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Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery

Poverty drives the unsuspecting poor into the hands of traffickers

Published reports & articles from 2000 to 2025                                            gvnet.com/humantrafficking/Eritrea.htm

Eritrea

Since independence from Ethiopia in 1993, Eritrea has faced the economic problems of a small, desperately poor country, accentuated by the recent implementation of restrictive economic policies.

Like the economies of many African nations, the economy is largely based on subsistence agriculture, with 80% of the population involved in farming and herding.

Eritrea's economic future depends upon its ability to master social problems such as illiteracy, unemployment, and low skills, and more importantly, on the government's willingness to support a true market economy.  [The World Factbook, U.S.C.I.A. 2009]

Description: Description: Description: Description: Eritrea

Eritrea is a source country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation. In connection with a national service program in which men aged 18 to 54 and women aged 18 to 47 provide military and non-military service, there have been repeated reports that some Eritreans in military service are used as laborers on some commanding officers’ personal properties, as well as in the construction and agricultural sectors. - U.S. State Dept Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2009   Check out a later country report here or a full TIP Report here

 

CAUTION:  The following links have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Eritrea.  Some of these links may lead to websites that present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even false.  No attempt has been made to validate their authenticity or to verify their content.

HOW TO USE THIS WEB-PAGE

Students

If you are looking for material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on this page and others to see which aspects of Human Trafficking are of particular interest to you.  Would you like to write about Forced-Labor?  Debt Bondage? Prostitution? Forced Begging? Child Soldiers? Sale of Organs? etc.  On the other hand, you might choose to include precursors of trafficking such as poverty and hunger. There is a lot to the subject of Trafficking.  Scan other countries as well.  Draw comparisons between activity in adjacent countries and/or regions.  Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper resources that are available on-line.

Teachers

Check out some of the Resources for Teachers attached to this website.

*** FEATURED ARTICLE ***

Eritrea 'like a giant prison', claims human rights group

Xan Rice in Nairobi, The Guardian, 16 April 2009

www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/16/eritrea-africa-human-rights-refugees

[accessed 4 February 2011]

Government's policies on torture, conscription and mass detention creating refugee crisis, Human Rights Watch says.   Eritrea is becoming a "giant prison" due to its government's policies of mass detention, torture and prolonged military conscription, according to a report published today .   Human Rights Watch (HRW) said state repression had made the tiny Red Sea state one of the highest producers of refugees in the world, with those fleeing risking death or collective punishment against their families.

There is no freedom of speech, worship or movement in Eritrea, while many adults are forced into national service at token wages until up to 55 years of age.

 

*** ARCHIVES ***

Freedom House Country Report

2020 Edition

freedomhouse.org/country/eritrea/freedom-world/2020

[accessed 23 July 2020]

G4. DO INDIVIDUALS ENJOY EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY AND FREEDOM FROM ECONOMIC EXPLOITATION?

Eritrea’s conscription system ties most able-bodied men and women—including those under 18 who are completing secondary school—to obligatory military service, which can also entail compulsory, unpaid labor for enterprises controlled by the political elite. National service is supposed to last 18 months but is open-ended in practice. UN human rights experts have described this system as enslavement. Following the peace deal with Ethiopia, the government announced a review of the national service system with a view to reducing the number of citizens in military uniform and boosting those engaged in development activities. However, no changes were announced by year’s end.

2020 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Eritrea

U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, 30 March 2021

www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/eritrea/

[accessed 6 June 2021]

PROHIBITION OF FORCED OR COMPULSORY LABOR

Forced labor occurred. Despite the 18-month legal limit on national service, the government did not demobilize many conscripts from the military or from civilian national service as scheduled and forced some to serve indefinitely in national service under threats of detention, torture, or punishment of their families. Persons performing national service could not resign, generally received no promotions, and could rarely leave the country legally because authorities denied them passports or exit visas. Those conscripted into national service performed standard patrols and border monitoring in addition to labor such as agricultural terracing, planting, road maintenance, hotel work, teaching, construction, and laying power lines, as well as many office jobs in government ministries, agencies, and state-owned enterprises. There were reports that some conscripts were additionally required to perform manual labor on national service projects unrelated to their assignment and for which they received no overtime payment. Plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed in Canada in 2014 alleged that, as conscripts in national service, they were required to work 72-hour weeks in a mine for between 11 and 17 years before fleeing the country.

