How Eritrea is governed: a constitution that never came into force

What the ratified constitution would build

"Today, 23 May 1997," the preamble reads, the people of Eritrea "approve and solemnly ratify, through the Constituent Assembly, this Constitution", after what it calls "active popular participation". The text defines Eritrea as a unitary state divided into units of local government, guarantees "the equality of all Eritrean languages", and lists completing national service among the duties of every citizen.

Its government is a presidency answerable to a parliament. Every citizen aged 18 or over may vote, and a National Assembly elected by secret ballot for five years is to be "the supreme representative and legislative body". The assembly elects the president from among its own members, by an absolute majority on a nomination backed by at least 20% of them, for a five-year term matching its own. No person may be elected to the office more than twice, and two thirds of the assembly can remove a president for violating the constitution or for incapacity, among other grounds.

A Supreme Court has sole jurisdiction to interpret the constitution. A Judicial Service Commission recommends judges, an Auditor General audits government revenue and spending and reports to the assembly every year, and an Electoral Commission is to operate "independently, without interference". Article 19 guarantees freedom of the press and of religion and gives every citizen the right "to form organizations for political, social, economic and cultural ends", and the text provides for multi-party politics.

The sources agree that none of this has been applied.

The UN commission of inquiry on human rights in Eritrea called it the "never-implemented Constitution of 1997" in June 2015. Britannica's fact table, revised in October 2026, gives the form of government as a "transitional regime" with one interim legislative house of 150 seats. The UN Special Rapporteur's report of May 2026 found the constitution still unimplemented and named what that leaves Eritrea without: democratic institutions, a separation of powers, an elected legislature, an independent judiciary, a free press and an independent civil society.

How the transitional state was put together

In May 1991, the month its fighters entered Asmara, the EPLF set up the Provisional Government of Eritrea to administer the territory until a referendum on independence was held and a permanent government established. The front's Central Committee served as its legislature. On 21 May 1993 Isaias Afwerki, the front's secretary-general, was made president of a transitional government, and on 24 May he proclaimed Eritrea independent.

The transitional National Assembly that chose him had 150 seats. Wikipedia's account of Eritrean politics divides them between 75 members of the front and 75 others, a group that had to include 11 women and 15 Eritreans living abroad, while Britannica records every seat as indirectly elected and dates the last such election to 1994. Freedom House calls it an unelected assembly that chose a president to serve "until elections could be held under a new constitution". Under the transitional rules it was the highest legal power until a democratic, constitutional government could be established, and the cabinet, chaired by the president, was in theory accountable to it.

The front then turned itself into a party. In 1994 the EPLF held what BTI calls its third and final organisational congress and renamed itself the People's Front for Democracy and Justice, the PFDJ. BTI dates the party's last congress to that year; Wikipedia's article on Eritrean politics puts it in January 2002.

Two pieces of law from the transitional years still shape the state. Proclamation 82, issued by the National Assembly in October 1995, required every able-bodied man and woman to serve 18 months of national service, six of them in military training. In 1996 the ten provinces Eritrea had at independence were consolidated into six regions, or zobas, whose boundaries follow water catchment basins, under Proclamation 86/1996 on regional administration. Each zoba has a regional assembly that sets a local agenda unless the National Assembly overrules it. Its administrator is not chosen by that assembly.

Why the promised elections were never held

Legislative elections were set for 1997, the year of ratification, and then postponed to 2001. The war with Ethiopia from May 1998 to June 2000 came in between. The reason the government gave afterwards was territorial. In its account 20% of Eritrea's land was under occupation at the time, and elections would wait until the conflict with Ethiopia was resolved.

The demand to hold them came from inside the party. In May 2001 fifteen senior officials of the PFDJ and the government, afterwards known as the G-15, published an open letter that called the president's actions "illegal and unconstitutional" and asked him to implement the ratified constitution and establish the rule of law. In September 2001 the government arrested 11 of the signatories and shut down every privately owned newspaper, and independent journalists were detained in the same crackdown, Dawit Isaak among them. None of the 11 has been tried. Amnesty International said in September 2021 that nine of them may have died in detention, and Human Rights Watch's chapter on 2025 records the fate and whereabouts of the 11, and of 10 journalists arrested since September 2001, as unknown.

The National Assembly stopped meeting soon afterwards. Most accounts date its last session to 2002, the UN commission of inquiry, Freedom House and Britannica among them, and Wikipedia gives January of that year; Human Rights Watch's chapter on 2025 says the legislature has not met since 2010. The commission found in 2015 that even while the assembly sat, laws were passed as government decrees called proclamations, and that since 2002 a proclamation had been the only way to make one. Some important policies, including ones that severely affect individual rights, were embodied in no law at all, it added, and were simply announced by government media or passed on by local administrations.

