Coffee one of the world most traded goods alld the majority of the production took place in developingrncountries. The small-scale cojfee farmer whu depend on international market for their product highlyrnmarginalized by the unfa ir international terms of trade and combined with imperfect local coffee lIIarketrnconditions induced farmers in a vulnerable position and live in absolute poverty. These problems. amongrnothers led to the f ormation of fair-trade certification scheme in order to help poor marg inalized coffeernfarm ers through their own organization to get accesses to international market and get fa il' price for theirrnproduct.rnThus. this study is about the role of Fair-trade certified small-scale coffee farmers. Though.rnmodern cooperatives exist in Ethiopiafor many decades the reorganization of coffee cooperatives alld therncooperative union ajter 1991 was partly in relation to the international coffee cris is that occurred atrnvarious times. Thus. the main objective of this study i ' to assess the role of 'Fair-trade' certified coffeernfarmers' cooperatives in addressing farmers problellis by taking Tuti Kanisa and Riga Damu primaryrncooperatives as a case in Melka Bello Woreda. East Hal' It'ghe Zone.rn111 order to address the research objectives. a qualitative data gathering techniques has beenrnemployed. These are. the prill1ary data were generated by conducting fieldwork through informantrninterl'iew. fo cus gruup discu 'sions and participant observations and ob. Â·ervation.rnThe re 'ult of the stlldy shows that fa ir-trade certified cooperati ves brou ht economic alld ocialrnbene/it to the fanners. Moreo ver. the existence of cooperatives in locol market brought competition [hatrnill1pl'Ol'ed the price of coffee gradually at local market. Fanners also receive a premiulII that i ' to bernin vested ill community developmentfromfair-trade coffee sale that benefits the whole community.rnThollgh. tl/ere is good demand for fair- trade coffee in the international market. due to lack of financialrncapital. poor infras tructure and absence of proper coffee processing equipments. low level of f ormalrneducation among members and the influence of khat production and exterllal intervention in cooperativernaffairs are major constraints to be mentioned.rnBased on the findings of the study. it is recommended that the cooperative in order tf'.1 bernsucces:-,ful. tl/ere should be udequate finan cial capital for cooperatives. proper coffee processing mach inernshould be ul'ailable at local level. there should be a II/eons to provide fO I'll/cd education for coopera tivernmelllbers and negative extem al in tervention should be minimized in the affair of the cooperatives