Luwam M. Weldemichael

[Tinsae Mulatu @TinsaeMON]

@Habtishgreat The way you confidently typed out "Exclusive footage" for a video that happened thousands of miles away in South Asia is insane 💀. Google is completely free my boy. Stop embarrassing yourself and take this fan fiction down 😭

[Thomas Eritrea PFDJ 🇪🇷 🐪 🇪🇷 @Eritrea_Erey]

@hawelti Ethiopia lies 👇🏽

[yohannes ጆን @yohannestek13]

Eritrea responds! Eritrean troops are NOT in Tigray! For the past couple days, unverified claims have spread like wildfire, Ethiopian government misinformation is being used to justify Ethiopia’s irredentist ambitions toward Eritrean territory.

It is about time Eritrea’s Foreign Minister, Osman Saleh, has called on the UN to condemn Ethiopia’s war rhetoric and provocations. He stated: “Ethiopia’s deceitful attempts to rationalize its brazen acts of war against a sovereign UN member State in ‘self-defense’ terms is hollow in substance and constitutes an insult to the intelligence of the international community.”
Stop the misinformation. Respect Eritrea’s sovereignty. The international community must verify facts, reject misleading narratives, and act before dangerous rhetoric escalates into conflict.
We urge @Reuters, @BBCNews, @BBCAfrica, @BBCAmharic & @BBCTigrinya @Channel4News to verify their reporting and correct any reports using old 2023 footage as new evidence of Eritrean troops entering Tigray.

[Amb. Sophia Tesfamariam @AmbStesfamariam]

The Wrong Question: How Do You Solve a Problem Like #Ethiopia?
The Sound of Music was one of my favorite movies as a child. Like many films that stay with us long after childhood, it offered far more than entertainment. It carried lessons about courage, conscience, leadership, responsibility and resilience, and, perhaps most importantly, about questioning whether the problem we think we are trying to solve is actually the problem we should be addressing.

One scene comes to mind when I read the torrent of commentary surrounding #Ethiopia today. The nuns gather together and sing, “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” They are not really asking how to punish Maria. She is restless, unconventional and poorly suited to the role the institution has assigned to her. The deeper lesson is that perhaps the problem is not Maria at all, but the assumption that she must somehow be made to fit.

The international community is asking a familiar question today: How do you solve a problem like #Ethiopia? It was a question raised repeatedly in conversations on the margins of the recently concluded UN General Assembly High-Level Week. But perhaps the more useful question is whether we have been asking the wrong question for decades.

Perhaps #Ethiopia is not a problem to be “solved” through successive rounds of external intervention, strategic partnerships, security arrangements and political accommodation. Perhaps the harder question is whether the international community has spent decades managing the consequences of #Ethiopia’s internal political crises while avoiding more fundamental questions of accountability, sovereignty, international law and the political choices that produced them.

The problem is not #Ethiopia, nor the #Ethiopian people. It is a pattern of international engagement, indeed, a pattern of strategic accommodation, in which successive governments in Addis Ababa have been treated as strategically indispensable, while those same governments have repeatedly learned to turn that perceived importance into political capital. What has often been presented as pragmatic engagement may instead have helped perpetuate a cycle in which strategic utility becomes a substitute for accountability.

This is not a story of innocent #Ethiopian leaders manipulated by outside powers. Hardly. Successive governments have understood how to convert #Ethiopia’s size, location, population and military capacity into external political, military and financial support when doing so served their interests. Powerful external relationships have been cultivated and recalibrated as circumstances changed. The tragedy is that these bargains have too often been struck by political elites and pursued for political advantage, while ordinary #Ethiopians have borne much of the human and economic cost.

The history is uncomfortable. During the Cold War, #Ethiopia became an arena in which competing great-power interests intersected with the calculations of successive governments in Addis Ababa. #Ethiopian troops were deployed to fight in Korea alongside the United States and its allies. Later, #Ethiopia became a major security partner for Western powers in the post-9/11 environment. The TPLF-led government developed particularly close security relationships with Western governments, while the Prosperity Party has likewise cultivated external relationships around security, economic reform and regional diplomacy.

The governments were profoundly different and should not be conflated. Haile Selassie, the Derg, the TPLF-led government and the Prosperity Party emerged from different political circumstances and pursued different policies. Yet there was a recurring structural feature: #Ethiopia’s perceived strategic importance created incentives for external powers to preserve relationships with the government of the day, even when doing so complicated the pursuit of accountability.

