The Prison Nation: How Eritrea Traps Its People in Endless Crisis

By. Daniel Herrera

DOI. 10.57912/31082815

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Eritrea faces one of the world’s most severe and least understood humanitarian crises, driven primarily by its system of mandatory indefinite military conscription. What is supposed to be mandatory military service for all citizens, man or woman, of 18 months, becomes in most cases a life sentence. Most soldiers were indefinitely conscripted to fight in the decades-long war with Ethiopia or the war in Tigray. The Tigray region, on the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea, was once ruled by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), an ethnic movement that governed Ethiopia in a ruling coalition until 2018. Eritrea fought the TPLF while they ruled Ethiopia. Now, alongside a new government in Ethiopia, Eritrea fights them in Tigray. Eritrea uses the violence of the TPLF and its previous conflict with Ethiopia as pretexts for sexual violence, mass killings, and looting. This violence, amounting to crimes against humanity, have only worsened Eritrean quality of life. Eritrea remains isolated on the world stage, as it has not attempted to establish ties with its neighbors, has few economic ties with other states, and has no reason to change- all crises that must be fixed for meaningful reform. To help Eritrean citizens, it must reverse course and begin cooperation with its neighbors. In doing so, and creating lasting agreements that will benefit Eritrea’s economy alongside new partners in East Africa and the continent as a whole, the state has the potential to stabilize after decades of conflict. 

Eritrea emerged as a state from decades of armed conflict. Born out of a 30-year war of independence with Ethiopia, the nation emerged in 1993, fought a border conflict once more in 1998, and has contributed to conflict, confrontation, and destabilizing violence in the region. Overlooking the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb Strait, Eritrea is strategically located in one of the world’s most important shipping lanes and geopolitical flashpoints. Amid perpetual conflict with Ethiopia and the TPLF, recent years have seen attempts to thaw conflict and promote stability in the region. The 2018 Eritrean-Ethiopian Joint Declaration of Peace was a concrete step to create stability and peace in a region that hasn’t seen it in decades. Such a peace agreement is the first of its kind and is unprecedented for both nations. Eritrea and Ethiopia once shared free trade and currency agreements, both ending permanently with the beginning of the 1998 war. Eritrea, led by Isaias Afwerki, followed a doctrine of fighting against Western influence while selectively engaging with global powers such as Russia, China, and the United Arab Emirates, which seek military or logistical bases near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Eritrea’s role in the Tigray conflict, in which it joined forces with Ethiopia against the TPLF, showed that it not only continues its hostility toward the TPLF but also seeks to reassert its influence in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea's embrace of perpetual conflict and violence has formed a unique military dictatorship, and has destabilized not only the nation itself, but its neighbors.

Eritrea’s geopolitical strategy today focuses on isolation, militarization, and opportunistic alliances that prioritize the regime’s survival over regional cooperation. Even though Eritrea is small, it leverages its strategic location on the Red Sea, a key route for international trade and energy transport, to assert its relevance in the region. However, its reputation for human rights violations and indefinite conscription has made it diplomatically isolated, with lingering sanctions and low foreign investment hurting economic recovery. While regional actors such as Ethiopia, Sudan, and Djibouti work toward stability, Eritrea’s confrontational approach risks further diplomatic isolation. However, even with Eritrea’s destabilizing presence in the Horn of Africa, the economic interests of global powers in the Red Sea corridor could provide Eritrea with leverage if it moves away from constant militarization and embraces engagement, a possibility currently unlikely in the near future.

Eritrea's crisis highlights a broader global trend: authoritarian regimes that thrive on isolation instead of reform. As Eritrea continues economic and political isolation, and as the world lets its human rights issues that external, involved actors could’ve addressed only worsen. Despite more than ten years of sanctions, reports from the United Nations Human Rights Council indicate that Eritrea's government has not significantly reduced forced conscription, improved press freedoms, or decreased arbitrary detentions. Instead, it has used isolation as a weapon, framing outside criticism as an attack on sovereignty to justify ongoing repression. This mirrors the endurance of other sanctioned regimes, such as North Korea and formerly Syria under Bashar al-Assad, which survive through controlling information, militarization, and pushing nationalist narratives. For Eritrea, ongoing punishment without chances for reintegration only deepens this cycle. Incentivizing decreased repression in exchange for entry into the global economy is a historically successful strategy. Vietnam’s accession into ASEAN and the WTO coincided with a decrease in political violence, increased internal stability, and a higher quality of life for Vietnam’s citizens. 

A new strategy should focus on opening Eritrea’s markets and decreasing repression through  cooperation and targeted agreements with neighboring states. Economic incentives, such as lifting sanctions in exchange for ending involuntary military service or signing similar agreements to the one reached in 2018 with Ethiopia, would guide Eritrea towards regional stability. Eritrea must make the choice to change. However, with the aid of African states, particularly an organization such as The Intergovernmental Authority on Development, Eritrea has multiple beneficial partners. IGAD, an eight-member organization based in East Africa, seeks, through cooperation and shared goals, to bring peace and stability to the region. The main initiative of IGAD, its Vision 2050, aims to transform East Africa into an “upper-middle economy and industrialized region,” by promoting cooperation in fields such as agriculture and manufacturing, sharing in economic and industrial development, and raising the quality of life for citizens of member states. Eritrea has the opportunity, if it takes the initiative to liberalize, to create a peaceful East Africa, take the lead in IGAD economic and development efforts, and strengthen its economy through increases in regional trade and social development. Member states should deepen economic ties with Eritrea in exchange for tangible demobilization and political reform. If not, it will continue to serve as a warning about how isolation maintains tyranny, rather than ending it and bringing peace and stability to the region, and providing a good life for its people.