Lifting the US sanctions on Eritrea is long overdue
As some readers may know, there was a time when I argued for
sanctions against Eritrea because of the regime´s persistent and deeply
upsetting human rights abuses against its own citizens. As the vast majority of
Eritreans, I had an expectation that the attention of the outside world would
ensure that those in positions of power would be held to account. However, in
the years since and particularly after observing the diverging responses of
Western governments to wars in Ukraine versus Gaza, I have become increasingly
doubtful about how sanctions are used in international relations. The US
sanctions on Eritrea were not implemented in the interest of the Eritrean
people, and now they will be lifted for the sake of current geopolitical
considerations.
Today, I am not bothered by the principle of accountability
itself but rather its selective application. Although sanctions are often discussed
as measures to protect human rights and international law, in practice, they
seem strongly influenced by political interests and geostrategic alliances.
Some states are sanctioned quickly and comprehensively, while others, even
accused of similar grievous breaches of rights, but happen to be allied,
financially involved or geopolitically advantageous, escaped with caution or
are outright protected.
This contradiction is exemplified by Eritrea. Eritrean armed
forces have also, rightly, been accused of committing serious abuses throughout
the course of the Tigray war. Many of those reports also described atrocities
committed by Ethiopian forces, but the Ethiopian army was not sanctioned. The
international response was nonsensically weighted towards Eritrea.
In Sudan, we can see another variation of the same song
today. The U.S. has imposed sanctions on certain individuals associated with
both the SAF and RSF, as well as on foreign mercenaries purportedly fighting on
the side of one or the other faction. But the critics point to a refusal to
directly challenge regional players such as the UAE, which stand accused of
financing or facilitating the war. This, to many observers, further strengthens
the view that sanctions are driven not by value-based principles but by
self-interested political and economic considerations.
There is also the uncomfortable truth that sanctions hardly
ever deliver on their own goals. Over the mountain ranges in Eritrea, where
many of the targets are high-ranking military or security officials, whose
presence in the West is so limited that individual sanctions have little
impact, who work through opaque channels and systems using foreign names and
regional alliances to sidestep restrictions. As a result, the impact is fairly
limited for ground-level decision-makers.
The rest of us seldom get by unscathed. We already know that
economic isolation, banking restrictions, and diplomatic pressure are deepening
hardship, which they barely endure under authoritarian rule. Eritrea shows that
sanctions produce no political change and do nothing to bolster opposition.
Even the opposition has remained divided and failed to turn international
pressure into domestic political pressure.
In the end, significant change in Eritrea — as in so many
authoritarian cases — will not stem from foreign sanctions alone. It will have
to come from within the society, via political change initiated and spearheaded
by the Eritreans.
There is no excuse to overlook or justify human rights
abuses. Far from it. However, when the principles of justice are binding only
at certain times, they cannot be expected to provide moral authority for the
international community. Otherwise, sanctions will continue to be seen around
the world not as instruments of justice but as tools of geopolitical
self-interest disguised in the language of human rights.
