End-of-Year Reflections and the Question of the Future
Which wish should mark the end of this year, what should we truly wish for 2026, especially for a country that has spent decades suspended between endurance and postponement? These are questions that return with a certain regularity, almost ritual in nature, especially when one tries to look beyond the immediacy of the present and measure the distance between what has been and what might still come. In the case of Eritrea, any assessment can only be complex and layered, resisting both easy self-exoneration and sweeping condemnation. On the one hand, it would be dishonest to ignore a degree of diplomatic vitality, a renewed visibility expressed through a series of high-level visits and meetings, from the Middle East and the Gulf to Egypt and Saudi Arabia, signals of an international posture that seeks autonomy and relevance. On the other hand, the most recent rupture, Eritrea’s withdrawal from the regional organisation IGAD, appears overall less a strategic leap forward than a step back. Not so much because of an abstract judgment on the organisation itself, but because the decision undermines a principle repeatedly affirmed by Eritrean leaders, namely trust, at least in principle, in multilateral cooperation as a tool of regional engagement.
Disengagement, Regional Politics, and the Elephant in the Room
What makes this choice even more problematic is the concrete context of recent years. After the reactivation of relations in 2023, following a long suspension that began in 2007, Eritrea did not participate meaningfully in the organisation’s meetings. To denounce IGAD today as ineffective or as a body bent to the interests of some of its members, while not entirely unfounded, leaves an unresolved question. What, in the meantime, was done to reform it from within? Absence, in regional politics, rarely translates into leverage. A strategy of disengagement, especially at the regional level, risks leaving the field open precisely to those dynamics it claims to oppose. Here, the elephant in the room remains evident, the Ethiopian leadership, which for years has used regional and international forums as instruments of pressure, first through the sanctions narrative, more recently through an overtly militarised rhetoric on access to the sea, in open contradiction with the principles of international law. Walking away from the table does not make the problem disappear, it often magnifies it, depriving those who leave of even an imperfect space for contestation and dialogue.
Domestic Signals Between Ambiguity and Pressure
Against this backdrop, the release of a number of prisoners who had been detained for more than eighteen years on political and religious grounds is undoubtedly a significant development, perhaps the most meaningful domestic signal in recent times. The fact that it occurred without any official communication from the government or state media highlights its ambiguity, a concrete act devoid of any articulated political framework. It is difficult not to interpret this decision also as the result of long-standing pressures, fuelled by repeated reports and findings from international organizations documenting arbitrary detention and the systematic absence of due process. In this sense, the release appears as a minimal yet necessary gesture, intended to suggest that something is moving, at least symbolically. At the same time, it exposes the limits of a governance model based on isolated acts, episodic concessions, pardons or amnesties dependent on the discretion of a few rather than on shared and binding rules.
The Necessary Wish: Enforcing the Constitution
This brings us to the real issue, the one that should guide any serious wish for the future. The question is not whether to release a few prisoners today or to stage another symbolic move tomorrow. The only authentic and structural objective is the enforcement of the Constitution. To bring the Constitution into force means to affirm a simple yet radical principle: no one may be detained without formal charges and a fair trial, and in their absence must be released within clearly defined limits. Were this principle applied, political prisoners would not have to wait for acts of clemency or sudden presidential amnesia to see the light of day. More than twenty-eight years after its adoption on 23 May 1997, Eritrea needs to return to that constitutional text, to establish a commission for constitutional review, and to reaffirm it as the highest source of legitimacy and law. Declaring once and for all that no one stands above the law is not merely a legal act, it is the foundation of a credible social contract. From there, economic and social reforms would follow as consequences rather than rhetorical promises. For future generations, this would mean a more cohesive country, confident in itself, capable of recognising and nurturing talent and competence under conditions of genuine equality. If the current leadership wishes to leave a lasting legacy, history will remember not gestures, but a single choice: whether the Constitution was finally enforced.
