While some reports indicate a partial lessening of abuses in the region, most particularly a partial lifting of Ethiopia’s blockade, there is no way to assess this information without full access for human rights monitors throughout the Somali region.

Armed Ethiopian Intervention in Somalia

Please see related human rights concerns about Ethiopian violations of human rights and international humanitarian law addressed under Somalia above.

Renditions and Forcible Returns

In January and February 2007 Ethiopian forces in Somalia rendered at least 85 political prisoners to Ethiopia. Most had been arrested in Kenya when Kenya closed its border to people fleeing Somalia. Foreign nationals from some fourteen countries were released after some months and sent back to their countries of origin. In May the Ethiopian authorities acknowledged holding forty-one detainees in military custody, but authorities have still not
released their charges or their whereabouts. These detainees included Somalis who are Kenyan citizens, two conscripted Eritrean journalists, and alleged members of armed Ethiopian opposition groups. Detainees from Kenya and Somalia were reported to have been tortured or ill-treated in secret military places of detention in Addis Ababa.

Fifteen refugees forcibly returned to Ethiopia by Sudan in August 2007 were detained in Ethiopia, and five people from the Somali Region were forcibly returned to Ethiopia by Somaliland in October 2007 and their whereabouts are unknown.

Human Rights in Eritrea: freedom of expression, political prisoners, and military conscription One would be hard pressed to find a country in sub-Saharan Africa in which U.S. foreign policy currently has less impact than Eritrea, where the regime of President Issayas Afewerki maintains a stranglehold on basic human rights in perceived protection against multiple threats, domestic and regional, to his rule. International relations for Eritrea have not been improving–from the government of Eritrea’s conduct toward UNMEE to its support for Ethiopian and Somali opposition groups. And its human rights record remains abysmal, including persecution of Eritreans for their religious beliefs, arbitrary detention, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees, and forced conscription. The government, supported by remittances from the Eritrean diaspora, maintains its bellicosity on the Horn and its international isolation, with the ready excuse of the unenforced border commission ruling, and in retaliation for years of neglect by an international community biased against independence claims. No independent or private news outlets have been allowed since 2001, and university education is no longer
available in Eritrea.