The Eritrean Institute for Policy and Strategy (ERIPS) is a research advocacy initiative aiming to address the limited public information and dialogue around issues that matter for the future well-being and democratic health of Eritrea and its people. By engaging members of the Eritrean diaspora in comprehensive and in-depth discourse regarding complex and intricate issues, we hope to develop a strong foundation of informed advocates and establish the groundwork for ongoing essential research to shape cohesive policies and strategies that will inspire peace and stability in Eritrea and the Horn of Africa. We are organized based on our specific fields of expertise and our goal is to provide research-based knowledge and expertise that could guide and serve peace loving Eritrean nationals and our partners in making informed decisions.
What are the goals of ERIPS?
The Primary goals of the ERIPS are
- To bring all Eritrean Scholars and Professionals of different backgrounds together
- Build a platform where they can research critical topics
- Provide leadership, guidance and direction for Eritreans
- Develop policies and strategies relevant in advancing the causes of justice, equality, liberty and prosperity.
ERIPS proposes to accomplish the above goals through a series of research and capacity building activities. This includes research publications, media outreach, and website blogs as well as conferences and workshops.
Generally speaking, ERIPS’ editorial philosophy is based on our mission to build a platform where each focus group can research critical topics, provide leadership, guidance and direction for Eritrean nationals, and develop polices and strategies to advance justice, equality, liberty, prosperity, and regional peace and stability.
ERIPS has already formulated ten issue-based focus groups, which are coordinated by Eritrean professionals and scholars who have expertise in the respective focal issue. ERIPS will continue to recruit and organize additional Eritrean subject matter experts as the project unfolds. For the purposes of this project, each focus group will develop an issue-based editorial philosophy and mission, an outline of specific topics to more thoroughly research and address, a timeline for content development and publication of materials, and a process for the selection of the timeliest research to publish and distribute widely. Each focus group will meet with their respective members every four to six weeks to prepare research questions, identify resources, and assess collected data prior to final draft publications.
Our Approach: We believe in the power of making informed decisions based on research, evidence and multiple perspectives. We are committed to providing high-quality and data-driven research and analysis, encompassing major aspects of social, political and economic factors, and within the context of existing and anticipated challenges, opportunities and priorities of democratic governance. We seek to provide a good understanding of the current situation in Eritrea and its neighbors, shape cohesive policies and strategies and inspire peace and stability in the Horn of Africa. We pride ourselves on the depth of our research and the actionable insights we provide so that the people we support will make well-informed decisions.
Eritrea is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural country in northeastern Africa with at least nine officially recognized ethnic groups and a population estimated at four million people. Eritrea is home to the oldest human settlements in the region and an archaeological treasure not yet fully discovered. One million-year-old human remains were found in the Danakil Depression in the country[1]. Recent archaeological investigations in the Asmara Basin show that there is a great potential for understanding the origins of the settled life in the highlands and the growth of communities that acted as urban precursors in the Horn of Africa[2]. An analysis of excavations from the National Eritrean Museum in 1994 in Kokan firmly places Agordat within the mix of regional trading systems from ca. 2300 BCE to the “Pre-Axumite period, ca. 400 BCE, where it was a center of the increasing trade between the Nile valley and Eritrean/Ethiopian highlands[3] . It is also home to one of the oldest written scripts in sub-Saharan Africa, Geez. It is an early home to both Christianity and Islam.
Modern-day Eritrea began with the incorporation of independent and distinct Kingdoms and Sultanates and was declared a colony by Italy in 1890. After the defeat of the Italian colonial army in 1942, Eritrea was administered by the British Military Administration until September 15, 1952. During the British Administration, Eritrea enjoyed political freedoms. Eritrea was a pioneer in multi-party democracy in Africa in the 1940s, as there were about ten registered political parties in the country. When the British departed, Eritrea was formally federated with Ethiopia, based on a resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1950.
The Federation provided for Eritrea to have its Executive and elected Parliament with its constitution, derived from the U.N. principles that provided extensive rights of the citizens and protected its culture and languages.
