Ambassador Nebiyu Tedla’s article in Horn Review attempts to justify Ethiopia’s demand for “sovereign maritime access” as a logical product of history and geography. But such rhetoric conceals a far more troubling reality: Ethiopia is reviving an expansionist ambition, repackaged as necessity, and presenting it as legitimate diplomacy. In truth, it is neither diplomacy nor negotiation — it is a violation of international law from the moment it is asserted.
This is not a disagreement between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Eritrea and Ethiopia are two sovereign states with clearly defined and internationally recognised borders. Ethiopia’s demand constitutes a direct assault on Eritrea’s sovereignty and, simultaneously, a challenge to the entire international legal order that maintains peace among states.
The UN Charter leaves no room for reinterpretation. Article 2(1) affirms the sovereign equality of all states; Article 2(4) prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state; and Article 2(7) forbids interference in the domestic jurisdiction of sovereign nations. Ethiopia’s claim to Eritrean territory violates each of these principles. Even voicing such a claim constitutes a prohibited threat under Article 2(4).
African law is even more explicit. The Constitutive Act of the African Union mandates respect for borders inherited at independence (Article 4(b)), prohibits the use of force (Article 4(f)), and forbids interference in the internal affairs of member states (Article 4(g)). These principles were reaffirmed in the AU’s 1964 Cairo Resolution, designed precisely to prevent the reopening of territorial disputes that could tear the continent apart. Ethiopia helped shape this principle — and now stands as the state most aggressively undermining it.
That a country openly repudiating AU founding principles continues to host the African Union Headquarters in Addis Ababa is becoming increasingly indefensible. A state cannot simultaneously be the custodian of the Union’s seat and the leading violator of its constitutional values.
Nor is Ethiopia’s behaviour limited to Eritrea. It has already violated Somalia’s sovereignty by signing an illegal memorandum of understanding with Somaliland, in outright defiance of Somalia’s territorial integrity. Ethiopian officials have also indicated interest in Djibouti’s ports and critical infrastructure. When viewed together, these actions form a clear pattern: Ethiopia is emerging as a serial violator of international law and African norms, seeking regional dominance through territorial pressure and intimidation.
The historical arguments deployed by Ambassador Nebiyu collapse under scrutiny. At no point in recorded history did any political entity corresponding to modern Ethiopia exercise sovereign authority over the Red Sea coast — not in antiquity, not in the medieval era, not under the Ottomans, and not during European colonial rule. Indeed, Ethiopia as a modern state emerged afterEritrea had already become an Italian colony with demarcated borders. Eritrea’s coastline was governed by indigenous polities for millennia and later by the Ottoman province of Habesh for more than three hundred years.
Yet even if Ethiopia had possessed historical control — which it did not — history has no standing in determining modern borders. The international system does not permit states to resurrect medieval memories or reinterpret ancient geography to justify territorial claims. If it did, no African state would survive the resulting chaos.
Eritrea’s position, by contrast, is grounded firmly in international law. Landlocked states are entitled to negotiate access to ports and transit routes, and Eritrea has never opposed such cooperation. But access cannot be transformed into ownership. Ethiopia’s demand that Eritrea surrender sovereign territory — in whole or in part — is incompatible with the most basic principles of the modern international order.
Eritrea’s coastline is not a strategic vacuum waiting to be reassigned. It is sovereign land — internationally recognised, legally protected, and defended at immense human cost during a 30-year struggle for independence and in the decades that followed.
Ambassador Nebiyu’s article attempts to normalise what is profoundly abnormal. It reframes territorial revisionism as an inevitable aspiration, as if Ethiopia’s need or size grants it unique rights. But if Ethiopia is allowed to advance such claims unchallenged, every African border becomes negotiable, and the continent enters a new era of instability with potentially catastrophic consequences.
The international community — including the United Nations, the African Union, IGAD, and responsible governments — must speak with clarity and urgency. No state may claim the sovereign territory of another. No country may redraw borders on the basis of ambition or perceived necessity. No government should remain host of the African Union while actively undermining its founding principles.
Ethiopia’s maritime claim has no basis in history or law. It threatens Eritrea’s sovereignty, undermines Somalia’s territorial integrity, and signals similar ambitions toward Djibouti. It jeopardises the entire African state system. The African Union Commission — which routinely issues statements on far less consequential matters — cannot remain silent simply because Ethiopia is its host country. Silence in this context is not neutrality; it is complicity, and it signals that AU principles are optional for some and obligatory for others.
The Commission must uphold its own Constitutive Act and speak clearly: no member state has the right to claim the territory of another, and territorial revisionism will not be tolerated — even when the violator sits in Addis Ababa. If the AU cannot defend its founding principles in this moment, then Africa must seriously question whether its headquarters can continue to reside in a state that openly undermines them.
