The Embassy of the State of Eritrea has taken note of recent articles by Deutsche Welle (DW), “Eritrea: Key Player in the Geopolitical Gamble at the Horn,” and Foreign Policy Journal, “Eritrea Emerges as a Critical Strategic Player in the Horn of Africa’s Shifting Geopolitical Landscape.”

While both acknowledge Eritrea’s strategic importance, domestic stability and growing relevance in the Red Sea and Horn of Africa, they reproduce remarkably similar narratives that distort Eritrea’s history, minimize, and normalizes the implications of Ethiopia’s declared unlawful pursuit of “sovereign access” to the sea, portray Eritrea’s legitimate regional diplomacy as an anti-Ethiopian project, and employ politically loaded characterizations of Eritrea.

At the heart of current Eritrea-Ethiopia tensions is a fundamental question that should not be obscured: commercial access to a port is one matter; sovereignty over another country’s coastline or territory is entirely another.

Eritrea has no territorial claim against Ethiopia, demands no Ethiopian land or resources, and seeks no alteration of Ethiopia’s internationally recognized borders. Eritrea has never, in recorded history, opposed Ethiopia’s legitimate commercial use of regional ports through mutually negotiated arrangements. Landlocked countries throughout the world conduct international commerce through neighboring coastal states without acquiring sovereignty over their territory. In fact, commercial necessity creates opportunities for cooperation among countries; it does not create territorial entitlement.

Ethiopian official rhetoric concerning “sovereign access” to the Red Sea therefore cannot be sanitized as a simple dispute over maritime trade. Economic aspiration, demographic size or geographical disadvantage cannot be converted into sovereign entitlement, nor can they justify revising internationally recognized African boundaries. Any suggestion to the contrary constitutes a flagrant violation of international law and would establish a profoundly destabilizing precedent for the continent.

The historical framing employed in both articles is equally troubling. DW describes Eritrea as having “split” from Ethiopia, while Foreign Policy Journal asserts that Eritrean independence “stripped Addis Ababa of its direct coastal outlet.”  Such terminology reverses historical cause and effect and inadvertently lends legitimacy to contemporary territorial revisionism such as that by Ethiopian leaders.

The mere truth is that the Eritrean people are endowed with their own, separate, and rich history in the millennia prior to the advent of European colonialism to the African continent.  In this respect, Eritrea’s modern territorial boundaries, like those of virtually all African states, were consolidated during European colonial rule, with the Italian colony of Eritrea formally established in 1890. Eritrea subsequently passed through Italian colonial rule, and a ten-year British Military Administration, (BMA), in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War before being linked with Ethiopia under a bogus “Federal Arrangement” to mollify the “overriding” geopolitical interests of major powers and against the expressed will of the Eritrean people.

Moreover, Ethiopia unilaterally abrogated the “Federal Arrangement” ten years later and annexed Eritrea in 1962, precipitating the three decades of protracted armed struggle for independence.

In the internationally supervised referendum of 1993, 99.805 percent of Eritreans voted for independence, after which Eritrea was admitted to the United Nations. To portray this internationally recognized process as Ethiopia being “stripped” of a coastline is historically prejudicial and legally untenable.

Furthermore, the Eritrea-Ethiopia boundary is neither provisional nor unresolved. Following the 1998–2000 border war, both countries signed the Algiers Agreement and voluntarily submitted the “putative dispute” on some areas on the common boundary – specifically, “Badme and its environs” – to independent international arbitration.

The Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC) rendered its delimitation decision in April 2002 based on the “Colonial Treaties of 1900, 1902, 1910) and applicable international law”, further expressly stipulating, in accordance with other provisions of the Algiers Agreement, that the determination is final and binding.

The articles also attempt to interpret Eritrea’s relations with Egypt, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, and other partners primarily as an effort to construct a “counterweight” against Ethiopia.

This is an Ethiopia-centric and reductive interpretation of the legitimate foreign policy of a sovereign state. Eritrea is a Red Sea nation situated along one of the world’s most consequential maritime corridors. Its international relations naturally encompass maritime security, regional stability, trade, investment, transportation, and bilateral cooperation. Eritrea does not require an Ethiopia-centered explanation for every diplomatic relationship it maintains.

Equally problematic is the contradiction between acknowledging Eritrea’s remarkable stability while simultaneously disparaging that stability as merely “authoritarian.” The articles invoke terms such as “autocratic,” “repressive,” and “authoritarian,” speculate about institutional collapse after a future leadership transition and reproduce sweeping and pejorative comparisons with “North Korea”. Political labels and hypothetical succession scenarios are not substitutes for evidence or serious analysis. Eritrea’s political system must be examined within its historical experience, social fabric, national institutions, its people’s unity, and independent nation-building trajectory – not judged exclusively through predetermined ideological templates.

This contradiction is particularly striking because the articles themselves recognize Eritrea as comparatively peaceful, cohesive, and secure, strategically positioned along the Red Sea, and increasingly important to regional and international partners. These realities deserve examination on their own merits rather than being reframed as evidence of political deficiency.

The overall principle at stake extends far beyond Eritrea. Africa’s interstate order rests on respect for inherited international colonial boundaries, sovereign equality, and territorial integrity. If established borders can be reopened because one country is larger, landlocked, economically ambitious or considers another state’s territory strategically necessary, virtually no African boundary would remain immune from challenge.

Eritrea claims no territory belonging to another state and seeks peaceful, mutually beneficial relations with Ethiopia and all its neighbors. What is not open to negotiation is Eritrea’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Eritrea’s sovereignty is not a geopolitical bargaining chip. It is an internationally recognized legal right, and the same right upon which the security, sovereignty and territorial integrity of every African nation ultimately depend.

Embassy of the State of Eritrea
Washington, D.C.