• World Report 2012: Eritrea
    Eritrea marked 20 years of independence in 2011, but its citizens remain victimized by one of the world’s most repressive governments. They suffer arbitrary and indefinite detention; torture; inhumane conditions of confinement; restrictions on freedom of speech, movement, and belief; and indefinite conscription and forced labor in national service.
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Reports

  • Ten Long Years
    A Briefing on Eritrea’s Missing Political Prisoners
  • Service for Life
    State Repression and Indefinite Conscription in Eritrea
  • Policy Paralysis
    A Call for Action on HIV/AIDS-Related Human Rights Abuses Against Women and Girls in Africa

Eritrea

  • Sudan: End Mass Summary Deportations of Eritreans
    Oct 25, 2011
    The Sudanese authorities are increasingly deporting Eritreans to their country without allowing them to claim asylum, Human Rights Watch said today. On October 17, 2011, Sudan handed over 300 Eritreans to the Eritrean military without screening them for refugee status, drawing public condemnation from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
  • Eritrea: Free Political Prisoners 10 Years On
    Sep 22, 2011
    Ten years after President Isaias Afewerki of Eritrea ordered the detention of 21 senior government members and journalists who criticized him, his government should release the detainees or reveal their fate, a Human Rights Watch briefing paper says. Eritrea should also open its jails to international monitors.
  • Egypt: End Traffickers’ Abuse of Migrants
    Dec 9, 2010
    Egyptian authorities should rescue migrants held for ransom and abused by human traffickers in the Sinai desert. The government has neither prosecuted the traffickers nor closed down their detention sites.
  • From the Horn of Africa, a Ray of Hope
    Jul 21, 2010
    Ask people what they know about Somalia and most will probably start talking about pirates, terrorists and Black Hawk Down. Not many would think to mention democracy or free elections as well, but they should. Last month, Somaliland--an impoverished sliver of territory that has maintained de facto independence from Somalia since 1991--held elections that put the democratic pretenses of its neighbors in the Horn of Africa to shame.
  • Italy: Offer to Shelter Eritreans Detained, Abused by Libya
    Jul 8, 2010
    The Italian government should immediately offer to take into Italy at least 11 Eritreans it had previously forced back to Libya and who are now detained there and threatened with deportation back to Eritrea.
  • Libya: Do Not Deport Eritreans
    Jul 2, 2010
    Libyan authorities should immediately stop apparent efforts to deport a group of 245 Eritreans, some of whom have been severely beaten by guards.
  • Statement to the US House of Representatives on the Horn of Africa
    Jun 17, 2010
    Leslie Lefkow, senior researcher with Human Rights Watch's Africa Division, testifies before the US House of Representatives on human rights abuses in the Horn of Africa.
  • Libya: Don’t Send Eritreans Back to Risk of Torture
    Jan 15, 2010
    Libyan authorities are giving Eritrean officials access to Eritrean migrants, including many asylum seekers who are being detained in Libya, violating their right to seek asylum.
  • African Civil Society Urges African States Parties to the Rome Statute to Reaffirm Their Commitment to the ICC
    Jul 30, 2009
    Recognizing our obligation to help protect human rights and uphold the rule of law, we, the undersigned civil society organizations, appeal to African ICC States Parties to reaffirm their support for the ICC and their commitment to abide by their obligations under the Rome Statute, particularly in relation to the arrest and transfer of the President of Sudan to the ICC.
  • Eritrea: slender land, giant prison
    May 8, 2009
    Eritrea has avoided international attention in recent years in ways that may have protected the Red Sea country's rulers from proper scrutiny but benefit no one else. Even those who recall that the continent's youngest state gained its unlikely independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after a bloody thirty-year struggle may be shocked to hear that the optimistic nationalism of the 1990s has been dissolved under President Isaias Afewerki into a despairing void, causing thousands of Eritreans to flee the country that they fought so hard to establish.
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