Asked by Al Jazeera in 2008, the president said that "Eritrea will wait three or four decades, maybe more, before it holds elections. Who knows?"

Local voting has continued in a limited form, and the accounts disagree on when it last took place, May 2003 in one, 2003 and 2004 in a UN Human Rights Council report and 2010 and 2011 in another. Freedom House describes the local and regional votes held as carefully orchestrated by the PFDJ, with no meaningful choice for voters. BTI's 2026 report finds no free election at any level since independence.

Who decides while the constitution waits

With no constitution in force there is no separation of powers to describe, and BTI's 2026 report puts it in those terms. The president rules by decree, it finds, and controls the legislative, executive and judicial branches, so that state power is not subject to the law.

How a small circle governs

BTI found that government functions were carried out by the president and a small group of advisers, among them the PFDJ's head of financial affairs, the minister of information and leading military figures. The cabinet, which the president handpicks, had not held a formal meeting in years. The post of defence minister was vacant in January 2025. Freedom House reports that the cabinet and the security officials carry out decisions made in an informal circle, and that the UN Human Rights Council found military personnel overrepresented among the president's closest associates.

The party has no rival. It has been the only permitted party since independence, its leadership is not subject to internal elections, and BTI describes it as severely weakened by the president and unable to articulate or aggregate the interests of society. No mechanism for succession to the presidency had been set up when BTI's review period closed in January 2025.

Open challenges from inside the country have been rare. Britannica records a short-lived mutiny by a small group of soldiers in 2013 as the one notable protest from within during that period. Berhane Abrehe, a former finance minister arrested in 2018 after publishing a book that called the president a dictator, died in jail in 2024.

Where the army and the party hold the economy

The army has no formal political role, and BTI calls it "de facto the most influential political player apart from the president". Its report describes four military command zones in which the commanders exercise unconstitutional executive and judicial powers and the civilian administration is powerless. Each zone is meant to be self-sufficient, raising money legally and illegally from taxes on land and trade and from the illicit cross-border trade in consumer goods and spare parts.

BTI finds the economy monopolised by the party and the army together. Every state enterprise is controlled by the party-owned Hdri Trust Fund, whose accounts are checked by one person, the PFDJ's financial head, and Eritrea has not made a state budget public since independence. In 2021 the United States imposed sanctions on the PFDJ, the Eritrean Defence Forces, the Red Sea Trading Corporation and the Hdri Trust Fund over Eritrea's part in the war in Tigray.

How national service became the state's main institution

The 18 months set by Proclamation 82 were extended without limit in 1998. Human Rights Watch ties the change to the state of emergency declared that year; Wikipedia's account says everyone under 50 was enlisted for an indefinite period, with release left to the decision of a commander. The government gave Ethiopia's hostility and its occupation of Eritrean territory as the reason. When the two states declared peace in July 2018 the policy stayed as it was, and Eritrea did not answer when Human Rights Watch asked why.

How school and office work were drawn in

Entry was then built into schooling. In 2002 the government launched the Warsai Yikealo Development Campaign, which sends students to six months of military training in twelfth grade, or at 18 for those out of school, and final-year secondary students do their service at the Sawa training centre, Freedom House reports. From 2002 high school graduates were also enlisted to carry out the routine work of the administration, and BTI's 2026 report describes substantial parts of the state administration as staffed by national service recruits working for pocket money. Party-owned companies such as Seghen Construction use conscripts as forced labour, BTI found, and in its review period men from 18 to 60 and women from 18 to 27 were compelled to serve.

The UN has described the result twice. The commission of inquiry found in June 2015 that "since 1994, Eritreans have had to spend most of their working lives in national service", called it an institution where slavery-like practices take place, and held that national service and forced labour may amount to crimes against humanity. Its second report, in June 2016, put the average length of service at 6.5 years. The government rejected both, and its foreign ministry described the second as "wild allegations" that were "totally unfounded and devoid of all merit".

Mobilisation tightened the system again. A general mobilisation ordered in the autumn of 2022 to send more troops to Tigray was still in force in January 2025, and the homes of families whose members evaded the draft were sealed, leaving them homeless. The Special Rapporteur's report of May 2026 records mass round-ups, known as giffa, in July, August and December 2025, concentrated in the Segheneyti subregion of Debub as tension with Ethiopia over access to the Red Sea rose.

Why so many Eritreans leave

Freedom House sums up what is left to a citizen as "no political options other than loyalty to the PFDJ, imprisonment, or illegal emigration through often dangerous routes". Eritreans of service age are rarely given permission to go abroad, leaving without an exit visa is punished with prison, and permits are needed even to travel inside the country. More than 660,000 Eritreans were living in exile in late 2024, by the UNHCR figure Human Rights Watch cites, about 18% of an estimated population of 3.8 million.

