The Youth of Eritrea Must save Eritrea and the People of Eritrea.
In the first part of July 2012 there will be a timely gathering of Eritrean youth from across the world in Ethiopia. We welcome this strategic initiative without any reservation.
In its last annual congress EGS has resoundingly affirmed its support for the Eritrean youth by stating:
“EGS-JHD will do everything possible to encourage the post- independence generation to find its own voice and nurture its own vision and leadership so that Eritrea’s future can be reassured. It considers this critical task as one of its prime guiding principles.”
EGS-JHD has incorporated this fundamental conviction as a prime guiding principle. We welcome the historic gathering as a launching pad with greater follow up possibilities. The very act of coming together will create its own demanding dynamics. Understanding, sorting out and wisely managing the dynamics, formulating a practical and non-expansive agenda and coming out with an all-inclusive coordinating leadership team is the collective duty of all participants.
The people of Eritrea, more specifically the youth inside the country, will be following the process of deliberation, the sense of purpose, level of commitment and practicality of the platform (decisions) that will emerge out of this first gathering. The temperament, tone and follow up agenda outlined by the convening will have more weight than the unavoidable and necessary arguments that is inherent in a gathering of this magnitude. We hope the youth will keep the need to project a unified, strong, positive and forward looking message to the people of Eritrea as the central responsibility of the meeting.
Please find ways to disagree without being disagreeable. Consider compromise, in the interest of the people, a commendable virtue. Share your individual expedience but do not consider it as the supreme criteria to judge others by. Raise diversity as a cardinal principle beyond intellectual understanding and integrate it in your deliberation, agenda formation, leadership team election. We ask you to be considerate of each other’s feeling and perspectives. Give equal weight to your process of deliberation as you do to the joint agenda you will have to formulate.
If we were to make a modest suggestion to the youth it will be this: the overriding focus should be to mobilize, empower and help the people of Eritrea to get rid of the harshest tyranny in Africa and transfer all- inclusive power to the people of Eritrea. All other agendas must be relegated or deferred to secondary consideration. Your message has to be practical, clear, simple, and easily digestible by our fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers at home.
Thank you for travelling thousands of miles to participate, share, dialogue and deliberate on what to do to bring an end to the rule of the authoritarian regime. Your commitment to your national duty is to be admired and applauded. The urgency puts a heavy sense of national responsibility on your youthful shoulder. EGS-JHD firmly believes that you will rise to the occasion and deliver.
We extend our sincerest appreciation to those who worked hard to make this gathering a possibility and for creating the opportunity for the Eritrean youth to define their own agenda, find their own voice and affirm vision and dream of Eritrea as a secure sovereign state with peace, justice, rule of law and democracy as the foundation of its free people.
We ask the youth to make sure this is not going to be the first and last meeting. Follow up meeting to carry through the decisions and agendas of the gathering must be finalized before departing from Addis Ababa. The youth must do everything possible to avoid the paralysis, inaction and show up and disperse experiences of other Eritrean conferences and meetings. Learn from the past and show us the future. The stage is yours. Define your vision, mission, action agenda, commitment and practicality. We are willing to be good followers and team players in the struggle for liberation of our people.
We encourage all Eritrean organizations to encourage and extend all possible moral and political support to the youth conference. Failing to do so or finding secondary excuses to cast doubt on this first conference will only complicate the effort of the youth. The Eritrean youths must be encouraged to find their own process.
