![]() “Sawa” as a Recruitment ChannelĪfter the two years of deadly fighting between Ethiopia and Eritrea ended in 2000, Ethiopia rejected an international border demarcation decision, which gave the disputed territory of Badme to Eritrea. ![]() However, at time of writing, the government had not made any meaningful changes to national service or to its system of repression generally.īased on 73 interviews with former secondary school students and national service teachers who attended or taught in secondary school in Eritrea between 2014 and late 2018, and who have since fled Eritrea, as well as 18 interviews with Eritrean and international experts, this report examines how national service violates young people’s rights and restricts their access to quality secondary education. It should have encouraged the government to offer its youth real employment opportunities of their choosing afforded by peace and the possible economic development that an opening up of Eritrea can bring. The government has also justified linking education and mandatory military service in the last year of secondary school as a way to cultivate an ethic of hard work and nationalism, and, more recently, justified indefinite national service as a means of providing jobs for the country’s youth in the absence of a functional economy.īut the signing of a peace agreement with Ethiopia in July 2018 and the lifting of United Nations sanctions in October removed the government’s excuse for maintaining the national service system indefinitely. President Isaias has repeatedly defended this repressive system, which the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Eritrea has labeled “slavery-like,” by arguing that the country and population should remain on a “war-footing” because of the conflict with Ethiopia. Thousands, including unaccompanied children, take the perilous journey toward Europe. The system of conscription has driven thousands of young Eritreans each year into exile: an estimated 507,300 Eritreans live in exile out of an estimated population of around five million. At the same time, instead of developing a pool of well-trained, committed, career secondary school teachers who voluntarily choose to teach, the government has relied on national service conscripts who have little to no say in their assignment and no end in sight to their conscription. This indefinite national service has had a visible and lasting impact on the rights, freedom, and lives of Eritreans.īeginning in 2003, the Eritrean government has forced thousands of young people-male and female-each year to undergo military training before they completed secondary school, with many being conscripted directly from secondary school into national service. Human Rights Watch research finds that many Eritreans have spent their entire working lives at the service of the government in either a military or civilian capacity. ![]() Since the border war with Ethiopia in the late 1990s, Eritrea’s President Isaias Afewerki and the ruling People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) have used indefinite national service to control the Eritrean population. Former student, now aged 23, who eventually fled Eritrea after completing high school in late 2015 A lot of people think of fleeing the country, but then you see people being arrested and you think about waiting for a better moment. As a student, it’s difficult to live here. ![]()
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