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 ERITREA
Humanitarian Country Profile | | Background | Last update: March 2007 |
Before independence in 1993, Eritrea was part of a federation with Ethiopia from 1952, until it was formally annexed as a province by Ethiopia in 1962.
The annexation led to the formation of armed struggle movements, in favour of independence for Eritrea, culminating in the taking of Asmara, Eritrea's capital, in May 1991, by the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) after a series of military defeats.
Eritrea attained independence in 1993 but remains one of the poorest countries in the world, with an average annual per capita income of US$180, according to the World Bank.
At least 53 percent of its population lives below the poverty line of less than $1 per day and about one-third lives in extreme poverty, measured as less than 2,000 calories per day.
Relations between Eritrea and Ethiopia were stable until May 1998 when a border conflict escalated into a full-scale war, resulting in the death of tens of thousands of soldiers from both sides.
The 1998-2000 border conflict and the ensuing stalemate over border demarcation have hampered Eritrea's socio-economic development as significant human and economic resources are being diverted to military activities.
Eritrea is still grappling with the immediate needs of reconstruction, reintegrating returnees and restoring social services.
Most of the internally displaced people have returned to their homes but are still facing extreme socio-economic insecurity, while 70,000 live in camps. The 1998-2000 conflict with Ethiopia displaced more than one million farmers and had a severe impact on the country's infrastructure.
Peace and security
Conflict and displacement have characterised the Eritrean social and political landscape for 40 years, with the country experiencing the longest continuous war in Africa from 1960 to the 1990s.
The 30-year war of independence from Ethiopia claimed the lives of at least 60,000 Eritrean combatants.
After independence, Eritrea went to war with Yemen in 1995 over the Hanish islands in the Red Sea, which were eventually awarded to Yemen.
From 1998, a two-year border conflict emerged over the disputed Badme area between Eritrea and Ethiopia. The casualties have been estimated at between 70,000 and 100,000 people.
According to UNHCR's WRITENET Report, the two territorial wars are attributable to the history of the war of independence, which envisaged more land than was inherited by the EPLF.
The Ethiopia-Eritrea war ended in 2000 with the signing of a cessation of hostilities accord in Algiers. The deal included the deployment of a United Nations peace-keeping force - the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) in a 25km-wide Temporary Security Zone (TSZ) running the length of the border.
The two countries also agreed to form an independent boundary commission, comprising five lawyers appointed by both countries, whose decision on the demarcation of the disputed border would be final and binding.
The commission's ruling, in April 2002, awarded the border town of Badme, the source of the conflict, to Eritrea - a decision that Ethiopia said in November 2004 it would accept 'in principle'.
However, progress on demarcation has stalled, with the security situation dominated by residual tension between the two countries.
Frustrated at the lack of progress in resolving the dispute, Eritrea banned UNMEE flights over its territory in October 2005, forcing peacekeepers to scale back operations by more than half, and expelled the peacekeeping mission's foreign personnel and some relief agencies.
UNMEE's mandate runs until 31 July with (as of 31 December 2006) 2,285 military personnel, including 2,063 troops and 222 military observers; as well as 149 international civilians, 194 local civilians and 65 UN volunteers.
There have also been increasing army and militia movements and incursions into the TSZ. There were approximately two million landmines in the country, many dating from the 1998-2000 war, at the end of 2005. According to UNMEE, new landmines were planted on both sides of the Ethiopian-Eritrean border during the year.
National defence remains a top priority for the government at the moment, according to ICG with an increasing number of young people being drafted into the military.
IDPs/Refugees
The 30-year war in Eritrea, before independence, generated more than 500,000 refugees in Sudan and an additional 100,000 to 150,000 refugees and migrants to the Middle East, North America, Australia and Ethiopia.
At least one in four Eritreans left the country due to war-related factors, many of them in risky escapes across the sea or desert.
At the end of 2005 there were an estimated 116,746 Eritrean refugees in Sudan, representing roughly 23 percent of the original number who had sought refuge in the country.
The 1998-2000 war led to the flight of almost 90,000 Eritrean refugees to Sudan, the internal displacement of more than one million and the expulsion of Eritreans and Ethiopians of Eritrean ancestry and the departure to Ethiopia of tens of thousands of 'Ethiopians' who had resided in Eritrea for generations.
As of January 2006, at least 50,000 internally displaced persons, 70 percent women and children, were living in refugee-like situations, unable to return to their villages inside the TSZ.
Meanwhile, the return of 30,000 internally displaced to their villages has strained basic services.
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) will continue to provide humanitarian assistance to both camp-based and urban refugees, paying special attention to sexual and gender-based violence, and lobby for the adoption of national asylum legislation laws.
