Eritrea has been high on the agenda of the United Nations Human Rights Council during its 29^th Session, which is currently on-going in Geneva, Switzerland, with the release of two important reports, namely those of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Eritrea and the report of the Commission of Inquiry on Eritrea.

“It is indeed high time that the international community accords intensified scrutiny to the human rights situation in Eritrea, with 5 000 fleeing the country on a monthly basis because of violations of their basic rights”, said Prof Frans Viljoen, Director of the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Eritrea, Sheila B. Keetharuth, emphasized that Eritrea and the international community should nurture a long-term human rights perspective in the country. She provided an update on the situation of human rights in Eritrea on 24 June 2015, during the 29th Session of the Human Rights Council. She called on the Eritrean Government and the international community to bear in mind that trading human rights for short-term political or economic gains would undermine the long-term enjoyment of all human rights by all in Eritrea.

In her third report, the Special Rapporteur focused on the issue of forced evictions and demolition of houses in different parts of Eritrea.  She also raises the plight of unaccompanied minors crossing the international borders and the Mediterranean Sea.  Ms Keetharuth ends the report with conclusions and recommendations to the Government of Eritrea and the international community, aimed at addressing the prevailing situation of human rights in Eritrea.

The Special Rapporteur called on the Government of Eritrea to put an immediate stop to the practice of forced evictions and demolition of houses by agreeing to a moratorium, to be maintained until the Government sets up an independent mechanism to assess the reasonableness and legality of any eviction, bearing in mind international human rights law and practice in this field. Approximately 800 houses were demolished in Asmara and in several other villages in the vicinity of Asmara, as well as in other towns, such as Adi Keyh. About 3,000 people were made homeless owing to the forced evictions and demolitions.  These figures represent conservative estimates collated from different sources, as no official statistics are available regarding the number of houses torn down, the number of people displaced, the number of people injured and the number of those who lost their lives during the evictions, more specifically in Adi Keyh.

The plight of unaccompanied Eritrean minors crossing international borders is becoming increasingly visible, revealing a population characterized by its heightened vulnerability. They manage the journey across the borders into neighbouring countries, and then through the desert and across the Mediterranean Sea. At risk of falling prey to many forms of abuse, including sexual, economic and criminal, these minors represent a group with special protection needs. The consequences of these death-defying journeys are too dire to bear and the impact on unaccompanied minors could be ever-lasting, leaving them scarred for life. Ms. Keetharuth called on the international community to develop detection and follow-up mechanisms to identify and protect unaccompanied migrant children.

The Commission of Inquiry on Eritrea (COIE) also presented its report to the UNHRC on 23 June 2015. After a year-long investigation, the COIE commissioners observed that they have seldom seen human rights violations of the scope and scale they documented currently in Eritrea.

The COIE found that systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations have been and are being committed with impunity in Eritrea under the authority of the Government. Some of these violations, namely torture and forced labour, may constitute crimes against humanity.  The COIE’s investigations identified specific patterns of systematic human rights violations, based on several factors.  They include the high frequency of occurrence of violations documented and corroborated, the number of victims and replication of the violation over a certain period of time, the type of rights violated and the systemic nature of these violations, indicating that they cannot be the result if random or isolated acts by the authorities.

The Centre for Human Rights welcomes these reports as important steps paving the way for accountability for human rights violations and restoration of the rule of law in Eritrea. Earlier this year, the Centre for Human Rights launched a report on the freedom of expression in Eritrea, and called on the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights to urge the African Union Assembly of Heads of State and Government to take more decisive actions in respect of Eritrea.