Domestic Politics

Once again, Eritrea’s autocratic political system did not undergo any kind of reform. President Isaias Afewerki’s rule over the country remained uncontested, and he continued to rule without an implemented constitution supported by a small circle of advisors. The national assembly, in theory the country’s legislative organ, remained inactive, and the ruling People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (pfdj) was largely inactive. Only the party’s financial head, Hagos Gebrehiwot ‘Kisha’, and the head of political affairs, Yemane Gebreab, who was also in charge of diaspora affairs and accompanied minster of foreign affairs Osman Saleh on most of his official journeys, maintained their political influence. No elections were envisaged to be held and there were no plans to reform the national service without time limit, which had been in place since 2002. The last official meeting of the cabinet of ministers was held in April 2018, which meant that the president seemed to have abandoned the last impression of public participation in his decision-making processes. No cabinet reshuffles were announced, and it was obvious that Eritrea was fully under the one-man rule of the president.

Following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Eritrea’s first case was registered on 21 March, when a Norway-based diaspora Eritrean visiting the country developed symptoms. The Eritrean government declared a strict lockdown on 2 April that remained in place throughout the year. International travel, including diaspora visits, ceased and the borders were closed. All schools and businesses except for groceries were shut down; public transport, including buses and taxis, was discontinued and the use of private cars was prohibited. This meant that people had to resort to horse and donkey carts to transport daily commodities. Restrictions on travel from one location to another were extremely tight, and agro-pastoralists and pastoralists were unable to perform their seasonal movements.

At the same time, the government claimed that the country was hardly affected by the spread of the pandemic. Nevertheless, fundraising campaigns to help fight the pandemic were conducted throughout the year among diaspora Eritreans, with no transparency as to how the funds were being used. Despite grave economic consequences due to a lack of compensation for individuals affected by the lockdown and a drop in agricultural production, no opening strategy was envisaged by the end of the year.

Aid organisations warned that the lockdown, which deprived people of the ability to engage in all kinds of informal business opportunities and leave their homes to look for food, led to famine conditions with far more dangerous implications than the pandemic itself. In early September, the bbc reported that there was most probably a hidden famine in Eritrea – denied by the government, which did not grant independent journalists and aid organisations access to the country. The diplomatic community in Asmara had been banned from travelling to Eritrea’s countryside for more than a decade.

The human rights situation remained dire, and civil liberties, which had been extremely restrained even before the Covid-related lockdown, became even more restricted due to the prohibition on meeting other people in public in the absence of any possibility to communicate online. The indefinite lockdown further tightened the totalitarian grip of the regime on the population. All internet cafés were closed, removing one of the few possibilities to gather information and communicate with the outside world, even if only 2% of all Eritreans had internet access. The telephone system was unreliable, and most Eritreans feared that all communication was traced by the state security. Eritrea was ranked 178th out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom ranking. There were no improvements in religious freedom, and Jehovah’s Witnesses and Pentecostal churches were denied the right to practise their faith actively. However, in September the government released 20 members of Pentecostal congregations from prison, and on 4 December it freed 28 Jehovah’s Witnesses, two of them women, who had been behind bars for between 5 and 26 years without trial. No explanation was given as to why these individuals were pardoned while large numbers of Eritreans remained in prison due to religious persecution. The legal religious denominations, namely Orthodox, Catholic, and Lutheran Christianity and Sunni Islam, remained under the close surveillance of the government. All of Eritrea’s surviving long-term political prisoners remained in prison, including the reform group of the G15 and the journalists of the independent press who were put behind bars in 2001.

In September, Dr Mohamed Abdelsalam Babiker, a Sudanese professor of international law, was appointed as the new special rapporteur on Eritrea by the unhrc. His predecessor, Daniela Kravetz, published her final report on 11 May, stating that there had been no tangible improvements in the human rights situation. In September, a lawsuit filed in 2014 against Nevsun Resources, a Canadian mining company that ran a gold and copper mine at Bisha in a joint venture with the state-owned Eritrean Mining Corporation (enamco), was settled out of court, with the plaintiffs receiving compensation from Nevsun. Amnesty International welcomed the decision as a landmark settlement because it held international companies responsible for their activities abroad. The former miners, who had been conscripts of the Eritrean national service, had claimed to have been subjected to forced work, torture, and human rights abuses during the construction of the mine.

Eritrea’s judicial system remained in a state of obsolescence in the absence of an implemented institution, rule of law, and ordinary legal processes. There was still no institution of higher education in charge of educating judges and other jurists. Corruption remained high, and ti’s Corruption Perceptions Index ranked Eritrea 160th out of 180 countries. Due to the strict lockdown, which included the closure of administrative buildings, Eritreans had no access to public services starting from April. In the absence of online services, communication inside the country and with relatives abroad was only possible for those who had a telephone connection.