That is the deeper problem. When a government is regarded as indispensable to regional security, counterterrorism, migration management, economic interests or geopolitical competition, political, military and financial support can continue despite credible concerns about repression, human rights violations or conduct toward neighboring States. Strategic cooperation can then become a political shield. Principles proclaimed as universal begin to look negotiable when enforcing them against a strategically useful government carries a geopolitical cost.

The result is not merely inconsistency. It can create a cycle in which outside powers repeatedly manage the consequences of policies they have helped enable rather than confronting the choices that produced those consequences.

For the people of the Horn, this is not an abstract academic problem. Conflict, displacement, destroyed livelihoods and political violence have repeatedly exacted a terrible human cost inside #Ethiopia and across its borders. #Eritreans, Sudanese, Somalis and others have lived with the consequences of decisions made in Addis Ababa as well as decisions made in distant foreign capitals. This is why the present moment should be understood through a wider historical lens.

#Ethiopia again faces serious internal political and security challenges. Armed confrontations, political fragmentation and humanitarian pressures are unfolding simultaneously. Its relationship with several neighbors has also become increasingly strained. Yet there is a familiar danger: that international actors once again treat the government in Addis Ababa as the “indispensable party” whose concerns must be accommodated, rather than asking whether its own political choices are contributing to the instability it claims to be confronting.

For people across the #Horn, the pattern is familiar: crisis, international concern, diplomatic engagement, strategic accommodation, external assistance, temporary stabilization, and renewed crisis. At some point, the question must shift from how to manage the latest #Ethiopian crisis to why the same cycle keeps recurring.

That is not an argument for abandoning #Ethiopia. The #Ethiopian people deserve humanitarian assistance, development, constructive diplomacy and peace. But support for a people should never become immunity for a government. Strategic partnership should never become diplomatic indulgence. Geopolitical importance should never become a license to disregard international law or the sovereignty of neighboring States.

That principle is particularly relevant to the increasingly prominent discourse surrounding #Eritrea and the Red Sea. #Ethiopia’s interests can be pursued through negotiated commercial arrangements, infrastructure investment, port agreements, transit corridors and mutually beneficial regional integration. #Ethiopia is not without regional options. There is nothing in international law that transforms being landlocked into a right to the territory, ports or sovereign maritime assets of another State. Nor does strategic dependence on a particular corridor create unilateral entitlement to that corridor.

The legal principle is straightforward. The United Nations Charter rests on sovereign equality, territorial integrity, political independence and the prohibition of the threat or use of force. These are not diplomatic decorations to be displayed when convenient. They are foundational principles of the international order. A State cannot acquire rights over another State’s territory because it considers access strategically important. Nor can regional integration credibly be built by challenging the sovereignty of the neighbors with whom integration is supposedly to be achieved.

The more fundamental question for international actors, therefore, should be why #Ethiopia’s quest for maritime access is increasingly being presented as though it necessarily requires an extraordinary political solution. The solution to a geographical constraint is cooperation, not the creation of a new sovereign entitlement.

The same discipline should apply to the increasingly persistent effort in some quarters to construct an “#Ethiopia–#Eritrea crisis.” Nomenclature is not evidence. Calling something a crisis does not establish that a crisis exists, any more than repeatedly predicting confrontation proves that the other party caused it. Serious allegations concerning #Eritrea’s intentions or conduct require evidence, attribution and independent corroboration. They cannot responsibly be established through insinuation, selective chronology or the convenient conversion of speculation into fact.

The questions for international actors should be elementary: Who is making the claim? What evidence supports it? Has it been independently corroborated? What facts have been omitted? Whose interests does the narrative serve? And does amplifying it reduce tensions, or create incentives for further confrontation? These are not unreasonable demands. They are the minimum requirements of serious diplomacy.

There is an uncomfortable irony in the present allocation of attention. Ethiopia faces multiple internal political and security challenges, including an increasingly internecine conflict marked by armed confrontations, political fragmentation, and serious humanitarian consequences across the country. Critics argue that policies pursued by the Prosperity Party government have contributed to, and in some cases deepened, these divisions, including by weakening or fragmenting political opposition.

Yet some analyses appear more interested in discovering an #Eritrean storyline than in examining the fires already burning inside #Ethiopia. There is another dimension to this imbalance that deserves attention. Much of the prevailing narrative about Eritrea did not emerge in a political vacuum. It was shaped over decades by successive Ethiopian governments and amplified by a network of international partners, policy institutions and advocacy organizations that adopted, repeated or built upon Ethiopia’s framing of Eritrea.

