furthermore, the Center employs mechanisms that ensure effective and sustained utilization of the knowledge and skills attained for regular operations of the specialized government agents and CSOs thereby enhancing their capacities in respecting and protecting human rights of particularly the target groups.

The training themes are ;

1. Postgraduate training on ‘Human Rights in Times of State of Emergency’
2. Postgraduate training on ‘The Rights of Persons with Disabilities’
3. Postgraduate training on ‘Rights of Minorities in Ethiopia’
4. Postgraduate training on ‘Media Freedom and Human Rights’
5. Postgraduate training on ‘Election and Human Rights’
6. Postgraduate training on ‘Human Rights in Conflict Situation : The Nexus between Peace and Human Rights’