Dr. Yonas Birmeta is currently an Assistant Professor at Addis Ababa University (AAU) School of Law. He obtained his degree in law from the Faculty of Law of Addis Ababa University (AAU) in July 1998. He also completed his Master of Arts in the Theory and Practice of Human Rights at the
Norwegian Center for Human Rights (University of Oslo). He obtained his Ph.D. degree in May 2017 magna cum laude from Martin Luther University (Germany).

He served as a judge at the Federal First Instance Court in Addis Ababa prior to joining academia in 2006. He served as the Head of the School of Addis Ababa University for three years since January 2017. Yonas has long years of teaching and research and has publications on a variety of issues including human rights and child rights in the Ethiopian context. He has edited volumes on different issues including Refugee Protection in Ethiopia, the Implementation of International Humanitarian Law in Ethiopia, Human Rights, and Legal Pluralism in Ethiopia. Yonas also conducted situation analyses on child protection in Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, and Oromia. His areas of interest include human rights, land rights, international humanitarian law, and refugee rights.

He has been a member of Transparency International Ethiopia (TIE) General Assembly for the last five years and was elected as a board chairman on the 3rd of July, 2022.