UNHCR also plans to strengthen the framework to establish refugee status and to help the government devise refugee regulations and national asylum legislation.
The agency will also focus on pursuing durable solutions for Somali refugees through voluntary repatriation to Somaliland and the self-declared autonomous state of Puntland and for Sudanese refugees to south Sudan.
Democracy and governance
After the EPLF took Asmara from Ethiopia in 1991, the UN supervised a referendum in April 1993 in which 99.8 percent of Eritreans voted in favour of independence.
President Isaias Afewerki, leader of the EPLF, who had ruled before independence, became president. In February 1994, the EPLF reformed as a political party, the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ).
Eritrea's first post-independence elections, scheduled for 1998 or 1997, were postponed indefinitely following the outbreak of hostilities with Ethiopia, consequently being rescheduled for December 2001.
However, during 2001 the likelihood of elections taking place diminished with President Afewerki assuming an increasingly authoritarian position.
Eritrea remains a one-party state where only the PFDJ is legal. According to HRW, the government has also failed to implement the 1997 constitution, drafted by a constitutional assembly and ratified by referendum that respects civil and political rights including guaranteeing multiparty politics.
There has also been increased clampdown on faith groups not willing to take part in the national conscription or carry arms, draft-evaders and army deserters due to the open-ended national army conscription; developments precipitated by the border war with Ethiopia and the great political and economic stresses this is causing.
National service of 18 months - six months of military service and 12 of development and military-related service - is obligatory for 28-40 year-olds. However, conscription has become open-ended and many who reported for service during the 1998-2000 border war still find themselves in the military.
In its quest to ensure effective defence of the country, the government has become increasingly less tolerant of conflicting views and more intrusive in individual and communal affairs.
Eritrea has also taken measures that have seriously and negatively affected the human rights of its citizens including the indefinite detention of PFDJ dissidents for criticising the non-implementation of the constitution and concentration of power in the office of the president, journalists, and others deemed threats to national security.
There are also almost no independent civil society organisations, only government-affiliated ones, according to WRITENET.
Eritrea has remained under de-facto emergency conditions for eight years accompanied by higher expenditure on defence. In Transparency International's 2005 Corruptions Perceptions Index, Eritrea was ranked 107 out of 159 countries surveyed.
Media
The Committee to Protect Journalists describes Eritrea as one of the world's leading jailer of journalists, with media watchdogs calling Eritrea one of world's abusers of press freedom.
At least 15 journalists, who had worked for local independent publications, remain in prison or otherwise deprived of their liberty, the victims of a ruthless crackdown on dissent in September 2001.
There has been increased government control over the media and there is no private media in Eritrea.
The Eritrean government also maintains a monopoly over access to information, controlling all media, including three newspapers, one published in Tigrinya (Hadas Eritrea), one in Arabic (Eritrea al-Hadisa), and one in English (Eritrea Profile); two magazines, one radio station, Dimtsi Hafash (Voice of the Masses radio); and one television station, EriTV.
In 2001, the government closed all private newspapers and magazines. Since then, the government has expelled the BBC correspondent in Eritrea, the sole remaining foreign journalist in the country. In addition, it has placed all internet cafes under supervision.
Economy
Eritrea seems to have paid a high price for its border dispute with Ethiopia, despite having registered remarkable economic growth in the first few years after independence, peaking at 7 percent in 1997.
The 2002-2003 drought raised the inflation rate to more than 20 percent before this was reduced to 12 percent in 2005 after a better harvest as well as price controls for essential commodities and the bulk importation of basic commodities by the state sector.
Economic growth stalled due to the government's increased control and management of the economy coupled with the costs of sustained mobilisation, both political and financial, after the border war, according to analysts.
In 2005, military spending was expected to consume about 17 percent of the national budget, a substantial amount compared with international standards, but still much lower than the 50 percent spent during the war in 2000, according to Eritrea's Minister for National Development, Woldai Futur.
Meanwhile, the government is in the process of considering policy reforms needed to join the list of countries that could benefit from debt relief under the Highly Indebted Poor Countries initiative.
Population
Eritrea has a population of about 4.4 million, with at least 69 percent living in rural areas.
The annual population growth rate is 3 percent while the median age is 17.4 years.
Although the recent Demographic and Health Survey indicated that the total fertility rate had declined from 6.1 lifetime births per woman in 1995 to 4.8 in 2002, the mean ideal family size is still high at 5.8.
The national or official languages spoken in Eritrea include English, Arabic and Tigrinya. Other languages spoken include Central Kanuri, Hadrami, Hausa, Qimant, Ta'izzi-Adeni, Afar, Hijazi, Bedawi, Bilen, Kunama, Nara and Saho among others.
The main religions are Islam and orthodox Christianity.
