Eritrea’s demand to cancel the mandate of the human rights monitoring course, Muhammad Babiker, has shed light on the continuous conflict between Asmara and the international human rights mechanisms that accuse her of politicization, intuitive and integrity.
Many Eritrean and international human rights organizations demand this type of oversight in light of the continued violations and the lack of improvement in the human rights record in the country.
The United Nations Human Rights Council session held between June and July 2025 witnessed the Eritrean delegation of the aforementioned council with a draft resolution to end Babiker’s work, which caused an international uproar, while the matter ended with the council’s rejection of the proposal and the extension of the mandate of the decision another year.
This report explains the backgrounds and details of this compound image, in a country placed by many international reports at the bottom of its lists regarding human rights standards.
How were the mechanisms concerned with human rights control in Eritrea acknowledged?
The approval of the state of the special course concerned with the human rights status in Eritrea was the end of the efforts to monitor this file, which began to pay attention to the need to take care of it early.
In 2003, a decision was issued by the African Committee for Human Rights and Peoples, calling for the release of a group of former officials and journalists who were arrested in 2001.
For years, the comprehensive periodic review represented one of the mechanisms that were also resorted to before the establishment of the mandate of the Special Rapporteur and the International Investigation Committee, as the United Nations Human Rights Council holds periodic sessions in which one of the countries exposes a report on the human rights conditions in it to the aforementioned council, while other countries make their recommendations, and the state’s commitment to international human rights treaties is evaluated.
Despite Eritrea’s participation in this review, international reports indicate that its commitment to applying the recommendations was very weak and was absent from serious follow -up, which lost this mechanism its effectiveness, which resorted to Eritrean civil forces in the diaspora to enhance their activities to highlight the continuous violations in their country.
In this context, Eritrean human rights organizations outside the country and in alliance with their international counterparts gathered the testimonies of survivors and fleeing to the diaspora. Based on these testimonies, the Eritrean situation was presented, both through documented and detailed reports, or through annual reports, communication with the media and representatives of the member states of the Human Rights Council and urge them to support the decisions calling for the creation of monitoring and investigation mechanisms.
During the twentieth session of the Human Rights Council in July 2012, the Council approved a project submitted by both Djibouti And Somalia کجريمة It demands the appointment of a special decision concerned Human rights In Eritrea, where the Council expressed in a statement issued at the time its strong condemnation, “continuing the widespread and methodological violations of human rights committed by the Eritrean authorities, severe restrictions on freedom of opinion and expression, and the compulsory recruitment of citizens for unspecified periods.”
This step threw the council to approve the formation of the Human Rights Investigation Committee in Eritrea in June 2014, whose mission was later until the same month of 2016, while the mandate of the special course was renewed periodically, and this was recently done on July 4, 2025 for one year.
What are the tasks of both the investigation committee and the special decision?
The tasks of the special course in monitoring the human rights situation in Eritrea and its evaluation are embodied by collecting information and meeting with witnesses outside the country, analyzing the patterns of methodological violations and providing detailed annual reports and oral updates before the Human Rights Council, including directing recommendations to the Eritrean government on addressing violations and the international community to pressure Asmara and to provide support and ensure accountability.
The formation of the Human Rights Investigation Committee in Eritrea in 2014 represented an important shift in the course of monitoring and evaluation to a comprehensive and in -depth investigation, collecting forensic evidence and identifying those responsible for violations.
According to the commission’s assignment statement, its mandate was to investigate all alleged violations of international human rights law in Eritrea, as stated in the reports of the Special Rapporteur, and the committee consisted of 3 commissioners, namely: Mike Smith (President), Sheila B. Kitharouth, and Victor Dankua.
According to the committee page on the UN Human Rights Council, these commissioners were not employees of the United Nations, and they worked as independent experts and did not receive wages for this work, which is considered by observers as an affirmation of their impartiality.
While the mandate of the committee was scheduled to continue one year until 2015, it later extended the summer of the following year, and the extension decision clarifies the commission of the committee to investigate the systematic, broad and grateful violations of human rights in Eritrea in order to ensure full accountability, including violations that may rise to the level Crimes against humanity.
A statement issued by Human Rights Watch indicates that the importance of extending the committee lies in ensuring its ability to collect the latest information and determine whether the violations documented constituted crimes against humanity.
Observers believe that the change in the mandate of the committee reveals its transformation from observation to work to prove the evidence of international criminal accountability, and that the volume of violations allocated in Eritrea and its nature may require a higher level of international legal audit.
What is the most prominent of the committee and the private decision?
The importance of the work of the special course from keeping the human rights file in Eritrea alive within the global human rights agenda through his continuous work in checking and documenting violations, building a database on Eritrea’s human rights record, and calling for accountability through his periodic reports submitted to the Human Rights Council in Geneva and the General Assembly in New York.
While the most prominent of what the committee has accomplished in issuing two wide decisions, the first (2015) concluded that the committee was found, based on widespread evidence, that “systematic, wide and grateful violations. For human rights I have been committed and committed in Eritrea under the authority of the government. “
The report was separated in a wide spectrum of violations, as the executions of the external judiciary included, enforced disappearance, detention in isolation from the outside world, arrest and arbitrary detention, and torture (including sexual torture), and severe restrictions on freedoms of expression, movement and privacy.
