[spider_facebook id=”4″] Whenever the Government of Isaias Afwerki is challenged to meet the demands of a UN-impaneled body, whether that is the Special Rapporteur or the Commission of Inquiry, it has a uniform reply: we are engaged with the UN via the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and we reject targeted mandates.
And, in that regard, it has accepted recommendations to join conventions on broad themes and then rejected or turned a deaf ear to specific calls applicable to it. For example, the Eritrean government has agreed to accede to treaties and conventions on human rights and torture; and covenants on civil and political rights, freedom of conscience and religion. But then, when its called upon to deal with its own specifics, it uses a combination of: denial (it didn’t happen); grudging acceptance (it sorta happened but we are fixing it); and, belligerence (whether it happened or not is none of your business.)
The government counts on the international institutions’ sheer exhaustion and/or institutionalized short memories. The case of the European Development Fund (National Indicative Program, or NIP) is a case in point. In 2015, as part of its targets for donating 200 Euros over 5 years, the European Union set a new baseline year (2015) for the Eritrean government to comply with the recommendations of the UPR, and then it said that it will leave it to the Eritrean Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Foreign Affairs to monitor themselves. Meanwhile, the United Nations has been recommending to the Government of Eritrea that it improve its human rights record, release or bring to court political prisoners, and improve Eritrea’s civil rights and civil liberties since 2003. And the UN is likely to publicize the Commission of Inquiry’s damning report on the government’s human rights record next month.
In other words, the government of Isaias Afwerki is where it has been for the past 15 years: between forces (NGOs, GOs, journalists, think tanks) who think that engagement results in improved behavior and those who think engagement is another word for appeasement and rewarding bad behavior. Here is one example of Eritrea in the middle of the UN and the EU: between forces of accountability, and forces of “reset”. The “engage”, “reset” camp has been pressing that button, with no results, for 15 years now:
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[tweetthis] How Eritrea Benefits From Institutionalized Short Memory [/tweetthis]
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