Development indicators
The Human Development Index for Eritrea is 0.454, ranking it 157 out of 177 countries with data, according to the UN Development Programme.
Per capita ross domestic product is US$977.
Life expectancy at birth is 54.3 years, with at least 27.6 percent of the population having a probability of not surviving past age 40.
At least 40 percent of the children younger than five are underweight for their age.
The combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment ratio is low at 53.1 percent.
At least 40 percent of the people are without access to an improved water source.
Education
Primary school enrolment increased from a gross 56.6 percent in 1996 to 65.5 percent in 2002, according to the World Bank.
At least 44 percent of girls and 52 percent of boys are in primary school with 44 percent of children completing a full course of primary education.
Only 18 percent of girls attend secondary school against 29 percent of boys.
The government requires that all students attend their final year of secondary school near the Sawa military training facility in the western part of the country.
Students who do not attend this final year of secondary school do not graduate and cannot sit for examinations to be eligible for advanced education.
The remote location of this boarding school, concerns about security, and societal attitudes restricting the free movement of girls has resulted in fewer girl students enrolling for their final year; however, women may earn an alternative secondary school certificate by attending night school after completing national service.
Only 1 percent of the qualifying population attends tertiary education.
The literacy rate for adults over 15 is 62.5 percent for both men and women; 70.9 percent for men and 54.8 for women. Half of school-age children, mostly girls, do not attend school.
Children
The situation of children and women remains very precarious despite the 2005 rains after five consecutive years of drought.
At least 10 percent of children younger than five are severely underweight while diarrhoeal diseases remain a major cause of under-five mortality.
The first case of polio since 1996 was reported in April 2005, prompting several immunisation campaigns, which reached 96 percent of the population, including 400,000 children.
The situation of 'no war, no peace' with neighbouring Ethiopia and almost five consecutive years of drought continue to hurt the survival and development of children in Eritrea.
Meanwhile, the Eritrean government has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child and agreed to the optional protocols forbidding the sale of children, child prostitution, child pornography and the use of child soldiers.
Health
Access to primary healthcare in Eritrea is difficult due to insecurity, poor infrastructure or long distances between medical centres. Supplies of essential drugs are inadequate, with available health-centres often having limited personnel.
Diarrhoea is a main cause of out-patient and in-patient morbidity among infants and children Nationwide, 54 percent do not have access to safe water.
Malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, with malnutrition, are responsible for 60 percent of out-patient hospital attendance and 40 percent of in-patient morbidity. These diseases were also responsible for at least 56 percent of all in-patient deaths in 2003.
Acute respiratory infections account for 17.3 percent of all out-patient and in-patient morbidity.
The prevalence of acute malnutrition in children under five was about 25 percent in Gash Barks, Anseba and parts of the Northern Red Sea while 42.6 percent of pregnant and lactating women were undernourished, with severe cases reaching 10 percent in the worst-hit areas, according to surveys conducted by the Ministry of Health in 2004.
However, Eritrea is on track towards achieving the fourth Millennium Development Goal, the reduction of child mortality, with infant mortality rates at 50 per 1,000 births in 2005 and under-five child mortality rates at 89 per 1,000 births.
There is a need to sustain immunisation programmes to control infectious diseases, strengthen therapeutic and supplementary feeding, and extend health outreach services to villages.
HIV/AIDS
The 1998-2000 border war between Eritrea and Ethiopia left a large mobile population of internally displaced person returnees or deportees, increasing the risk of HIV infection.
About 1,200 people, out of an estimated 59,000 people living with HIV, were receiving anti-retroviral treatment by 2005.
There are no laws or regulations protecting those who are infected and affected by HIV infection. The HIV prevalence rate for adults aged between 15 and 49 years is 2.4 percent, with young women in urban areas considered at greatest risk.
Moreover, the government has not yet established one coordinating authority outside the Ministry of Health, with the national response being the responsibility of several divisions in the Ministry of Health.
However, an association of people living with HIV has been set up by the government in an effort to address stigma and discrimination informally.
The main barriers to HIV prevention, treatment and care are the lack of skilled healthcare workers and limited resources after the United States Agency for International Development, Eritrea's one bilateral donor, pulled out in October 2005.
According to the UN AIDS Agency, UNAIDS, there is a need to scale up voluntary counselling and testing and prevention of mother-to-child transmission to include the rural areas and promote access to all.
Food security
At least two-thirds of the population, more than two million people, are unable to feed themselves.
Consecutive years of drought and crop failure, beginning in 2000, coupled with the effects of the 1998-2000 border war, have led to the depletion of foreign exchange resources, reducing Eritrea's capacity to import basic food items. This has led to steadily increasing prices of food and fuel.