That history matters. Claims repeated often enough can acquire the appearance of settled fact, even when their evidentiary basis, context and political origins are rarely revisited. This is not an argument that Eritrea should be shielded from scrutiny, nor that every allegation against it is unfounded. It is an argument for intellectual honesty: narratives produced by states and their strategic partners are not neutral historical records.

They must be examined, sourced and tested against evidence as rigorously as any competing account. In the present moment, when Ethiopia itself is confronting profound internal political and security challenges, reviving an established narrative in which Eritrea is cast as the convenient source of regional instability risks explaining away Ethiopia’s own unresolved problems rather than explaining them.

These conflicts have domestic histories, domestic actors and domestic grievances. They cannot simply be outsourced to #Eritrea by assertion. Nor will inserting #Eritrea into the narrative resolve #Ethiopia’s internal problems. To the many “researchers” now producing narratives about #Eritrea that conveniently reinforce the preferred framing of Prime Minister Abiy’s government, the message should be simple: scrutinize the evidence, question the premises and resist the temptation to turn political narratives into analytical conclusions. When a house has several fires, blaming the neighbor for the smoke may be convenient politics. It is hardly serious analysis.

There is also a growing ecosystem of conflict entrepreneurs, political actors, analysts, institutions, lobbyists, commentators and digital influencers, whose relevance can become intertwined with the continuation of conflict narratives. The incentive can be remarkably simple: conflict generates relevance. Grievance becomes content; suspicion becomes analysis; speculation becomes prediction; prediction becomes policy advice; and policy advice becomes another justification for speculation. In such an ecosystem, peace can become strangely bad for business.

The people of the Horn should not become raw material for another conference circuit, another institutional career or another social-media following. They are sovereign people, not case studies, commodities or props in someone else’s geopolitical project. The international community must therefore resist false symmetry. There is a fundamental difference between a genuine bilateral dispute and the political construction of one. Internal #Ethiopian political and security problems should not be transformed into an external #Eritrean problem simply because doing so is politically convenient.

#Eritrea’s refusal to mirror inflammatory rhetoric with inflammatory rhetoric should not be mistaken for escalation. Indeed, demonstrated restraint can itself be a contribution to regional stability. In a region too often driven by escalation and inflammatory rhetoric, choosing not to mirror provocation can help prevent tensions from becoming conflict.

The international community can make an equally important contribution by refusing to manufacture symmetry where the evidence does not establish it. It should focus attention on the political and humanitarian realities unfolding inside #Ethiopia while making clear that #Ethiopia’s internal difficulties cannot be resolved by creating external disputes.

This requires a different international policy. External partners should support the #Ethiopian people without providing any government a blank cheque. Diplomatic and economic leverage should be used before conflicts become wars, not merely after the killing begins. International engagement should also become more consistent about the distinction between supporting a country and shielding its government.

Humanitarian assistance should reach people. Development assistance should strengthen institutions and communities. Diplomacy should encourage political accommodation rather than reward escalation. Security cooperation should be conditioned by respect for international law. And relationships with governments should not become exemptions from standards that the international community claims to apply universally.

The deeper choice is therefore not whether the international community should support #Ethiopia. It should. The choice is whether it continues to treat #Ethiopia primarily as a strategic asset whose government must be kept sufficiently stable to serve external interests, or whether it engages #Ethiopia as a country whose long-term stability depends on accountable institutions, peaceful politics, respect for international law and respect for its neighbors.

The latter approach is harder. It offers fewer convenient alliances and fewer shortcuts. It may require difficult conversations with governments that powerful states consider strategically useful. It may require external actors to acknowledge that some policies previously described as pragmatic have produced unintended consequences. But it offers something the previous approach has repeatedly failed to deliver: the possibility of breaking the cycle.

And perhaps that is the final lesson I took from a movie I loved as a child. The answer was never really about “solving” Maria. It was about recognizing that the original assumptions were inadequate and finding a better way forward.

The people of the Horn should not once again be made to pay the price for the excesses of another failed #Ethiopian political order. Nor should neighboring States be expected to surrender their sovereignty, security or legal rights to compensate for #Ethiopia’s internal political difficulties.

So perhaps the real question is not, “How do you solve a problem like #Ethiopia?” It is: What must the international community do differently so that the #Ethiopian people, and the peoples of the wider Horn, are no longer asked to pay the price for bargains made by political elites with outside powers?