PROHIBITION OF CHILD LABOR AND MINIMUM AGE FOR EMPLOYMENT

Children in rural areas commonly worked on family farms, fetched firewood or water, worked in illegal mines, and herded livestock. In urban areas children worked as street vendors. Children also worked in small-scale garages, bicycle repair shops, metal workshops, and tea and coffee shops. They also transported grain or other goods via donkey cart or bicycle. Child domestic service occurred, as did begging by children.

Migrants say suffered torture, were sold on way to Italy

Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (Italian news agency) ANSA, Rome, 29 August 2018

www.ansa.it/english/news/politics/2018/08/29/migrants-say-suffered-torture-were-sold_22b9efd1-ab71-454a-8a5e-0aa3b2858007.html

[accessed 3 September 2018]

Many of the Eritrean migrants rescued by coast guard ship Diciotti have said they suffered torture and were sold several times during their journeys to Italy, sources said Wednesday.

They reportedly suffered years of violence, while some were held underground in a warehouse, and sold two or three times, and 16 children who died after four or five months were born during the detention, they said.

Sisi, crack down on mass murder, torture in Sinai!

Seth J. Frantzman, Jerusalem Post, 22 June 2014

www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Sisi-crack-down-on-mass-murder-torture-in-Sinai-360204

[accessed 22 June 2014]

The accounts are so shocking, the more one reads the more one becomes numb. “The kidnappers would make me lie on my back and then they would get me to ring my family to ask them to pay the ransom they wanted,” 17-year-old Lamlam from Eritrea told the BBC in March last year. “As soon as one of my parents answered the phone, the men would melt flaming plastic over my back and inner thighs and I would scream and scream in pain.” Another man recalled, “They had about four of five of us tied up together and they would pour water on the floor and then electrocute the water so that all of us would get electrocuted at the same time.” He saw 20 people die. These stories are the tip of the iceberg of a torture and mass murder industry in the Sinai peninsula that is part of a network that spans across the Sahara and into Sudan, in which Beduin and Somali smugglers lure Africans into camps and torture them for ransoms of up to $30,000.

Back in 2011, a Physicians for Human Rights report found through interviews that 59 percent of the Africans traversing the Sinai Peninsula had been chained or locked up, 52% had suffered abuse and 44% had witnessed violence and murder. A survivor told Corriera Dela Serra that “many of the women have been ferociously and repeatedly raped by Beduin who kept them in captivity in Sinai.” A 33-year-old man named Temesghen told doctors, “they threatened us: ‘if you don’t pay we’re going to take your organs.’” People were chained up for over six months; they were kept inside water tankers, in the hot and boiling sun; the women among them raped everyday. And many of them were murdered.

Torture and rape alleged by Lampedusa asylum seekers

Big News Network, 9 November 2013

www.bignewsnetwork.com/index.php/sid/218287265

[accessed 11 Nov 2013]

Italian police have claimed that dozens of African migrants on a boat, which sank near Italy's coast in October with the loss of 366 lives, were raped and tortured before starting their journey.

People traffickers allegedly held a group of 130 migrants from Eritrea for ransom in a desert area in southwest Libya before allowing them to travel further, even after they had already paid for a boat journey.

Survivors from the boat-sinking said they had been forced by the traffickers to pay for their freedom and their onward journey to the Libyan coast and then onto a boat to Europe.

Eritrean women and girls were allegedly raped while men were tortured with various methods including electric shocks and beatings.

Eritrea rejects US Country Report on Human Trafficking

Embassy of Eritrea, Washington DC, 18 June 2009

www.ethiopianreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13627

[accessed 16 July 2013]

The Embassy of Eritrea finds the US State Department’s Human Trafficking Report on Eritrea to be subjective and inaccurate, not based on well defined evidentiary standards or fact, and therefore rejects its findings and conclusions.   Eritrea is a country whose citizens have been deliberately lured and victimized by certain quarters and as such, the ranking is meaningless as it seeks to punish the victim for crimes committed by others.

