• Press release
    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.
  • Press release
    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.
  • Press release
    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.
  • Commentary
    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.
  • Press release
    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.
  • Press release
    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.
  • Written statement
    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.
  • Press release
    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.
  • Written statement
    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.
  • Commentary
    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.