Ethiopia and Eritrea must obtain Eritrean Afar consent for any agreement concerning use of Afar traditional lands
JOINT PRESS RELEASE
June 23, 2018 | The Eritrean Afar National Congress (EANC), the Afar Nation within Eritrea, and Eritrean Afar exiled in Ethiopia and Djibouti, and the Eritrean Afar traditional leadership [“the Afar”] welcome Eritrea’s announcement that it will enter direct negotiations with Ethiopia towards normalization of relations on the basis of the Algiers Agreement of 2000.
As normalization includes granting Ethiopia access to the Eritrean port of Assab and Dankalia, which is traditional Afar territory, we require that any agreement to use Eritrean Afar territory receive the fully informed, prior consent of Afar indigenous people.
United Nations agencies have repeatedly criticized Eritrea for removing the Afar from their traditional territories, including Assab and its environs, by killings, mass murders, rapes, torture and other atrocities which the UN found amounted to crimes against humanity. The UN also found that Afar displacement from their traditional lands threatens Afar livelihoods as Afar depend on their traditional lands for their sustenance as an indigenous people.
Accordingly, in accordance with international law, the Eritrean Afar call upon Ethiopia and Eritrea to include an Afar representative in their talks and demand that any agreement about the use of Afar traditional lands receive the fully informed, prior consent of the Afar.
The Eritrean Afar National Congress will hold a press conference about the current developments during the Afar Unity Congress in Uppsala, Sweden on June 30th, 2018. The EANC will unveil its new policy and introduce new executive leadership to lead the struggle for Afar internal self-determination in Eritrea. We call on all stakeholders for peace to join us at this press conference.
Conference venue and program details are attached in the link below
http://dankalia.org/eanc-conference-june-2018-final/
Short URL: https://english.farajat.net/?p=11065
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