John Foster Dulles, who served as U.S. Secretary of State (1953-1959) under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, said: “From the point of view of justice, the opinion of the Eritrean people must receive consideration. Nevertheless, the strategic interests of the United States in the Red Sea Basin and world peace make it necessary that the country be linked with our ally Ethiopia.”
However, Ethiopia failed to abide by the U.N. resolution. In complete disregard of the federal arrangement, it imposed its language on the people and schools, brought down the Eritrean flag, forcefully annexed Eritrea, and made it one of its provinces on November 14, 1962.
Ethiopian encroachment on the rights of Eritrea and its complete disregard of the wishes and aspirations of the Eritrean people did not go unopposed. Eritreans appealed to the U.N. for the Ethiopian Emperor to abide by the federal agreement. Still, their pleas for a peaceful political resolution to Ethiopia’s flagrant abuse of their rights and upholding the agreement were utterly ignored. Ethiopia had no intention to abide by the U.N. Federal arrangement. All peaceful means were exhausted, and the U.N. did not shoulder its responsibility to intervene and stop Ethiopian infringements. Eritreans had no option but to resort to armed struggle to ascertain their right to self-determination and independence. Thus, in 1961, the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) was formed and followed by the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) to carry out the armed struggle. After 30 years of a devastating war against the mightiest army in Africa, Eritrea was able to win the war and gain legal and formal independence through a referendum assisted and supervised by the United Nations.
Although Eritreans demonstrated great resolve, phenomenal organizing skills, and unprecedented participation of the people fighting for their independence, all were not well both within the liberation fronts and their relationship. Undemocratic tendencies and practices dominated both leaderships and dissenting members seen as a threat to their power, were liquidated. In the end, a “civil war” erupted between the two that resulted in the ouster of the ELF from Eritrea, ending its armed participation and assumption of and participation in power in free Eritrea.
While the armed confrontation was going on between the Eritreans and the military government of Ethiopia, several attempts were made by different interested and concerned parties to help resolve the conflict peacefully. One was U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
With the help of the U.S. government and United Nations officials, President Jimmy Carter attempted to mediate peace talks between the EPLF and the Ethiopian Government. The negotiations were hosted at the Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta, Georgia, in September 1989. As a result, a peace accord was signed in November 1989. However, soon after the agreement was signed, hostilities resumed. After the end of the Cold War, the United States played a facilitative role in the peace talks between the Eritrean front leaders and the Ethiopian government in Washington, D.C., during the months leading up to the May 1991 fall of the Mengistu regime. In mid-May, Mengistu resigned as head of the Ethiopian government and went into exile in Zimbabwe, leaving a caretaker government in Addis Ababa. A high-level U.S. delegation was present in Addis Ababa for the 1–5 July 1991 conference that established a transitional government in Ethiopia.
Having defeated the Ethiopian forces in Eritrea, the EPLF attended as an observer in the said conference and held talks with the new transitional government regarding Eritrea’s future relationship with Ethiopia. The discussions resulted in an agreement in which the Ethiopians recognized the right of the Eritreans to hold a referendum on independence and support its outcome. The referendum was held in April 1993 in which the Eritrean people voted almost unanimously (99.83%) in favor of independence. The referendum’s integrity was verified by the U.N. Observer Mission to Verify the Referendum in Eritrea (UNOVER). On May 28, 1993, the United Nations formally admitted Eritrea to its membership.
Names Like Idi Amin and Mobutu Sese Seko are well-known as African dictators. Still, Isaias Afwerki has cruelly ruled over the Eritrean people for decades in relative anonymity outside the Horn of Africa and the attention of Western and African government officials and Africanists.
His story began in September 1966 when he left Haile Selassie I University to join the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) and was sent to China in 1967 to receive intensive military and political training.
In August 1970, Isaias and some other members of the Eritrean Liberation Front splintered from ELF to form the Eritrean Peoples’ Liberation Front (EPLF) with him as one of the leaders.
With a clandestine “Marxist Party” established in 1971 in the EPLF, Isaias kept a closer watch and eliminated opponents to have absolute authority gradually.
