On March 8th, International Women’s Day, we remember Aster Yohannes, Aster Fessehasion, Senait Debesay, and Miriam Hagos, four courageous Eritrean women who have been imprisoned for over 23 years. They are mothers, sisters, and former freedom fighters who once sacrificed for Eritrea’s independence, only to be betrayed by the very nation they helped liberate. Instead of recognition, they have faced enforced disappearance, indefinite detention, and unimaginable suffering. Today, we honour their resilience and demand justice. They fought for freedom, now we must fight for theirs.
Violations of women’s rights in Eritrea are widespread and persistent. The country has a long history of systemic repression, gender-based violence, and the denial of fundamental freedoms for women. Although Eritrea ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1995, the government has shown no political will or commitment to uphold international standards on women’s rights. Instead of honouring the treaty they signed, state authorities systematically violate the very principles enshrined in it.
Lack of Political and Civil Rights
Women, like all Eritreans, are denied basic freedoms, including freedom of speech, press, and assembly. Independent civil society organisations and women’s rights groups are banned, making advocacy for Women’s Rights nearly impossible.
While women’s organisations exist, they are government-controlled vehicles for propaganda. Women are forced to participate in numerous meetings of state-sponsored groups, such as the National Union of Eritrean Women (NUEW) and National Union of Eritrean Youth and Students (NUEYS), primarily for indoctrination rather than empowerment. They must also pay mandatory monthly fees, which take away from their time, resources, and family needs.
The Eritrean government claims that women enjoy political rights, including the right to vote and stand for election. Yet, with no parliamentary elections since independence, these rights are meaningless.
Though official reports insist that Eritrean women have the right to association and assembly, the reality is that no citizens of Eritrea enjoy such freedoms. In fact, in Eritrea, a gathering of more than seven people is a punishable crime.
The government does not tolerate any form of opposition and has arrested women who assembled to vent their frustration with the process of land allocation. For instance, women who were going to the offices of the President and the Ministry of Local Government to file their complaint regarding the issue of land reallocation were blocked by the security forces of the country and arrested. Public demonstrations are usually rapidly and brutally broken up by troops, sometimes with live-ammunition gunfire (as in the case of the demonstrations against the closure of the Al Diaa Islamic School in October 2017).
Equality before the Law and Access to Justice
No woman in Eritrea has any guarantee of receiving justice from the state or its agents. There are very clear reasons why this is the case. Firstly, a large proportion of arrests in the country are carried out without warrant or charge, and the accused are never brought to court. Female detainees like their male counterparts languish in prison for years without knowing exactly what they are accused of, and without their cases ever being heard in a court of law.
Secondly, the Eritrean judicial system is not independent of the executive; the appointment of judges is within the powers of the government, and the executive can decide that any case it wishes should be heard by a special court, convened and run by the state authorities and military commanders.
Access to justice is both haphazard and never guaranteed. Within such a “rigged” system, run by an unelected government made up almost entirely of men, how can any woman be assured of “legal equality” with men, no matter how loudly this may be asserted by those in power?
Female Education, School Retention Rates, and Economic Opportunities
Girls inevitably face barriers to education due to poverty, traditional gender roles, and forced conscription. Especially in the rural and Muslim regions, young women tend to quit education because they see no future in it, since they will only end up in national service, with the final year of secondary school is delivered at the Sawa military camp. Without completing their education, women have fewer economic opportunities and are often relegated to informal or low-paying jobs.
In Eritrea, all Grade 11 students in the education system are sent to the Sawa Military Training Centre to complete their final year of secondary education, where they also sit their national school leaving exams. For young girls and women, particularly, Sawa is a very difficult place to live, with inadequate sanitary facilities. Young women in the camp do not have the chance to bath regularly, even during their menstrual cycles.
Many Grade 11 students are below the age of 18, so they are in effect children entering military training, and can be classified as child soldiers conscripted illegally, in violation of the Convention of the Rights of the Child. Their education includes military instruction, which they cannot avoid, as it is necessary to complete this last year to sit their final exams. Therefore, education and militarisation are inextricably intertwined for Eritrean girls.
Compulsory and Indefinite National Service for Women
Eritrea uses the ‘threat’ of war from Ethiopia as a justification for national conscription. Women are forced into national service, where they are separated from their male counterparts outside the military, with no provision made for the most basic survival needs for themselves or their children. Eritrean women, subjected to compulsory national service, find it often turns into indefinite forced labour.
Many female conscripts face sexual violence, harassment, and exploitation by military officials. Women conscripts are not treated as equals with the male soldiers, but used as sex objects by the military officers and made to work as housemaids and slaves.