The Eritrean diaspora remained deeply split between government supporters and opponents, and the opposition was weakened by splits along ethnic, religious, and regional fault-lines. Eritrea’s involvement in the armed conflict in Ethiopia’s bordering Tigray Region (see below) caused further splits, but many diaspora Eritreans residing in North America and Europe participated in demonstrations demanding an end to the conflict, while many government supporters celebrated the demise of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (tplf).

Foreign Affairs

The Joint Declaration of Peace and Friendship signed by Eritrea’s president Isaias Afewerki and Ethiopia’s prime minister Abiy Ahmed with the aim of establishing close political and economic ties and fostering cooperation in the fields of social and cultural activities remained unimplemented. No lasting transport, trade, or communication links were established, and the border was not demarcated on the ground. However, in the field of security cooperation it seemed that both leaders, whose personal relationship was strong, were pursuing unforeseen strategies.

On 27 January, Abiy and Somalia’s President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo met with Isaias in Asmara and forged a tripartite alliance with the official aim of fighting terrorism, human and arms trafficking, and drug smuggling. On 3 May, Isaias travelled to Addis Ababa to discuss the Covid-19 pandemic and locust infestation. On 18 July, it was Abiy’s turn to visit Eritrea again, and he became the first foreign leader to be allowed to visit Eritrea’s infamous Sawa military training camp in the western lowlands, where national service recruits received their military training. On 12 October, Isaias met with Abiy in Ethiopia once again and visited various projects, including the controversial Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (gerd) and the military facility at Bishoftu which hosts Ethiopia’s national air force. When Abiy Ahmed launched what he called a law enforcement operation in Tigray against the tplf leadership on 4 November, rumours of Eritrean participation soon emerged. On 14 November, the tplf launched several rocket strikes against Asmara, targeting the airport and other strategic locations. tplf leader Debretsion Gebremichael accused Eritrea of rendering military support to the Ethiopian National Defence Force, but Eritrea denied involvement and remained silent about the shelling of Asmara. On 8 December, Reuters reported that the US government had accused Eritrea of being involved in the war in Tigray, citing evidence from satellite images, intercepted communications, and eyewitness reports from Tigray and from refugee camps in Sudan. However, presumably due to the imminent change of the US government, no further action was taken by the Trump administration.

Eritrea’s relations with Sudan, which had improved after the ousting of President Omar al-Bashir in 2019, remained close, and President Isaias was anxious to retain his influence on Sudanese policies, specifically in the eastern part of the country bordering Eritrea. Beginning on 25 June, he paid a three-day visit to the government in Khartoum, holding talks with the head and the deputy chairperson of Sudan’s Sovereign Council, Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalu (known as Hemedti), and Sudan’s prime minister Abdallah Hamdok about regional issues and enhanced cooperation. On 21 July, a high-level delegation of the Eritrean Defence Forces, including chief of staff General Filipos Woldeyohannes, General Romodan Osman Awliya, navy commander General Humed Karikare, and head of the National Security Agency General Abraha Kassa, travelled abroad to hold talks with General Hemedti about defence and security issues. It was highly unusual that Eritrea’s military elite jointly travelled abroad. Further meetings took place on 7 September, when General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan arrived in Asmara for a one-day visit, and on 11 November, when Eritrea’s minister of foreign affairs Osman Saleh and his constant companion, presidential advisor Yemane Gebreab, travelled to Khartoum to discuss the evolving conflict in Ethiopia.

Eritrean relations with Saudi Arabia and the uae , which maintained a military base at Eritrea’s port city Assab, remained close. On 19 November, Getachew Reda, the spokesperson of the tplf, claimed that drones stationed at Assab by the uae had been employed during the military campaign in Ethiopia’s Tigray Region with the aim of toppling the tplf administration. On 20 February, President Isaias met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz in Riyadh to discuss bilateral cooperation, and on 15 December a delegation from Saudi Arabia headed by foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud travelled to Asmara for talks.

Relations with Egypt also remained strong, and Isaias, accompanied by Yemane Gebreab and Osman Saleh, paid a visit to Cairo and met President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and other officials on 8 June and again on 5 July to discuss regional relations and the situation in Sudan. On 18 November, Yemane and Osman travelled to Cairo once more to discuss, inter alia, the gerd and the situation in Ethiopia.