In 1977, the first EPLF congress elected Isaias as Vice-Secretary General. The second EPLF Congress of 1987 selected him as the Secretary-General of the organization. Isaias was elected in April 1993 as President of the State of Eritrea by a National Assembly. The EPLF monopolized power and did not recognize other political organizations. He had held that office ever since.
Under Isaias, Eritrea has remained a pariah state in which the Isaias regime has never allowed national legislative and presidential elections to be held.
“I conclude that Eritreans will meet these challenges with the same determination and resourcefulness that characterized their long struggle for international recognition as a sovereign nation.” (Pateman, 1998)
During the first few years of Isaias’s administration, institutions of governance were structured and put in place. Management included providing an elected local judicial system and an expansion of the educational system into as many regions as possible. In February 1994 in its fourth congress and as part of its transition to a political party, the EPLF renamed itself the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ).
Isaias’ public advocacy of the necessity for the development of indigenous political and economic institutions conveyed the impression that he intended to build a self-reliant country that would not require foreign aid. The government pursued a development strategy that suited its internal conditions and available resources. The key element of such a policy included ambitious infrastructure development campaigns. The infrastructure plan included power, transport, telecommunications, and primary healthcare and educational facilities. This external façade mislead many in the west and U.S. President Bill Clinton at that time, dubbed Isaias as one of the few “renaissance African leaders.”
In reality, however, Isaias used his self-reliance rhetoric to build a political and security apparatus that would maintain him in power indefinitely and crush any form of dissent – no matter how mild.
Cruelty and absolute denial of all freedoms and fundamental human rights define the Isaias’ regime. On July 4, 1994, the Isaias regime had massacred dozens of disabled liberation war veterans at Mai-Habar. Asking for improvement in their conditions was their only crime. This incident is just an example of the brutality of his regime.
Military conscription is mandatory and indefinite beginning, officially, at the age of 18 but includes underage children of 16- and 17-year-olds. The regime’s zeal to conscript young people knows no limits. On December 8, 2012, Ciham Ali – an American citizen – was arrested while attempting to leave Eritrea and has not been seen since. Ciham was 15 years old at the time of her arrest.
It is also essential to underscore that hundreds of thousands of Eritrean conscripts, many underage, are currently sent to the war in Tigray, Ethiopia. Their parents do not know whether their children are dead or alive.
According to Human Rights Watch, the Eritrean government’s human rights record is among the worst in the world. Eritrea ranked at the bottom, under North Korea in the Global Press Freedom Index 2021. Many journalists have been incarcerated for almost 20 years without charge and a day in court.
Freedom of worship for members of minority Christian churches has been denied, and their members have faced particular persecution under the Eritrean government. About 150 Islamic schoolteachers were arrested in 1994, and whose whereabouts are unknown. Widespread, systematic human rights violations have become routine, including severe restrictions on freedom of expression, freedom of worship, freedom of association, and freedom of movement.
A national network of jails and detention facilities exists to hold those trying to avoid national service, political prisoners, and prisoners of conscience. Civil society groups, religious communities, independent journalists, and opposition political parties are criminalized, and their members are imprisoned and tortured. Torture, cruel and degrading treatment, arbitrary arrest and detention, extrajudicial killings, disappearances, and forced labor are routinely practiced. Detention conditions are inhumane, with detainees often held in underground cells or shipping containers in dangerously high temperatures; Eritrea is among countries with the highest prison population rates globally, and reliable sources put the number of prisoners in Eritrea in the tens of thousands.
The Commission of inquiry on human rights in Eritrea, established by the U.N. Human rights Council found in 2016, stated, “there are reasonable grounds to believe that crimes against humanity have been committed in Eritrea since 1991. Eritrean officials have engaged in a persistent, widespread, and systematic attack against the country’s civilian population since 1991. They have committed, and continue to commit, the crimes of enslavement, imprisonment, enforced disappearance, torture, other inhumane acts, persecution, rape, and murder.”
A recent PBS documentary on the treatment of Eritrean prisoners can be accessed through this link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jquCbpLYw7Q
Eritrean authorities show no mercy; they are cruel to disabled veterans, underage boys and girls, expectant mothers and brides, respected elders, and religious leaders. These religious leaders include the Head of the Eritrean Orthodox Church, His Holiness Abune Antonios, who has been under house arrest since 2007, and Hajj Musa Mohammed Nur, the Board President of Al Dia Islamic School in Asmara, who died in prison on March 1, 2018.
