The Indigenous World 2026: Eritrea

Written on 22 April 2026. Posted in Eritrea

Eritrea borders the southern Red Sea in the Horn of Africa. It emerged as an Italian colonial construct in the late 19^th century, superimposed over Indigenous populations. Eritrea’s current population is between 3.7 and 5.9 million inhabitants.^[1] There are at least four Indigenous Peoples: the Afar (between 4 and 12% of total population), Kunama (2%), Saho (4%) and Nara (>1%).^[2] These groups have inhabited their traditional territories for some 2,000 years. They are distinct from the two dominant ethnic groups by language (four different languages), religion (Islam), economy (agro and nomadic pastoral), law (customary), culture and way of life. All four Indigenous groups are marginalized and persecuted.^[3]

Following a UN Resolution in 1950 calling for the federation of Ethiopia with the Eritrean colony that Britain had captured from the Italians, a federation was established in 1952. Tensions arose immediately when Ethiopia interfered with the Eritrean courts and executive branch. An armed national liberation struggle broke out in 1961 when Ethiopia abolished Eritrea’s official languages, imposed Ethiopia’s national language, Amharic, dissolved the federation and annexed Eritrea. The ensuing 30-year struggle succeeded in 1991 when the current regime marched into the capital and took power. Following a referendum in 1993, Eritrea seceded from Ethiopia to form a new state.

Eritrean nationalism emanates from the two large ethnic groups (80% of total population combined) that control power and resources. This nationalism is based on suppressing sub-state identities, which the elites see as threatening to the nation-building process. In particular, the Indigenous Peoples have been under pressure from the government’s policy of eradicating identification along regional and religious lines. The regime expropriates Indigenous lands without compensation and has partially cleansed Indigenous Peoples from their traditional territories by violence.

The existence of Indigenous Peoples as intact communities is under threat from government policies aimed at destroying Indigenous cultures, economies, landholdings and, for some, their nomadic and pastoral lifestyles.

Eritrea is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) (but not its optional protocols), International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) (but not its optional protocol), International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) (but not its optional protocol), Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) (but not its optional protocol), Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) (but not its optional protocol), Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (but not its optional protocol), and Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) (but not its optional protocol). Eritrea has not ratified ILO Convention 169, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPAPED), or International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (ICPRAMW). Eritrea’s failure to ratify the optional protocols means that its citizens do not have access to the international human rights machinery to vindicate violations of their human rights.

Eritrea is the subject of complaints to the UN Human Rights Council, the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in Eritrea, the UN Special Rapporteurs on the situation of human rights in Eritrea (all of which sustained the allegations) and the Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples. A new complaint was accepted by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) in 2025. The Commission granted the Government of Eritrea 60 days to respond to the accusations. Taken together, the complaints allege crimes against humanity including persecution, mass murder, ethnic cleansing, displacement of Indigenous Peoples from their traditional territories, and intentional destruction of the Indigenous economy.

This article is part of the 40^th edition of The Indigenous World, a yearly overview produced by IWGIA that serves to document and report on the developments Indigenous Peoples have experienced. Find The Indigenous World 2026 in full here

A country over the brink

On 8 June 2016, the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in Eritrea (COI) reported that there were reasonable grounds to believe that Eritrean officials had committed crimes against humanity in a widespread and systematic manner since 1991. The COI provided detailed evidence relating to specific crimes of enslavement, imprisonment, enforced disappearance, torture, reprisals and other inhumane acts, persecution, rape and murder.^[4]

Notably, the COI found that these crimes had been perpetrated against two of Eritrea’s four Indigenous Peoples, the Afar and the Kunama. Eritrea had persecuted these groups, the COI concluded.^[5] Accordingly, the COI recommended that the UN and other entities initiate protective actions to safeguard these two Indigenous groups.^[6] The recommended measures included bringing Eritrea’s crimes and human rights violations to the attention of the relevant special procedures,^[7] the UN Security Council determining that the Eritrean situation poses a threat to international peace and security^[8] and, accordingly, the Security Council referring the situation in Eritrea to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.^[9]