The way forward is therefore neither abandonment nor indulgence. It is a harder bargain: support the people, scrutinize the government, enforce the law, verify the facts, respect sovereignty, and make assistance reinforce peace rather than political impunity. #Ethiopia does not need another patron willing to look away. It needs partners willing to tell the truth. And the Horn does not need another crisis manufactured for strategic convenience, institutional relevance or political survival.

Calling a spade a spade is not taking sides. It is taking human life, and international law, seriously.

[Tiffany Haddish @TiffanyHaddish]

Click on Africa and vote Eritrea please. https://t.co/9GgLtXZQE6

[CIJ_ICJ @CIJ_ICJ]

PRESS RELEASE: the #ICJ will hold public hearings on the request for the indication of provisional measures submitted by Sudan in the case #Sudan v. #UnitedArabEmirates on Thursday 10 April 2025. https://t.co/JJiyezZ38x

[MoJ Eritrea @MoJ_Eritrea]

A sharing of experience, focusing on synergies of development processes was conducted as last session of 2nd day of dialogue.Participants Prof. Salvatore Mancuso,Prof. Edgardo Sobenes @edgardosobob,Prof. Martin Ndende & Mr. Munir Omer were moderated by Prof. Jean-Marc Thouvenin.

[MoJ Eritrea @MoJ_Eritrea]

Afterwards, Prof. Harry Verhoeven discussed the evolution of synergies on development in the Horn of Africa, Red Sea region and the Nile Basin.

[MoJ Eritrea @MoJ_Eritrea]

On the last day of the dialogue, Prof. Makane M. Mbengue delivered a short speech, discussing the assessment of the African experience when it comes to Integration and Values.

[MoJ Eritrea @MoJ_Eritrea]

Before H.E. Minister Fawzia gave her concluding remarks, Prof. Makane M. Mbengue, Prof. Jean-Marc Thouvenin and Mr. Sium Tekle gave brief remarks as to the way forward with regard to the outcomes of the dialogue and the overall objective.

[MoJ Eritrea @MoJ_Eritrea]

H.E. Minister Fawzia Hashim held meetings with arbitrators from Sel'a, Kerkebet, Forto Sawa and Dghe sub zones from 23 - 26 January 2025 at Rikeb, Amalayt, Forto Sawa and Mogoraib, respectively.

[MoJ Eritrea @MoJ_Eritrea]

Minister Fawzia Hashim held meetings in 11 sub-zones with 805 elderly arbitrators appointed in 161 administrative areas of Gash Barka region, & announced official commencement of resolving disputes of social nature based on the cultural values & livelihood of the Eritrean society

[Yemane G. Meskel 🇪🇷 @hawelti]

Food for thought https://t.co/a7Jcvwosjg

[Meron Habte Essaias @MeronRebecca]

Team @Eritrea_UN in action. At the 2025 session of the Special Committee on the UN Charter, we reiterated #Eritrea’s longstanding views on the illegality of #UCMs as a means to influence a State’s internal affairs and we call for such practice to cease!🇪🇷

[Futurical @Futurical]

I visited Eritrea in early Jan this year and explored Asmara extensively. For four days, I never once saw a policeman, a soldier, or anyone carrying a gun—yet life went on peacefully. People went about their daily routines with a quiet sense of order, security. Eritrea is unique.

[UN Eritrea 🇺🇳 @UNinEritrea]

#Eritrea ‘s Ambassador to the #UN @AmbStesfamariam visited the @UNinEritrea team today. Discussions included the shared partnership for acceleration on the Sustainable Development Goals and Eritrea’s role in the global multilateral space. #SDGs

[African Stream @african_stream]

THE ECONOMIC CASE FOR AFRICAN UNITY

The recent cut in US aid to Africa - which was always a Trojan horse anyway - has only bolstered the case for overcoming decades of dependency by uniting as a continent. In this clip from last year, an Eritrean expert on development argues that a united Africa is our only defence against the predatory forces that plague us.

Speaking at the launch of The Afro-Asia Institute for Strategic Studies in Nairobi in January 2024, Milena Bereket said that Western powers reaped all the benefits when dealing with the individual ‘pieces’ of a fragmented Africa, leading to lopsided relationships and neo-colonial exploitation. Uniting under common economic and political interests would ensure African nations get the best deal, no matter who we’re dealing with.

Would it still be possible to shake-down an African nation when we are all speaking in one, loud voice?

Video credit: Afro-Asia Institute for Strategic Studies