HRC 38 – Agenda Item 4 – Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Eritrea – HRC – Geneva

Date: 26 June 2018

Thank you, Mr President,

The International Fellowship for Reconciliation and Human Rights Concern – Eritrea thank the special rapporteur for her 5th report.

She has been a vital means of holding the Eritrean regime to account for its widespread human rights violations. Faced with 6 years’ refusal of any access or co-operation from the Eritrean government, and their endless denials of any wrong-doing, she has continued to present them with damning evidence of their own abuses, amplifying the calls for justice of countless unheard victims.

In the face of sustained criticism and attacks on her independence, it takes both courage and determination to repeatedly expose the catalogue of crimes which include deaths in custody, enforced disappearances, mass arrests and imprisonments, torture, indefinite national service, lack of freedom of expression and religion, shoot to kill at the borders, guilty by association and the desperate flow of refugees from their homeland.

She has called for justice and compassion for Eritrean refugees and stressed that impunity for the Eritrean regime must not be allowed to prevail.

Her voice carries the unquestionable conviction of truth in pointing out that there is still no constitution in Eritrea, no parliament where laws can be debated and enacted, and no independent judiciary system and no civil society.

When she reports no tangible improvements in human rights within Eritrea for over 6 years, the world can find no other voice of witness so credible or convincing. We at Human Rights Concern Eritrea can affirm without any reservations, “She speaks the truth for us all”.  

Nothing has changed, the Eritrean people are still suffering, and due to luck of progress, the mandate is as important as ever and we strongly urge for it to be renewed under item 4.

Thank you

Elizabeth Chyurm