Anti National Service Slavery Campaign Welcomes UN Findings

Stop National Service Slavery in Eritrea Campaign

The Stop National Service Slavery in Eritrea Campaign, welcomes the United Nations Special Rapporteur comments on the situation of human rights in Eritrea. Sheila B. Keetharuth,’s warning about persisting human rights violations in the Eritrea and particularly in the context of the Eritrean national service is something that the Campaign has been focusing on since its launch in January 2014.

Ms. Keetharuth said “National service dominates life in Eritrea entirely,” following her visit to Germany and Switzerland where she collected first-hand information on the situation in Eritrea. Her findings confirm the Campaigns biggest area of concern, that many children and young people are fleeing the country and ending up in precarious situations as victims of human trafficking in their attempt to escape the indefinite and abusive policy that has become a situation of modern day slavery rather than the national service it was intended to be at its inception.

Conscripts are recruited forcefully, often during ‘round-ups’ that indiscriminately target young people in a bid to capture ‘absconders’ and ‘potential absconders’. Once recruited conscripts are then held in military training centres against their will often engaged in forced heavy labour with payments amounting to less than $10 a month.

Speaking about the Special Rapporteur’s findings, Amanuel Ghebre, from the campaign, who was himself forced to serve for 3 years in the so called national service stated: ‘her findings are also confirmed by our experiences. we are in the middle of a six months campaign, to highlight the slavery that is carrying on unchallenged in Eritrea. Young people continue to flee the country across the borders into swelling refugee camps. This includes children who are also fleeing to avoid being conscripted, infact whole families have perished in their attempt to save their children from this scourge. The world shouldn’t let this continue, this is nothing more than the slavery we are supposed to have abolished hundreds of years ago.

The Campaigners, many former recruits themselves, also highlight that forced labour isn’t adding anything of value to the country’s developmental stride as corruption often means many recruits end up working for high ranking military officers and private firms in an economy dominated by the ruling party. Accordingly, nor is a demoralised national service army, defecting at a rate of 1,500 people a month able to meet Eritrea’s security concerns, often highlighted by the regime as a reason for maintaining such a large army.

The Campaigners urged the regime in Asmara to respect the Forced Labour Convention (1930) and the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention (1957) both ratified on 22 February 2000".

Eritrea is now one of the top refugee producing countries globally and nearly everyone of these refugees are young people fleeing the interminable national service, therefore Campaigners urge the world of the needs to address this as a matter of not just humanitarian concern, but also practical concern in terms of the ensuing refugee crisis’

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For further details please contact Feruz Kaissy (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

http://StopSlaveryInEritrea.com