Eritrea Condemned on Indefinite National Service at UN Review

Eritrea Condemned on Indefinite National Service at UN Review

(Geneva 03-02-2014) Diplomats, gathered for the UN Universal Periodic Review, today identified the interminable National Service in Eritrea as a cause for grave concern.

Representatives of the Stop National Service Slavery in Eritrea Campaign were at the Geneva UN Headquarters, lobbying diplomats on the need to highlight the National Service, which has effectively become bondage of slavery on young Eritreans, as an issue of grave concern causing the Eritrean refugee crisis in the neighbouring countries and across the globe. Campaigners report that many Members noted the concern and made recommendations for ending the practice.

The Campaign welcomes the recommendations and calls for a continued pressure to be put on Eritrea to implement the recommendations, unlike in the previous Reviews where the regime ignored all similar recommendations and continued to subject the nation’s youth to the illegal and unjust practice that is driving an entire generation into exile, risking their lives at the hands of human traffickers.

The current form of the National Service in Eritrea violates the fundamental human rights of the conscripts and their families’ rights to Life, Liberty, Security of person, Economic Rights, Personal rights and Legal and Political rights. Those who resist conscription on the grounds of conscientious objection have been languishing in prisons incommunicado. Tens of thousands of young Eritreans have been fleeing the country to escape from the open-ended slavery-like forced labour and seek protection and livelihoods elsewhere.

This afternoon, the representative for Eritrea, Ambassador Tesfamichael Gerahtu, denied all charges of human rights violations in Eritrea and stated that National Service Recruits from rounds 1-14, i.e. those who were recruited prior to 2008, have in fact been demobilised. However the experience of many former recruits is such that no one is officially demobilized, but thousands have escaped into refugee camps in neighbouring countries.

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Notes

Stop National Service Slavery in Eritrea, was a campaign launched on the 1st of January 2014 with the following objectives:

• Highlight the toxic nature of Eritrea’s National Service, which has become indefinite in length, persecutory in the process of recruitment and retention and violates the basic rights of the conscripts.
• Highlight conscription to national service and fear of conscription as the push factors contributing to Eritrea’s refugee crisis.
• Call on the International community to recognise this slavery as an abject violation to the human rights of Eritreans and an affront to humanity at large.

Please contact Feruz Kaissy on: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or +44 (0) 7804 897 448