They are subjected to abuses and sexual harassment by officers in training camps, prisons and the army. Refusal to meet the demands of the officers usually results in torture and reassignment to places with extremely hostile living and working conditions. Sexual violence, including rape, is widespread, particularly in military training camps and detention centres. Many victims of rape in the military contract sexual transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS, and end up as single mothers.
In many ethnic groups, the recruitment of women into the military is traditionally not accepted. Women who are recruited are shunned as unsuitable to be wives and mothers. Paradoxically, childbirth is the only release from national service.
Completion of national service is a requirement for marriage. Municipalities and. priests have been given instructions not to permit any marriage unless the couple can produce certificates of national service.
Of course, those performing their national service duties can get married. However, if the women get pregnant, they are not released from national service until they are close to the delivery time. After childbirth, while waiting to be demobilized, young mothers usually struggle, as there is no government assistance, and they are not allowed to work.
Forced Labour and Child Labour
Underage children (under 18) including girls are conscripted into the indefinite national service. The forced conscription is a thinly veiled practice of forced labour and slavery. All citizens (both female and male) who are required to undertake military service are frequently forced to perform non-military work, which is essentially enforced labour, often in government owned farms, factories, industries and mining.
Young women conscripted into national service have no choice regarding the work they are assigned to, are treated and abused in ways that violate international labour standards, and are paid a pittance on which no one could survive. They have no right to leave and no end date for their enforced labour.
Eritrea was among the ten countries with highest prevalence of modern slavery in the 2018 Global Slavery Index and remained in the list of countries with the highest prevalence in 2023.
The “Walk Free” Report on Modern Slavery (2023) asserted that Eritrea had the world’s second highest prevalence of modern slavery (9 percent of the population), representing an estimated 320,000 people. A significant proportion of those subjected to enforced labour are young women.
Freedom of Religion and Belief
In Eritrea, there is no true freedom of religion or belief. Jehovah’s Witnesses and Pentecostals are not allowed to practice their faith freely. Leaders of these faiths have been detained for more than a decade, and an unknown number (certainly in the hundreds) oof women remain imprisoned because of their faith. Both Muslims and Christians are experiencing a dangerous erosion of religious freedom. Women of faith involved in healthcare, such as nuns running health clinics, or in education, such as teachers or assistants in Muslim schools, can suddenly find their workplaces forcibly requisitioned by the government and their employment terminated without justification or explanation.
In 2017, 33 Eritrean women were held in an infamous island prison in the Red Sea. They had been detained in a series of raids by the Eritrean military targeting members of non-sanctioned churches. These women were imprisoned in Nakura, a notoriously harsh prison facility in the Dahlak Archipelago. At least 170 Christians were arrested in these raids across Asmara and seven other towns. Many of those detained were reported to be young mothers whose husbands were either military conscripts or struggling to survive elsewhere. Consequently, their arrests left 50 children without parental care. There is no indication that the treatment of women and mothers has improved since 2017.
In Spring 2023, 108 students, many of them young women, from the officially recognised Evangelical Lutheran church, who were attempting to upload recordings of faith songs onto YouTube were all arrested and taken to the harsh Mai Serwa prison, where they were detained for months. Fifteen remain imprisoned nearly two years later. It is utterly unclear what regulation they might have violated, making their arrests entirely arbitrary.
Arbitrary Detention and Prison Conditions for Women
Women who oppose government policies, face persecution for their religious beliefs, or attempt to flee the country are subjected to imprisonment and torture. The Eritrean government claims that it ensures “humane treatment for all detainees,” including women. However, in reality, many women languish in the country’s 360 prisons, denied contact with their families and held indefinitely without trial or any opportunity to prove their innocence.
Among the official justifications for imprisonment are charges such as “failure to complete national service” and “absconding from the military.” Some women are detained simply for resisting the sexual advances of military officers. In such cases, their documented offense is “disobeying a direct order.”
Prison conditions are appalling. Cells hold between 70 and 150 detainees, and many prisoners are confined in metal shipping containers or underground cells where temperatures become unbearable. Hygiene standards are dire, and severe malnutrition is widespread. Many women prisoners do not receive proper medical care, and countless women die due to the harsh conditions.
Ciham Ali Abdu has been imprisoned for 11 years since her arrest at the age of 15. Born in Los Angeles in 1997, she was raised in Eritrea with her parents. Her father, Ali Abdu Ahmed, served as a government official under President Isaias Afewerki but fled to Australia in 2012 after a rift with the president. Shortly afterward, on December 8, 2012, Ciham was arrested while attempting to flee the country for her own safety. She has never been charged with any crime and has not been seen since. Her case is an enforced disappearance, in which authorities detain an individual and then refuse to acknowledge their imprisonment or disclose their whereabouts, a crime under international law.