The European Union’s relations with Eritrea remained stable, but no high-level visits took place. Eritrea’s Ministry of Information once again accused Germany of a biased stance against Eritrea because the development committee of the Bundestag had claimed on 22 April that no bilateral development cooperation could be considered due to the poor human rights situation in the country and a lack of cooperation by the Eritrean government, a statement which was considered an insult by the latter. The United States maintained little diplomatic interaction with Eritrea during the year, but the US administration was the first international actor to officially raise the issue of Eritrea’s military involvement in Ethiopia on 8 December.

The situation of Eritrean refugees stuck in Libya deteriorated further due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which drastically diminished the possibility of migrating further to Europe, and a decline in sea rescue operations. Evacuation flights of refugees from Libya to Rwanda via the Emergency Transit Mechanism also came to an intermittent halt due to the pandemic, but in November 79 asylum seekers, including Eritreans, were evacuated from detention centres in Libya by the unhcr and received protection in Rwanda. According to unhcr Sudan, the country hosted close to 123,000 Eritrean refugees, but there was a high number of unreported cases because many Eritreans tried to settle in the cities rather than staying at refugee camps. The armed conflict in Tigray had devastating effects on the approximately 100,000 Eritrean refugees hosted in four camps in northern Tigray. On 8 December, the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said that he was alarmed about alleged abductions of Eritrean refugees to their homeland by Eritrean military forces, killings, and abductions. The Eritrean leadership did not comment on these allegations, but the Ethiopian government denied them, although satellite images showed that massive destruction of housing and infrastructure had occurred in the Hitsats and Shimelba refugee camps.

Socioeconomic Developments

The command economy dominated by the military and the ruling pfdj was not reformed during the year. Borders with Ethiopia remained closed, and no border trade was possible. The national service was not reformed and remained open-ended, which meant that large numbers of Eritreans had to serve for decades without the freedom to choose their occupation or their residence. The government used the outbreak of Covid-19 to further restrict the possibility of moving from one place to another and carrying out business activities. In spite of claiming that only small numbers of the population were affected by the spread of the coronavirus, the government extended the initial lockdown imposed in April for an undisclosed period of time. At the end of the year, the Ministry of Health announced that so far 1,320 Eritreans had been diagnosed with Covid-19 and three had died from the disease. Reportedly, there were 41 quarantine centres in the country, which were apparently also in charge of carrying out the tests, but their exact locations were not disclosed. It was unclear which testing strategy the ministry had followed and why measures were not lifted in the face of an allegedly extremely low Covid-related death rate, while the harsh lockdown caused a looming famine.

In July, Human Rights Concern Eritrea warned that up to two-thirds of the population might be living under famine conditions. Daily labourers and people surviving through street-vending activities were prevented from working, and agricultural and pastoral activities were restricted due to the restrictions on movement. In urban areas, people were not allowed to leave their immediate neighbourhoods, and all public transport including buses and taxis was stopped. Consequently, people had to use horse and donkey carts to transport food products and water. The scarcity of consumer goods such as cooking oil, sugar, and other basic commodities continued, and the capital Asmara suffered a severe shortage of potable water due to decades-long poor maintenance of the water supply system, which made it impossible to follow who recommendations to washing hands frequently as a precaution against the coronavirus.

The AfDB’s rather optimistic outlook on the economic development of Eritrea, including an economic growth rate of 3.9% based on economic cooperation with Ethiopia after the peace agreement and the lifting of sanctions against the country – which had actually consisted of an arms embargo with no economic component – did not materialise due to the pandemic, the stalled peace with Ethiopia, and Eritrea’s involvement in the Tigray war since November (see above).

In the face of Eritrea’s extremely weak economy, the president continued to receive support from the uae and Saudi Arabia as renumeration for the use of the military base at Assab in their anti-Houthi war in Yemen. President Isaias even used uae’s Royal Jet aircraft for his international travel. As usual, no state budget was published, and it was unclear how funds generated through the diaspora tax levied on millions of Eritreans in exile and local income from mining activities were spent. The banking system remained in a rudimentary state, with no atms available and no possibility to pay by debit or credit card. The pandemic made it more difficult for diaspora Eritreans to remit money through Hawala systems, and many had to resort to official money transfer companies such as Western Union, increasing the cost of remittances. The use of cash remained under heavy restrictions and the maximum withdrawal allowed was 5,000 Nakfa (ern; $ 333) per month for families and businesspeople alike. Most Eritreans depended on diaspora remittances for their survival, especially in the urban areas where all economic activities had come to a complete halt.

