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After mediation from Qatar, in June 2010, Eritrea withdrew
its troops from the Ras Doumeira area and Doumeira island,
which belonged to Djibouti. In 2010, the Eritrean Joint
Ethiopian Border Commission also had to abandon Ethiopia to
leave the Badme area occupied by the country. Both countries
continued to refuse to pay the mutual compensation the
Commission had imposed on them.
Throughout 2010, Eritrea sought to improve relations with
its neighboring countries, and also contacted the Arab
League in order to get the league to work for lifting UN
sanctions.
In March 2012, Ethiopia attacked a series of Eritrean
military deployments along the border between the two
countries. According to
Countryaah data,
Ethiopia declared recognition of training and support
Eritrea had provided Ethiopian rebels with.
The West's isolation of Eritrea has resulted in the
country increasingly working with China, which has invested
in a number of development projects in the country and in
2014 bought 60% of the Zara gold mine.
In September 2014, the UN Human Rights Council set up a
commission of inquiry to investigate the human rights
situation in Eritrea. Commission representatives were from
Ghana, Mauritius and Australia. The Commission issued a
report in June 2015. It has investigated a wide range of
human rights violations since the country's independence,
and found that there could be crimes against humanity. The
refugee flow continued out of Eritrea through 2015, but many
European countries closed their borders during the year,
justifying the rejection of especially Eritrean asylum
seekers with improving the situation in the country. Acc. By
the end of 2015, UNHCR had 474,000 Eritreans fled their
country, representing 12% of the population.
In September 2015, a joint venture company consisting of
the Canadian Sunridge Gold Corp and Eritrean National Mining
Corporation (ENAMCO) signed an agreement with the Ministry
of Energy and Miner on the extraction of gold, copper and
zinc.
The ambivalence in the presentation of the situation in
Eritrea was illustrated when the Danish Ministry of Justice
in autumn 2014 prepared a report on the situation in the
country. The first edition of the report noted that there
were improvements in tracking the human rights situation in
the country. However, this discourse ran counter to the
prominent discourse in the West and the report was therefore
rewritten to make it far more critical of the country.
To break international isolation, Eritrea signed
agreements with Saudi Arabia and the UAE in December 2015 to
support their war against Yemen. In turn, the two Arab
dictatorship states supported construction projects in
Eritrea.
In June 2016, new clashes between the Eritrean and
Ethiopian forces along the border came. Several hundred were
reported killed.
Thousands of Eritreans fled the country through 2016
despite a ban on leaving the country and a "shoot to kill"
policy along the Ethiopian border. In April, 11 new
conscripted and random passers-by were killed in Asmara as
they tried to escape from the truck they were on. The
primary reason for the desire for escape was the continued
mandatory military service, which for some people reached 20
years or more.
In June 2016, the UN submitted to the Commission on Human
Rights Investigation in Eritrea report. It concluded that
the authorities were responsible for crimes against humanity
committed since independence in 1991 including slavery,
disappearances, arbitrary detention, torture, rape and
murder. |