The overcrowded prisons in Eritrea contain people who took part in the armed struggle, including former top military officers, ministers, and members of the National Assembly (Parliament).
The Isaias regime has driven thousands of Eritreans to flee the country to escape mandatory and indefinite military service and the repressive practices that have denied them freedom.
The Congressional Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission reported on April 18, 2018, hearing that by the time of that hearing, as much as 10 percent of Eritrea’s population had fled the country since 2000. During that hearing, Rep. Randy Hultgren, Co-Chair of the Lantos Commission, stated that “Many of these asylum seekers are exploited by smugglers and human traffickers, or find themselves in Libyan slave markets, enduring detention, torture, and forced labor. After gaining their freedom, some expressed that they would rather endure the experience of slavery over again than be sent back to their native country to end up in open-ended imprisonment terms.
“For those that leave Eritrea, the dangers they face are almost unimaginable. Smugglers and human traffickers exploit many asylum seekers. They may end up in Libyan slave markets enduring detention, torture, and forced labor. After gaining their freedom, some expressed they would rather endure the experience of slavery over again than be sent back to their native country. The question remains why are so many people leaving this country?” Hultgren asked.
The answer to Hultgren’s question lies in the horrific conditions, Eritreans have been forced to live. They experience indefinite national service, economic stagnation, lack of opportunities. Every aspect of life is under absolute control. For example, Eritrea has been under a complete lockdown for a long time, supposedly due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The lockdown resulted in tremendous hardship and hunger due to loss of livelihoods. On the other hand, the regime has refused to participate in the WHO vaccine distribution program, COVAX subjecting the people to attacks by new variants that may arise.
The Relationship with Ethiopia
The rivalry between Eritrea and Ethiopia stems from the 30-year war for Eritrean independence. This competition resulted in the outbreak of military hostilities between the two countries from May 1998 to June 2000, claiming approximately 70,000 lives from both sides and costing hundreds of millions of dollars.
In December 2000, Eritrea and Ethiopia signed a peace treaty ending their war. They created a pair of judicial commissions, the Eritrea-Ethiopia Border Commission (EEBC) and the Eritrean-Ethiopian Claims Commission (EECC), to rule on their disputed border and related claims. In April 2002, the Commission released its decision (with a clarification in 2003). Disagreements followed, creating a dangerous “no-war, no-peace” stalemate primarily because of the refusal of the Ethiopian government to abide by the ruling that was binding, punctuated by periods of elevated tension and renewed threats of war. Ethiopia refused to permit the physical demarcation of the border, contrary to the agreement, while Eritrea insisted the border must be demarcated as defined by the Commission. Consequently, the Boundary Commission ruled that the boundary was virtually demarcated and effective.
Eritrea maintained a military force on its border with Ethiopia roughly equal in size to Ethiopia’s forces, which required a general mobilization of a significant portion of the population. The Eritrean government said it viewed this border dispute as an existential threat to itself. After the border conflict, Ethiopia no longer used Eritrean ports for its trade. The tensions were a pretext to justify the ongoing mobilization of Eritrean citizens into the military.
During the border conflict and afterward, Ethiopia supported militants against Eritrea. Eritrea retaliated by hosting militant groups against Ethiopia as well. The United Nations Security Council argued that Eritrea and Ethiopia had expanded their dispute to a second theater: Somalia. Eritrea reportedly continues to train the Somali militia currently.
The 2018 Eritrea–Ethiopia summit (also known as the Eritrea–Ethiopia peace summit) took place on 8–9 July in Asmara, Eritrea, between Eritrean President Isaias and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and officials from the two countries. The two leaders signed a joint declaration on July 9, formally ending the border conflict between them, restoring full diplomatic relations, and agreeing to open their borders to each other for people, goods, and services. The joint statement was supposed to have closed all chapters regarding the Eritrean–Ethiopian War and subsequent sporadic clashes until 2018.