In addition to the pandemic, parts of Eritrea were affected by natural disasters. In August, the coastal areas were hit by flooding, and agricultural areas around Bada were damaged. Minister of local government Woldenkiel Abraha toured the Northern Red Sea Region from 21 to 26 September and promised to alleviate social service shortages. Eritrea was also affected by locust invasions in different regions of the country, including Central Region (Ma’akel), but the government claimed to have brought the infestation under control by spraying large areas with pesticides.

The focus of the EU’s support for the Eritrean government shifted from the National Indicative Programme (nip) under the EU’s 11th edf to the European Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (etuf), which had been established in 2015 with the aim of curbing irregular migration by improving ‘migration management’ and socioeconomic conditions in refugee-producing countries. The EU allotted € 30 m for job creation in the agricultural sector, € 5 m to economic governance, and € 15 m to promote Eritrea’s culture and heritage. The bulk of the support, comprising € 125 m, was allocated to infrastructure development – more precisely, to the construction of new roads that were supposed to connect Eritrea and Ethiopia in the aftermath of the 2018 peace agreement. The EU Commission was fully aware that the national service had not been reformed and that those who were employed as construction workers were forcibly recruited members of the national service.

However, this decision came under scrutiny, and on 15 June the EU’s Parliament Committee on Development (deve) discussed development cooperation with Eritrea with the European Commission and Europe External Action Service (eeas). As a result, the Commission decided to stop funding road construction in Eritrea and declined a request by the Eritrean government for € 50 m for this purpose in addition to € 80 m which had already been allocated. Instead, the EU allocated € 19.7 m to apparently less controversial areas, including diaspora engagement in national development, enhancement of the efficiency of the judiciary administration – mainly in the field of crime prevention – and promotion of a dubious undp-managed programme with the purpose of promoting economic growth, jobs, and public finance management. undp Eritrea was known to be playing into the hands of the government. On the other hand, the World Bank did not resume its lending programme to Eritrea, officially due to repayment arrears.

The Covid-19 pandemic had an adverse impact on the living conditions of the people. unicef reported that throughout the year, almost 70,000 children under five were treated for acute malnutrition, up from 58,000 the year before. Among those affected, 17,800 children suffered from severe acute malnutrition and 51,500 from moderate acute malnutrition. Probably the true situation on the ground was even worse, because Eritreans were often prevented by security forces from leaving their homes in search of food or medical treatment under the pretext of the pandemic. The Global Hunger Index was unable to provide any data for Eritrea.

Schools were closed in April and did not reopen throughout the year, with no substitute educational programmes offered to students, who were forced to simply remain at home. Eritrea’s educational system had already suffered for many years from the outflow of educated teachers, and often, unqualified national service recruits have been obliged to teach large numbers of students without renumeration. Against this background, it could be assumed that the prolonged closure of schools would lead to a further drastic increase of illiteracy. As usual, the government did not publish any reliable statistical data.

The only exception was the Ministry of Health (MoH): it regularly published Covid-19-related data on the Ministry of Information’s website shabait.com, which is predominantly addressed to diaspora Eritreans. According to the ministry, Eritrea was hardly affected by the pandemic, with only 1,320 cases and three deaths by the end of the year; yet there was no public discussion of the consequences of the unlimited severe lockdown. It was unclear if the numbers presented by the MoH were reliable and reflected the reality on the ground. The Sawa military camp, which hosts thousands of national service recruits who are forced to live in extremely crowded conditions, did not put in place any measures to protect their health. When Jack Ma, the head of the Alibaba Group, donated large quantities of Covid-related supplies such as face masks and test kits to African countries, Eritrea did not accept this support, refusing landing permission to the plane carrying the supplies. No explanation was given by the government. It seemed that the political leadership relied on diaspora donations to curb the pandemic, but no information was made available as to how much money was collected, nor was there any transparency about how the funds were used.

The Bisha Zinc Polymetallic Mine, which had been operated by enamco in collaboration with Canadian Nevsun since 2011, was now run as a joint venture with Chinese Zijin Mining, and no information was published about the impact of the pandemic on mining activities or financial revenues generated by the mine. The Colluli Potash Mine in the Southern Red Sea Region did not commence production. Australian-owned Danakali was supposed to run the mine in a joint venture with enamco and issued a statement in July, stating that it had received the necessary licences from the government but that progress in construction had been slowed down by the pandemic. Eritrea’s hdi rank was 182nd out of 189 countries, and the last available information about Eritrea’s total debt was from 2019, indicating that it stood at 248.9% of gdp. The radical lockdown had an adverse impact on the ailing economy, but the government showed no signs of preoccupation with the wellbeing or even the mere survival of the population.