The state collects from them too. Every Eritrean abroad owes a 2% tax, embassies require deserters from national service to sign a "letter of regret" promising to pay it, and BTI's 2026 report puts diaspora remittances at more than a third of the national budget.

What the courts and the churches answer to

The legal codes stayed transitional until 2015. At independence Eritrea adopted the Ethiopian penal code of 1957, and the commission of inquiry noted that as of May 2015 new codes had replaced the transitional codes in force since 1991. Beside the civil courts, which rise from community courts with elected village judges through zoba courts to the High Court, there are military courts and a Special Court. The commission found in 2015 that judges were appointed, reassigned and dismissed at the will of the president, and that the Special Court ruled on every kind of crime with senior military officers as its judges, without legal training and apparently accountable to the president directly. In its words, "It is not law that rules Eritreans, but fear."

BTI's 2026 report finds the Supreme Court defunct since 2002 and the special courts defunct as well, replaced by even more informal action by those who hold power, and records that nobody has been able to study law since Asmara University closed in 2006. Customary institutions carry most civil justice. Freedom House holds that the Supreme Court the constitution calls for was never established at all.

Religious practice depends on state recognition. Four denominations are recognised, the Eritrean Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church, the Lutheran church and Sunni Islam, and although a procedure to apply for recognition was set up in 2002, the commission found in 2015 that no other had been allowed to exist. The state reaches into the recognised ones as well. Abune Antonios, patriarch of the Orthodox Church, was deposed in 2006, expelled from the church for "heresy" in 2019 and kept under house arrest until his death in February 2022. Jehovah's Witnesses born in Eritrea had their citizenship revoked by the president on 25 October 1994, and 64 of them were in prison in April 2025 by Human Rights Watch's count.

Speech and assembly are closed as well. Privately owned media have been banned since September 2001 and every domestic outlet belongs to the Ministry of Information. The Committee to Protect Journalists counted 16 journalists imprisoned in Eritrea in late 2023, none of whom had ever been charged. Gatherings of more than seven people need a permit, by Freedom House's account. Freedom House scored Eritrea 1 of 40 for political rights and 2 of 60 for civil liberties in its 2024 report. In December 2025 the authorities released 13 detainees, former officials among them, who had been held for nearly 18 years without charge or trial.

How Eritrea deals with its neighbours and the UN

Foreign policy starts from self-reliance. Eritrea has rejected foreign aid since 2005 as a hindrance to development, and in 2006 alone it walked away from US$200 million in aid and refused a US$100 million loan from the World Bank. The European Union ended development cooperation in 2020 over Eritrea's part in the Tigray conflict.

What the quarrels with neighbours cost

The quarrels began within three years of independence. Tension with Sudan through the 1990s turned on mutual accusations of destabilisation, and in late 1995 and 1996 Eritrea fought Yemen over the Hanish Islands. Arbitration at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague recognised the islands as Yemeni, and both states accepted the decision. In 2008 Eritrean troops massed at Ras Doumeira on the border with Djibouti, and fighting there killed more than 30 people. In December 2009 the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on Eritrea over its alleged support for insurgents in Somalia and for not withdrawing its troops from Djibouti, and it expanded them in 2011.

The settlement of 2018 began with Ethiopia. The joint statement of 9 July 2018 ended the state of war, and in November the Security Council lifted its sanctions and Eritrea regained full membership of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, IGAD. The border crossings with Ethiopia closed again within a year. From November 2020 to November 2022 Eritrean troops fought alongside Ethiopian federal forces against the TPLF in Tigray, which Eritrea confirmed in April 2021, and Human Rights Watch's chapter on 2025 records them still occupying parts of Tigray. Since mid-2025, the Special Rapporteur reports, Ethiopia's renewed talk of access to the Red Sea has brought troop build-ups on both sides of the border.

Which blocs Eritrea joins and leaves

In October 2024 Eritrea entered a tripartite agreement with Egypt and Somalia, which BTI reads as an attempt to isolate Ethiopia, and in December 2025 it withdrew from IGAD, accusing the organisation of "becoming a tool against" countries like itself. It has not signed the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement. By July 2019, 54 of the African Union's 55 members had signed, and in July 2020 the information minister wrote that Eritrea's position, "first articulated at the 1994 OAU Summit", was to nurture the regional economic communities first. The 50 states listed by the tralac trade law centre as having ratified it by 4 September 2026 do not include Eritrea. It holds observer status in the Arab League.

Further afield, the partners BTI names are China, Russia and Saudi Arabia. Eritrea voted against the UN General Assembly resolutions condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as Belarus, Syria and North Korea did on one of them in 2022, and in 2023 it opened negotiations with Russia over a military base at Massawa, which had not materialised by January 2025. At the UN Human Rights Council the government sought in 2025 to end the Special Rapporteur's mandate, and the council renewed it in July. His request of 17 October 2025 to visit the country had received no answer by 22 April 2026.