Following this ending of hostilities, the two governments have become allies. The Eritrean military invasion of Tigray provided military support for the Ethiopian fight against the TPLF military forces. Still, it also enabled the Isaias regime to capture Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia and forcibly return them to the country.
As the international community struggles to resolve the catastrophic war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, the plight of the 100,000+ Eritrean refugees living in the four camps in Tigray/Ethiopia is overshadowed by the so many emergencies that are going on in the region. There are credible reports that about 20,000 Eritrean refugees were forced to return to Eritrea. Eritrean troops destroyed two of the four refugee camps.
In a December 16, 2020 statement, Refugees International stated that it was “concerned about reports that Ethiopian government forces and Eritrean soldiers have forced Eritrean refugees to return to Eritrea or other locations where they may be in danger. Eritrean refugees who fled to Addis Ababa to avoid the fighting in Tigray have been rounded up and returned to camps in Tigray. These camps in Tigray are in the middle of an active conflict zone and have little access to food or medical supplies.”
On April 21, 2021, Human Rights Watch reported that the Ethiopian government had quietly changed its asylum procedures for Eritrean refugees, undermining their access to asylum processes and denying the numerous unaccompanied minors necessary protections. Before Abiy took power, Ethiopia has for years provided asylum to Eritrean refugees as a group. The human rights agency said that in January 2021, the Ethiopian government began registering limited categories of Eritrean refugees, notably eliminating minors from the asylum and placing them in danger of being returned to abusive situations in violation of international refugee law.
The international community must give due consideration to the Isaias Afwerki regime’s disastrous impact in the Horn of Africa. This regime is known for instigating conflicts with neighboring countries (Sudan, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Yemen) since the early 1990s. The Isaias regime has regularly supported armed opposition groups against governments with disputes, including the militant Islamist al-Shabaab in Somalia. These wars have led to the unnecessary loss of lives. Yet, in the eyes of Isaias Afwerki, those losses are expendable for the protection of his regime.
- The border conflict between the forces of Djibouti and Eritrea occurred between June 10 and June 13, 2008. It was triggered by the tension that began on April 16, 2008, when Djibouti reported that Eritrean armed forces had penetrated Djibouti and dug trenches on both sides of the border. The crisis deepened when armed clashes broke out between the two armed forces in the border area on June 10, 2008. During the conflict, France provided logistical, medical, and intelligence support to Djibouti but did not participate in direct combat.
- Eritrea broke diplomatic relations with Sudan in December 1994 after a long period of increasing tension between the two countries due to a series of cross-border incidents involving the Eritrean Islamic Jihad (EIJ). Although the attacks did not pose a threat to the stability of the Government of Eritrea (the infiltrators were generally killed or captured by government forces), the Eritreans believed the National Islamic Front (NIF) in Khartoum supported, trained, and armed the insurgents. After many months of negotiations with the Sudanese to end the incursions, the Government of Eritrea concluded that the NIF did not intend to change its policy, thus breaking relations. Subsequently, the Government of Eritrea hosted a conference of Sudanese opposition leaders in June 1995 to help the opposition unite and provide a credible alternative to the government in Khartoum at the time. Eritrea resumed diplomatic relations with Sudan on December 10, 2005. Since then, Sudan has accused Eritrea, along with Chad, of supporting rebels.
- A dispute with Yemen over the Hanish Islands in 1996 resulted in a brief war. As part of an agreement to cease hostilities, the nations agreed to refer the issue to the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. Fighting took place over three days from 15 -17 December 1995. In 1998 the Permanent Court of Arbitration determined that most of the archipelago/islands belonged to Yemen.
The Isaias regime’s military intervention in the current conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region has caused thousands of deaths and widespread destruction, displacing more than two million people since it began, sending tens of thousands of refugees into neighboring Sudan.
Furthermore, the Isaias regime refuses to cooperate with governments and international institutions on vital cross-border issues such as the repeated regional droughts and the recent locust invasions.