Freedom of Movement
Under the Eritrean Transitional Civil Code, the government claims that all women in Eritrea “enjoy equality before the law” regarding the right to domicile and freedom of movement. In reality, no woman in Eritrea has true freedom of movement—they cannot freely leave the country or travel within it.
Anyone caught traveling without a menqasaqesi (travel permit) faces detention, sometimes indefinitely. The borders remain closed, and women attempting to cross them are frequently shot at, wounded, or even killed.
Obtaining an Exit Visa—even for study or medical treatment—is an extreme rarity. To secure one, women often have to pay large bribes, provide sexual favours to corrupt officials, or rely on a close relative within immigration authorities to obtain the document through illicit means.
Asylum-Seeking Women returned from other Countries
Forced conscription and endless military service have caused a mass exodus of the youth. Eritreans are fleeing Eritrea daily in their hundreds to escape the unprecedented oppression.
However, it is not only the men who attempt to leave the country who are imprisoned, tortured, and executed. Their wives and sisters and mothers and daughters are all treated as equally guilty facing both physical and financial punishment.
Women are imprisoned, sometimes with their children, for allegedly attempting to escape or for the actions of their husbands, sons, or daughters, such as failure to report to military units or escape attempts.
Those who try to flee face torture and imprisonment. Tragically, women who seek asylum in other countries if forcibly returned to Eritrea, despite credible evidence that they will almost certainly face imprisonment and torture upon their return.
Gender-Based Violence and Domestic Violence
Domestic violence remains largely unaddressed in Eritrea, as there are no specific laws criminalizing it. The government has yet to implement a comprehensive approach to tackling domestic violence. The Draft Penal Code does not establish a legal framework to outlaw domestic violence, favouring awareness-raising campaigns instead.
In Eritrea, very few women report domestic violence due to a combination of factors, including the lack of specific laws criminalizing it, fear of retaliation from abusers, social stigma, and cultural norms that treat it as a private matter. Additionally, women face a lack of trust in authorities, limited support services, and economic dependence on their abusers, all of which contribute to a pervasive silence around domestic violence and leave many women without recourse for justice or protection.
Child and forced marriages remain widespread, especially in rural areas. Early marriage increases the risk of physical and psychological abuse, as young girls are more vulnerable to violence from their husbands or extended family. Many girls marry to escape the burdens of indefinite national service and the threat of sexual harassment.
Marital rape is not considered a crime under Eritrean law. The Transitional Penal Code defines rape as occurring outside of marriage, although the Draft Penal Code introduces a slight change, recognizing rape between separated spouses living in different households.
However, when spouses live together, the law does not hold husbands criminally responsible for forcing their wives into sexual intercourse. This legal loophole exacerbates the risk of violence in the home and perpetuates impunity for marital rape.
Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)
Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is a deeply entrenched practice in Eritrea, with severe physical and psychological consequences. Despite being officially banned in 2007, FGM remains common, especially in rural areas, where girls who are not circumcised face social alienation. The practice is justified by beliefs in religious customs, virginity preservation, and deterring immorality. While initiatives by international NGOs and the government to eliminate FGM are ongoing, weak enforcement of the ban and strong social pressures continue to perpetuate the practice. FGM poses serious health risks, including trauma and complications during childbirth, highlighting the urgent need for more effective action to eradicate it.
Conclusion
As highlighted in this report, the systemic violations of women’s rights in Eritrea stem from the absence of the rule of law, allowing military and government officials to exploit and abuse women with impunity.
Women in Eritrea face abuse not only at the hands of military officers but also under the direct policies of the government. Gender-based violence is widespread and often sanctioned at the highest levels of authority. With no legal recourse available to victims and no accountability for perpetrators, the suffering of Eritrean women appears set to persist and even worsen unless immediate and decisive action is taken.
The international community has a moral and legal obligation to intervene, ensuring that the Eritrean government is held accountable for its actions. The protection of Eritrean girls and women from further violence, discrimination, and inhumane treatment must be a global priority. Concrete steps should be taken to bring justice to victims, prosecute offenders, and push for the establishment of a system that respects fundamental human rights.
The plight of Eritrean women cannot be ignored. The international community must act decisively to hold the Eritrean government accountable and support efforts to end gender-based violence and discrimination in the country.
Human Rights Concern – Eritrea (HRCE)