The situation continues

In February 2025, the Assistant Secretary-General of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights advised the UN Human Rights Council of continuing concerns about Eritrea’s “grave human rights violations … including torture, sexual and gender-based violence and abusive labour practices.”^[10] In June 2025, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Eritrea, Dr. Mohamed Abdelsalam Babiker, reported to the UN Human Rights Council concerning Eritrea’s human rights violations that “no meaningful progress has been made”. He expressed deep concern over the situation on the ground:

freedom of expression, association, assembly, religion and the right to participate in public affairs are effectively non-existent … The Government of Eritrea continues to subject the population to a system of indefinite military or civilian service that … is a system of social control and indoctrination, where coercion and grave human rights violations are widespread … gross human rights violations including the widespread use of arbitrary and incommunicado detention and enforced disappearance persist unabated and constitute a government policy.^[11]

The fact that the human rights situation in Eritrea in 2025 has not changed from that consistently reported over the 2013-2025 period illuminates the cataclysmic situation of Eritrea’s Indigenous Peoples in 2025. The COI, as well as Dr. Babiker and his predecessors as Special Rapporteurs, consistently reported on the “widespread persecution”^[12] to which Eritrea’s Kunama and Afar people were subjected over the 2016-2025 period. Dr. Babiker detailed how

they [the Afar Indigenous people] have been subjected to discrimination, harassment, arbitrary arrests, disappearance, violence [which] ‘interfered with their traditional means of livelihood, eroded their culture, caused displacement and threatened their way of life.’^[13]

Persecution on a widespread basis is a crime against humanity,^[14] which makes the responsible Eritrean officials liable to arrest and prosecution under international criminal law. All the UN mandate holders have called for the authorities to pursue this course of action before national and international criminal tribunals.

Peace and security

Escalating tensions between Eritrea and Ethiopia caused the security situation for Eritrea’s Indigenous Peoples to deteriorate markedly in the period under review. A chief source of the conflict involves the Red Sea port of Assab, located in the traditional territory of the Afar Indigenous people who reside in both countries.

Ethiopia lost possession of Assab when Eritrea seceded from Ethiopia in 1993. On 1 September 2025, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed claimed that losing Assab was a “mistake”. That “mistake”, Abiy threatened, would be “corrected tomorrow”. Abiy’s high officials, including army chief Field Marshal Birhanu Jula, suggested that Ethiopia would take Assab “by force”. Ownership of Assab, said Ethiopia’s Major General Teshome Gemechu, “has become our survival interest worth paying any price for”.^[15]

In February 2025, Eritrea began a nationwide mobilization of its armed forces and deployed increased military strength along the border with Ethiopia to confront a similar buildup on the Ethiopian side. Eritrean forces also occupied border areas awarded to Ethiopia under the decision of the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission,^[16] against the will of Ethiopia. In those areas Eritrean troops “are committing atrocities, including abductions, rape, property looting, and arbitrary arrests”.^[17] In addition to journalistic reports of flareups and border clashes between the two sides, in July 2025, while inside Ethiopia, I personally heard eye-witness testimony of clashes at the border from both Ethiopian soldiers and Eritrean deserters who had fled to Ethiopia.

All this is taking place in what is otherwise a highly securitized situation. Despite the Pretoria Agreement of 2022, which declared a Cessation of Hostilities in the Tigray War to end fighting between Ethiopia’s federal government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), instability, ongoing disputes, and violence continue. In November 2025, the Government of Afar State in Ethiopia (one of 12 regional states in Ethiopia’s ethnically organized federation) accused TPLF fighters of crossing into Afar Indigenous territory and seizing six villages in the Megale district.^[18]

Afar Indigenous people suffered horrible mass atrocities, with huge loss of life and enormous destruction of property during the Tigray war (2020-2022), which was fought in part on Afar territory in Ethiopia. Given renewed threats to resume fighting on their territory, the Afar traditional and customary leadership mobilized, gathering together twice, in July and December 2025, to consider a response to the gathering war clouds and the ongoing persecution of Afar people inside Eritrea. The Conferences issued a “Declaration of the Afar Nation” on 30 December 2025 in which “the Indigenous Afar People …Declared to the World” their intention to establish “Autonomy and Self-Government within our historical territories in Dankalia” and also condemned “in the strongest terms, the persecution and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Government of Eritrea and its officials against the Afar people”.^[19]

The current military buildup both between Eritrea and Ethiopia and also between Ethiopia’s central government and Tigray regional state in Ethiopia is extremely worrisome. Afar Indigenous people and their territories are once again under threat.