Between July 2011 and mid-2012, a severe drought affected the entire East African region. It was estimated to have been “the worst in 60 years”, causing a severe food crisis across Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya that threatened the livelihood of 9.5 million people. Many refugees from southern Somalia fled to neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia, where crowded, unsanitary conditions and severe malnutrition led to a large number of deaths. It remains unclear how the drought affected Eritrea or whether or how it added to the refugee flow from there to surrounding countries because of the black-out of information imposed by the Isaias regime.
The 2019–2021 locust infestation, a pest outbreak of desert locusts, threatened the food supply across the regions of East Africa, including the Arabian Peninsula, and as far away as the Indian subcontinent. The outbreak was the worst in 70 years in Kenya and the worst in 25 years in Ethiopia, Somalia, and India. In Eritrea, enormous swarms of immature adults and tree locusts migrated from Ethiopia were identified and controlled in the Northern Red Sea Coast.
While the weather helped slow the insects’ reproduction, the success in fighting the infestation was due primarily to a technology-driven anti-locust operation that hastily formed soon after the insects’ arrival to East Africa. This groundbreaking approach proved so effective at clamping down on the winged invaders in some places that some experts say it could transform the management of other natural disasters around the world. This operation could have been more successful and beneficial in the long run with the cooperation of the Eritrean government, which was not extended.
Information withheld on these matters makes regional programming unnecessarily challenging and only adds to the Isaias regime’s negative impact in the region. For all these reasons, the international community should want to end Isaias’s reign of terror in the Horn of Africa expeditiously.
ERIPS believes there are specific tasks that must be accomplished to bring lasting peace to Eritrea, the Tigray region, and the Horn and East Africa as a whole:
- Designate Isaias Afwerki, the Eritrean President, as a war criminal and a criminal against humanity and take all necessary steps to ensure that he is made to account for these crimes.
- All warring parties (the Federal Government of Ethiopia, the Tigray Regional Government, and the Eritrean regime) must enter into a binding cease-fire immediately to end the suffering of Eritrean refugees and others placed in danger in the Tigray region conflict.
- The Eritrean regime of President Isaias Afwerki must withdraw its forces from Tigray and cease any war activities in Ethiopia.
- The Eritrean regime of President Isaias Afwerki must end the forced repatriation of Eritreans from Ethiopia and its persecution of Eritrean refugees.
- An international, independent investigation of atrocity crimes, crimes against humanity and horrendous sexual crimes committed against innocent Tigrayan people must be conducted.
- The Eritrean regime of President Isaias Afwerki must release all prisoners of conscience and political prisoners.
- The Eritrean regime of President Isaias Afwerki must implement the ratified constitution and allow national legislative and presidential elections to take place.
- The Eritrean regime of President Isaias Afwerki must respect freedoms of speech, press, assembly, and religion.
- The Eritrean regime must end its mandatory, indefinite national military service, stop the involuntary assistance of recruits and allow those in government service to be released from this obligation.
- The Federal Government of Ethiopia must lift any blockade in its Tigray region. It has to allow the UNHCR, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and all humanitarian organizations free access to Eritrean refugees and the civilian population in the Tigray region.
- The Federal Government of Ethiopia must ensure that all Eritreans have the right to apply for and receive asylum following international asylum principles and publicly announce any changes to its asylum and camp management policies.
- The United States Government must impose an arms embargo on the Eritrean and Ethiopian governments until the current conflict ends.
- The Government of the United States must freeze assets of the PFDJ around the world.
- The Government of the United States must sanction President Isaias Afwerki and PFDJ officials, including personal asset freezes and travel bans.
[1] Abbate, E., et al., A one-million-year-old Homo cranium from the Danakil (Afar) Depression of Eritrea. Nature, 1998. 393(6684): p. 458-60.
[2]Schmidt, P. R., M. C. Curtis and Z. Teka (2008). The archaeology of ancient Eritrea. Trenton, NJ, Red Sea Press..
[3] Brandt, S. A. M., A.; Perlingieri, C. (2008). Linking the Highlands and Lowlands: Implications of a Test Excavation at Kokan Rockshelter, Agordat, Eritrea. The Archaeology of Ancient Eritrea. P. R. Schmidt, Curtis, Matthew, Zelalem Teka. Trenton (NJ), Red Sea Press. : 33-47.