The report also clarified how the government has suppressed the primary promises of democracy and the rule of law, and established repressive regimes to control, silence and isolate individuals.
As for the other report issued in 2016, it concluded that there are “reasonable reasons to believe that Crimes against humanity It has been committed in Eritrea since 1991 ″, as he indicated the fingers of these violations to government officials, the ruling party, military and assistant leaders to the National Security Office (Intelligence).
For example, the report has aligned in talking about the non -limited national service program, which is subject to recruits for forced work for unlimited periods, often for years or contracts, with minimal wages and arbitrary penalties.
The committee found that this practice is similar to slavery in its effects, and that while this service is apparently classified by using defense goals, it is practically employed as a large -scale system of forced work and a tool for social and political control.
What is the position of Asmara from the committee and the private decision?
The repeated Eritrean claim to cancel the mandate of the special course in successive sessions of the Human Rights Council is a summary of the status of Asmara rejecting the international mechanisms that have been adopted to monitor the legal file in Eritrea, and the most important points on which the Eritrean government relies on its criticism of both the committee and the next:
- Accusing politicization and lack of integrity: Asmara is challenged on the legitimacy of the establishment of the two parties, and this is part of the American pressure on it, and a lengthy analysis published on the website of the Eritrean Ministry of Information goes until Washington It was behind the pressures that led to the adoption of decisions established for the state of the decision in 2012 and the committee in 2014, putting this within the “Continue Framework Hostile works Unjustified, “Asmara also questioned the integrity of some of the characters who played a pivotal role, whether in the committee or under the mandate of the special course.
- Intervention in the affairs of the country: Eritrean authorities see that the appointment of a special decision to monitor the human rights conditions in a country that must be with their approval, otherwise it is considered an intervention in its internal affairs and a violation of principles United Nations.
- Skepticism about the methodology of the two parties: Many Eritrean government data indicate criticism of how periodic reports and the two reports issued in 2015 and 2016 are prepared, accusing the two parties of lack of neutrality and objectivity And transparency And based on Eritrean certificates who live abroad and use these statements to achieve special goals such as obtaining political asylum, as well as ignoring counter -testimonies supporting the regime.
- Human Rights Integrity: Asmara considers that the Human Rights Council is used as a “platform for geopolitical maneuvers”, and that it violated “the standards of neutrality and acceptance” in establishing the mandate of the human rights course in Eritrea.
- Cleansing: Eritrea accuses the council of adopting the policy of double standards where allied countries are ignored to the West, while Eritrea is highlighted with the aim of “distorting the country’s reputation, isolating it and destabilizing its stability to achieve political goals,” according to the message of Eritrean Foreign Minister Othman Saleh to the President of the Human Rights Council Federico Veligas in August 2023.
- Ignoring improvement in human rights: Eritrean authorities criticize what they consider “to ignore the development efforts achieved in health, education and empowering women”, and consider that reports do not reflect the “complete image” of Eritrea.
Based on all of the above, Asmara rejects cooperation with the course, which was what happened with the committee previously, confirming its adherence to the comprehensive periodic review mechanism, considering it a less politicized and more respectable means of the country’s sovereignty.
What is the position of Eritrean and international jurists?
Through successive data annually, Eritrean human rights organizations in the diaspora confirmed their support for the UN effort to monitor the human rights situation in the country, and to achieve justice for the victims of continuous violations, and that due to the lack of local means of such fairness, it is necessary The international community Continue to work to end the impunity prevailing in the country.
In this context, the renewal of the mandate of the special course annually is supported by the support of these organizations as an indispensable mechanism to enhance the protection of human rights in the country, by monitoring the deteriorating situation in the country, highlighting the violations, providing a vital platform for hearing the voices of the victims, and providing the opportunity for Eritreans to find sustainable solutions that guarantee respect for their human rights.
International human rights organizations such as the international pardon and Human Rights Watch are also repeated to reject the name of cooperation with the special course, and the director of the Human Rights Watch office in Geneva Hillary Power rejects the Eritrean government’s argument that the lack of arrival in the country is nullifying his mandate, describing it as “the circular argument”, explaining that the government’s refusal to allow visits or cooperation with the mechanisms of the United Nations is what makes the continuation of the international scrutiny. Essential.
According to an article published by a responsible Horn of Africa In Human Rights Watch, Litchia Bader, Eritrea is one of a small few of the members United Nations You have never allowed the special decision to visit or other experts of its own procedures for its lands, as it believes that the Eritrean government is responsible for not making progress in the field of rights by preventing it from reaching Eritrea and refusing to deal with it and systematic ignorance of the recommendations of international and regional human rights mechanisms.
While the Eritrean government repeatedly demands the end of the mandate of the special course, Eritrean human rights organizations stand in full contrast, as it calls not only to extend it, but also to strengthen it in the absence of independent media and civil society within the country.