Outlook

There is no panacea for this grim situation. It remains especially important to document what is happening inside Eritrea’s repressive regime as much as possible. The civilized nations of the world will one day demand accountability from Eritrea and its officials for the longstanding and ongoing atrocities they have committed. Hopefully, that day will come soon and provide relief for the persecuted Indigenous Peoples of Eritrea.

Joseph Eliot Magnet, FRSC, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa.

This article is part of the 40^th edition of The Indigenous World, a yearly overview produced by IWGIA that serves to document and report on the developments Indigenous Peoples have experienced. Find The Indigenous World 2026 in full here

Notes and references

[1] 3.7 million is stated by the SR-Eritrea in his 2024 Report, citing the UN Population Fund, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Eritrea, UN Doc. A/HRC/56/24, 7 May 2024, para. 71. Online: https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g24/073/00/pdf/g240730; 4.39 million is an estimate by the World Bank, see World Bank Country Profile: Eritrea. http://databank.worldbank.org/data/Views/Reports/ReportWidgetCustom.aspx?Report_Name=CountryProfile&Id=b450fd57&tbar=y&dd=y&inf=n&zm=n&country=ERI; 5.9 million is an estimate by the CIA, see CIA, World Factbook. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/er.html

^[2] The numbers are disputed. There are no reliable figures to resolve the dispute as there is no count and no census that has been conducted by Eritrea or others. The CIA World Factbook reports the Afar at 2% but this is very unlikely given that there are 20,000 UN-documented Afar refugees in two refugee camps in neighbouring Ethiopia and many more undocumented asylum seekers inside Ethiopia – this alone would likely account for 2% of the Eritrean population. The figure for the Saho is reported by Abdulkader Saleh Mohammad, The Saho of Eritrea: Ethnic Identity and National Consciousness (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2013).

^[3] Eritrea: Constitutional, Legislative and Administrative Provisions Concerning Indigenous Peoples (a joint publication of the International Labour Organization, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, 2009, pp. 5-7. http://www.chr.up.ac.za/chr_old/indigenous/country_reports/Country_reports_Eritrea.pdf

^[4] Second Report of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in Eritrea, A/HRC/32/47, 8 June 2016, para. 60. http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/CoIEritrea/A_HRC_32_CRP.1_read-only.pdf

^[5] Ibid, para. 87-88, 124, 129(b).

^[6] Ibid, para.124 (the COI referred to the Afar and Kunama as “ethnic groups”).

^[7] Ibid, para. 129(b).

^[8] Ibid, para. 132(a).

^[9] Ibid.

^[10] Ilze Brands-Kehris, Statement at the 58^th session of the Human Rights Council, 27 February 2025. Online: https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements-and-speeches/2025/02/enhanced-interactive-dialogue-human-rights-eritrea#:~:text=Our%20Office%20also%20calls%20on,Thank%20you

^[11] UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Eritrea, Dr. Mohamed Babiker, Statement. Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovzc3YtqDZM

^[12] Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Eritrea, Mohamed Abdelsalam Babiker, A/HRC/53/20, 9 May 2023, para 58 and 78. https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/country-reports/ahrc5320-situation-human-rights-eritrea-report-special-rapporteur

^[13] Ibid, para 58.

^[14] Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, art. 7(1)(h) and 7(2)(g). See generally, F. Pocar, Persecution as a Crime Under International Criminal Law, [2008] 2 Journal of National Security Law and Policy 355

^[15] BBC, Escalating war of words between Ethiopia and Eritrea triggers fears of conflict, 25 November 2025. Online: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgwg042vr4o

^[16] Permanent Court of Arbitration, Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission. Online: https://pca-cpa.org/en/cases/99/

^[17] Ilze Brands-Kehris, note 10, supra.

^[18] Tensions in Ethiopia: Afar Accuses TPLF of Attacks Despite Peace Deal. Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maEvasYlbew

^[19] Declaration of the Afar Nation Conference, 30 December 2025. Online: https://dankalia.org/2026/01/declaration-of-the-afar-nation-conference-dec-29-30-2025/

Tags: Global governance