Due to the covert nature of the crime, accurate statistics on the nature and prevalence of human trafficking are difficult to calculate and many cases of human trafficking go undiscovered and unreported. Trafficking is often associated with organized crime; therefore, gaining access to traffickers and information about routes, key persons involved, and practices is severely limited, if not impossible. When such crimes are discovered and reported, the Government of Eritrea conducts full investigations and prosecutes perpetrators when apprehended.

US adds six African countries to trafficking blacklist

South African Press Association SAPA and Agence France-Presse AFP, Washington DC, June 16 2009

www.mg.co.za/article/2009-06-16-us-adds-six-african-countries-to-trafficking-blacklist

[accessed 4 February 2011]

The United States on Tuesday added six African countries to a blacklist of countries trafficking in people, and put US trading partner Malaysia back on the list.   Chad, Eritrea, Niger, Mauritania, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe were added to the list in the annual report, which analyzed efforts in 173 countries to fight trafficking in humans for forced labor, prostitution, military service and other reasons.

Eritrea showed no progress in prosecuting or punishing traffickers, while Swaziland showed no effort to do the same.

Rights & Wrongs: Barack Obama, Eritrea, Child Soldiers and More

Juliette Terzieff, WPR-World Politics Review, 01 May 2009

www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/3681/rights-and-wrongs-barack-obama-eritrea-child-soldiers-and-more

[partially accessed 4 February 2011 - access restricted]

ERITREAN AUTHORITIES ACCUSED OF MASS ABUSES: Eritrean authorities have turned the small country in northeast Africa into a prison for the country's 4 million residents, Human Rights Watch charged in a 95-page report (.pdf) released April 16.   According to the report, the Eritrean government has orchestrated a multiyear campaign characterized by serious human rights violations that include arbitrary arrests, torture, dismal detention conditions and prolonged military conscription. The government has placed rigid restrictions on a host of other social, political and religious rights, and dissent is not tolerated.   "Eritrea has become one of the most closed and repressive states in the world. Thousands of political prisoners are detained in prisons and underground cells; there is no independent civil society; all independent media outlets have been shut down," the report says.

Child Soldiers Global Report 2004 - Eritrea

Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, 2004

www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/4988065f2d.html

[accessed 14 August 2012]

CHILD RECRUITMENT AND DEPLOYMENT - In 2001 over 2,000 students were detained when they demanded reform of a mandatory summer work program. Two students had reportedly died from the harsh conditions on the program. In August 2003 over 200 students on the program were allegedly beaten for possessing bibles, and 57 of them detained in scorching conditions inside metal shipping containers without adequate food or medical care. Six students were reportedly still held in solitary confinement in underground cells in November 2003.

Two former child soldiers who fled Eritrea in 2002 said that they had been conscripted at the age of 15, that about 30 per cent of recruits at the Sawa camp were under 18, and that those fleeing military service faced torture, arbitrary detention and forced labour. Asylum-seekers forcibly returned from Malta in October 2002 were alleged to have been tortured and detained in secret on their arrival in Eritrea. At least one was reportedly shot dead.

The Protection Project - Eritrea

The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), The Johns Hopkins University

www.protectionproject.org/human_rights_reports/report_documents/eritrea.doc

[Last accessed 2009]

www.protectionproject.org/country-reports/

[accessed 13 February 2019]

A Human Rights Report on Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children

FORMS OF TRAFFICKING –- Most reported cases of trafficking in persons in Eritrea concern the buying and selling of children. There are credible reports that children between the ages of 14 and 18 have been used as soldiers,  and it is widely acknowledged that children fought during the war for independence from Ethiopia.  In addition, displaced women and children fleeing conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia have ended up in prostitution in Djibouti. Some of them have also been trafficked to wealthy Arab states to work as domestic servants

Human Rights Overview

Human Rights Watch

www.hrw.org/en/africa/eritrea

[accessed 4 February 2011]

*** EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE ***

2017 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor

Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor, and Human Trafficking, Bureau of International Labor Affairs, US Dept of Labor, 2018

www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/documents/ilab/ChildLaborReport_Book.pdf

[accessed 17 April 2019]

www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ILAB/child_labor_reports/tda2017/ChildLaborReportBook.pdf

[accessed 27 April 2020]

Note:: Also check out this country’s report in the more recent edition DOL Worst Forms of Child Labor

[page 397]

The Ministry of Education operates a national program, Maetot, under which children from grades 9-12 who may be younger than 18 years are required to engage in compulsory labor in public works projects during their summer holidays. (14; 11) Some children may be required to work on roads, dams, canals, and irrigation projects. (14)

Previous reports found that some students are forced to conduct agricultural activities on government-owned farms, in addition to their military training, and girls may be subject to forced domestic work in military training centers. (14) The uncertain length of service, inability to earn higher wages in the private sector, and notoriously harsh working conditions in the National Service provoked a significant number of youth, including unaccompanied minors, to flee Eritrea and may have also encouraged many to resort to the use of international smuggling or human trafficking networks. (12; 13; 17; 18; 19; 11; 20; 3) Adolescent children who attempted to leave Eritrea were sometimes detained or forced to undergo military training, despite being younger than the minimum age of 18 for compulsory military recruitment. (13; 11; 21; 3).

2017 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices

U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, 20 April 2018

www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2017/af/276997.htm

accessed 22 March 2019]

www.state.gov/reports/2017-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/eritrea/

accessed 26 June 2019]

PROHIBITION OF FORCED OR COMPULSORY LABOR

Forced labor occurred. Despite the 18-month legal limit on national service, the government did not demobilize many conscripts from the military as scheduled and forced some to serve indefinitely under threats of detention, torture, or punishment of their families. Persons performing national service could not resign or take other employment, generally received no promotions or salary increases, and could rarely leave the country legally because authorities denied them passports or exit visas.

PROHIBITION OF CHILD LABOR AND MINIMUM AGE FOR EMPLOYMENT

Children in rural areas commonly worked on family farms, fetched firewood or water, and herded livestock. In urban areas children worked as street vendors of cigarettes, newspapers, and chewing gum. Children also worked in small-scale garages, bicycle repair shops, metal workshops, and tea and coffee shops. They also transported grain or other goods via donkey cart or bicycle. Child domestic service occurred. Begging by children occurred.

Human Rights Reports » 2008 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices

U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, February 25, 2009

2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/af/119000.htm

[accessed 8 February 2020]

SECTION 6 WORKER RIGHTS – [c] The government required all men between the ages of 18 and 50 and women between the ages of 18 and 47 to participate in the national service program, which included military training and civilian work programs. Increasing reports indicate citizens were enlisted in the national service for many years below minimum-wage rates with no prospective end date. The government justifies its open-ended draft on the basis of the undemarcated border with Ethiopia. Some national service members were assigned to return to their civilian jobs while nominally kept in the military because their skills were deemed critical to the functioning of the government or the economy. These individuals continued to receive only their national service salary; the government required them to forfeit to the government any money they earned above and beyond that salary. Government employees generally were unable to leave their jobs or take new employment. Draft evaders often were used as laborers on government development projects.

The Department of Labor’s 2006 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor [PDF]

U.S. Dept of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs, 2007

www.dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/tda/tda2006/eritrea.pdf

[accessed 4 February 2011]

Note:: Also check out this country’s report in the more recent edition DOL Worst Forms of Child Labor

INCIDENCE AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - In Eritrea, children work on the street, in the agricultural sector, and as domestic servants.  Children living in rural areas often work in family businesses, including subsistence farming, and engage in such activities as fetching firewood and water, and herding livestock. Children are expected to work from about age 5 by looking after livestock and working in the fields. For children working in urban areas street vending is typical, however this is not widely prevalent. Many underage apprentices work in shops and workshops such as garages or metal workshops in towns.  Children are reportedly involved in prostitution. However, specific data on the commercial sexual exploitation of children in Eritrea is lacking. Although the law prohibits recruitment of children under 18 into the armed forces, concerns exist regarding the training and recruiting of children for military service.

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