The war also left parts of the countryside, especially in the TSZ, riddled with land mines, rendering some grain-producing areas of the western lowlands unsuitable for farming.
The threats to food security in Eritrea include internal displacement, some localised flooding, continued military mobilisation and lack of labour for agriculture.
Despite millions of people requiring food aid, Eritrea was not part of the UN's 2006 global humanitarian appeal because of the government's decision to reduce dependence on food aid. The government placed more emphasis on efforts towards sustainable, domestic-driven food security.
Gender issues
Maternal mortality in Eritrea is one of the highest in the world at 1,000 deaths per 100,000 live births with at least 70 percent of women giving birth at home.
Other maternal health risks include lack of adequate coverage for high-risk pregnancies and poor nutritional status. At least half of pregnant women are anaemic, according to UNICEF.
Female genital mutilation is also widespread, with 89 percent of women affected in 2002.
With the assistance of international development partners, a national campaign on safe motherhood has been launched and a training manual developed. Moreover, a national proposal is under way to establish an obstetric fistula clinic.
The modern contraceptive prevalence rate among married women is low at 5 percent.
Human rights
According to Amnesty International dozens of political prisoners have disappeared into jails run by the armed forces, including at least 13 journalists, of whom there has been no word for nearly five years.
Human rights officers were still denied access to the politically sensitive camp of Eritrean refugees and asylum-seekers close to the border in Ethiopia.
Meanwhile, the arbitrary detention of Eritreans practising religious faiths not recognised by the government continued, contrary to the human rights protections provided by the laws and constitution.
The government also arrested thousands of citizens for avoiding endless military conscription, attempting to flee the country, or on suspicion of not fully supporting government policies.
Political dissent is now totally suppressed, with the government arresting 11 leaders of the PFDJ in 2001 who were calling for the implementation of the 1997 constitution and democratic reform.
Since then, the Eritrean government has also arrested publishers, editors and reporters among others because of their alleged ties to the dissidents or for their perceived political views.
Prison conditions in Eritrea also raise serious human rights concerns, with many of those arrested held incommunicado in secret detention sites. Facilities are poor, overcrowded and prisoners are often housed in underground cells and shipping cargo containers.
In 2006, UN staff also accused Eritrea of harassing their colleagues in the form of detentions, expulsions and restriction of movement, saying the government's actions against the world body's employees were illegal under international law.
Eritrea is listed in the Freedom House list of the 'Worst of the worst: the world's most repressive societies 2006'.
Humanitarian needs
The Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) rate of 17 percent in children younger than five in certain areas of the country requires a multi-sectoral response, according to UNICEF.
The expulsion of relief organisations from the country has denied the needy population much-needed humanitarian aid in water, sanitation and small-scale agricultural support activities.
The delivery of humanitarian assistance has also been hindered by international political disputes and by government taxes imposed on aid.
Meanwhile, five years of consecutive drought, escalating global fuel prices, a deteriorating economy and the border stand-off continue to undermine the humanitarian situation in the country. |
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| Eritrea in figures | · Population: 4.4 million
· Pop. growth rate: 3%
· GDP per capita: US$977
· Pop. below poverty line: 53%
· Life expectancy: 54.3 years
· Infant mortality: 50:1,000
· Access to med. services: N/A
· HIV prevalence: 2.4%
· Access to clean water: 60%
· Access to electricity: N/A
· Literacy rate for population over 15: 62.5%
· Doctors/people: N/A
· Displaced people: 70,000
· Refugees: 116,000 in Sudan by end-2005
· Human Development Index: 0.454 (HDI 2006 Rank 157)
Sources: UNFPA, UNHCR, UNAIDS, World Bank, UNDP, WFP, WHO, Amnesty International, UNESCO |
| Basic facts | Capital: Asmara
Languages: English, Arabic, Tigrinya
Ethnic Groups: Central Kanuri, Hadrami Spoken Arabic, Hausa, Qimant, Sudanese Spoken Arabic , Ta'izzi-Adeni , Afar Arabic, Hijazi, Bedawi, Bilen, kunama, Nara, Saho, Tigré, Tigrigna
Religions: Islam, Orthodox Christianity, Roman Catholic, Protestant, traditional religions
Geography: Dominated by extension of Ethiopian north-south highlands with jagged mountains, descending in the east to a coastal desert plain, in the northwest to mountainous terrain and in the southwest to flat to rolling plains
Border countries: Ethiopia, Sudan, Djibouti
Natural resources: N/A
Agriculture products: sorghum, maize, wheat, barley, teff (form of grain), millet, beans, chickpeas
Sources: Ethnologue, UNFPA, UNHCR, UNAIDS, World Bank, UNDP, WFP, WHO, Amnesty International, UNESCO |
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