Abstract Changing the legal environment can have transformative impacts on the lives of the most vulnerable. However, little is known about how legal advocacy can effectively achieve this within contexts where governments are not receptive to advocacy of this nature. This article outlines the activities of the Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association (EWLA) as it played a focal role in changing the Family Law, making important progress to removing aspects of the law that discriminated against women. We outline the ‘pathway’ of change taken by the organization, which moved from service provision to building an evidence-based, formal and informal advocacy, and finally utilizing critical junctures to encourage change to the law. This article also highlights the important role of enabling environments, as after several successful efforts of legal advocacy, the government closed down the operational space for legal advocacy, effectively stifling continued, or any new forms of, legal advocacy. This article provides insight on successful approaches to legal advocacy in challenging governance contexts as well as the limitations and opportunities that external actors can have.

中文翻译：

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法律倡导变革的途径：埃塞俄比亚女律师协会

摘要改变法律环境会对最弱势群体的生活产生变革性影响。但是，对于在政府不接受这种性质的倡导的情况下，法律倡导如何有效地实现这一目标知之甚少。本文概述了埃塞俄比亚女律师协会（EWLA）的活动，该协会在更改家庭法方面发挥了重要作用，在消除歧视妇女的法律方面取得了重要进展。我们概述了组织所采取的变革的“途径”，即从提供服务转变为建立基于证据的，正式和非正式的倡导，最后利用关键时刻来鼓励法律的变革。本文还重点介绍了有利环境的重要作用，因为在法律倡导的几次成功努力之后，政府关闭了法律倡导的运营空间，有效地扼制了法律倡导的持续或任何新形式。本文提供了有关在具有挑战性的治理环境中成功进行法律辩护的方法的见解，以及外部参与者可能具有的局限性和机会。