Eritrea accused of violating rights of ethnic Red Sea Afars

The Red Sea Afar Democratic Organization (RSADO) has accused the government of Eritrea of engaging in widespread and worsening human rights violations against the indigenous Red Sea Afar people in the Dankalia region. Briefing journalists on Wednesday in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, leaders of the organization said the government in Asmara has continued “its systematic and state-led human right violations including ethnic cleansing in the region.”

“For decades, the Red Sea Afar community has endured state-engineered repression, including mass displacement, targeted persecution, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and the systematic dispossession of their ancestral lands along the Red Sea coastline,” the chairman of the organisation Ibrahim Harun said during the briefing.

Harun said the African Centre on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) based in Banjul, Gambia has officially transmitted the communication to the government of Eritrea, ordering it to submit its response within sixty (60) days, pursuant to Rule 116(2) of the ACHPR rules of procedure.

He said RSADO welcomes and strongly commends ACHPR for its principled and legally grounded decision to seize and formally transmit Communication No. 868/25 against the State of Eritrea, concerning grave, systematic and long-standing human rights violations committed against the indigenous Red Sea Afar people.

“This decisive step marks a historic and long-overdue breakthrough in the Red Sea Afar People’s decade’s long struggle for justice, recognition, and accountability,” Abdishiek Mohammed, secretary of the organisation said.

Mohammed said the ACHPR Secretariat sends an unmistakable message across the continent namely that no state stands above the African Charter, and no regime however entrenched can indefinitely evade regional scrutiny and responsibility.

RSADO said it views this development as a critical recognition of the gravity and urgency of the Afar people’s suffering, and as an important step toward dismantling the culture of impunity that has shielded perpetrators for far too long.