Articles

Sinéad O’Shea In the world’s most censored country, citizens face a stark choice – live in misery or risk death by leaving. But it has no western allies so the situation goes unreported   Horror has been expressed at the latest catastrophe in the Mediterranean. Little has been said, however, …

Europe can’t afford to sit back and do nothing when thousands of migrants are dying every week in search of a new life in Italy and Greece A vast human tragedy is unfolding along the shores of the Mediterranean, its horrors largely ignored by Britain’s inward-looking, election-fixated politicians and an …

Israel presented a stark choice before the 40,000 asylum seekers living in Tel Aviv: return to Africa or face prison. So far, they’re not leaving Two weeks ago, almost all Jews in Israel celebrated the first day of Passover by reading and singing the Hagada, the centuries-old text which tells …

Eritrea is one of the most repressive states in the world and the refugee camps offer little freedom or safety, but enslavement and abuse instead. Television journalist Temesghen Debesai had waited years for an opportunity to make his escape from Eritrea, so when the country’s ministry of information sent him …

Soon after independence efforts were made to differentiate between the civilian police and the military. We have all seen that with time all such pretence has been abandoned and we have all seen how uniform a civilian police can be easily interchanged for that of a soldier. Consequently it is …

Children and human rights  Many street children, who have no family, are taken into the military system even though they may be well below 18 years of age. That these children are then trained as soldiers, that they become hardened soldiers often used to carry out nefarious acts. In post …

By Ibrahim Osman Politicians …mostly have sweet tongue singing patriotic songs that pale their within. The deteriorating political environment within/without, the disarray outsmarted for long, the looming failed state and the hope to breakthrough moved stakeholders to seek ways forward past clever words. Thus initiatives mushroom for and against change …

Forced military service and rights abuses lead many Eritreans to take the treacherous boat journey to Europe. Fatma Naib   Khalid al-Amin  is one of the lucky ones who survived the treacherous journey. Last year on October 3, more than 300 Eritreans drowned when their boat sank off the Italian island …

Farai Sevenzo The Mediterranean is fast becoming a massive watery grave for Africans. Another 500 reportedly drowned off the coast of Italy the other week, while the attention span of the world quickly moves away. But who are these Africans willing to risk all to reach European shores where they …

Eritrea’s hard-won independence promised much for the future, but instead it brought repression, war, secrecy and international pariah status I recently read an extensive report prepared by the UN Monitoring group on Somalia and Eritrea (pdf), which said Eritrea was behind a terrorist plot in January against an African Union summit in the Ethiopian capital, Addis …