The US government was wrong to say the emergency in Tigray had ‘expired’, and the Eritrean regime merited sanctions regardless

On 18 September the US Department of Treasury announced the lifting of sanctions that had been imposed on Eritrea for five years.

At least two reasons have been given for this by different government departments: the Department of State claimed that President Trump had chosen not to renew the Biden-era sanctions in order ‘to advance US regional interests’. When viewed in the context of the ongoing US-Israel war with Iran, this may sound reasonable. With continued blockages to the Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea on which Eritrea sits has become a key oil shipping route – another that is looking increasingly vulnerable in light of Houthi fighter advances around the Bab el-Mandeb strait in Yemen.

The other reasoning is more questionable. The sanctions were announced against the backdrop of a two-year conflict in the Tigray region of Eritrea’s neighbour Ethiopia, during which Eritrean forces and others have since been found to have perpetrated violations and abuses amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity ‘on a staggering scale’.

The Biden administration imposed the sanctions under a presidential declaration of a ‘national emergency’, and they had been renewed every year since, including under President Trump in 2025. This year however, the US Treasury claims that the emergency has ‘expired’.

Spoiler alert: it hasn’t.

An occupation that never ended

While the Tigray war was ostensibly brought to a close with the signature of an African Union-mediated peace accord between the Ethiopian government and Tigrayan leaders in November 2022, Eritrean soldiers have occupied parts of the region ever since.

Under particular pressure is the Irob District, which the Eritrean government insists was assigned to it at the end of its border war with Ethiopia by the Treaty of Algiers of 2000. Members of the predominantly Catholic Irob community from which the district takes its name report ongoing human rights violations, including looting, enforced disappearances, and being forced to choose between compulsory assimilation and forced relocation by troops who have imposed the Eritrean language and identification cards on them, conscripted individuals, and targeted Catholic priests.

In October 2025 the Ethiopian government sent a letter to UN Secretary General António Guterres accusing Eritrea of colluding with a faction of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) to fund, mobilise and direct anti-government militia in the Amhara region, which borders Tigray, and claiming that the Eritrean government and the TPLF were ‘actively preparing to wage war against Ethiopia’.

However, it is also evident that hostilities between the two countries are being stoked even further by provocative regular statements from Ethiopian officials about their country’s vital need for Red Sea access, including the prime minister’s description of Ethiopia’s loss of the port of Assab to Eritrea as an ‘historical mistake’, and his assertion in September 2025 that it was only ‘a matter of time’ before Ethiopia regained control.

An emergency expired?

Tensions have been escalating in the region all year. On 29 January 2026 fighting broke out between Ethiopian government forces and TPLF fighters in Mai Degusha, Tselemti District, sparking several days of clashes in which at least one Tigrayan fighter was killed in drone strikes for which a Tigrayan official alleged the Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF) was responsible.

On 1 August violence erupted in Shererina, near the border with Sudan, with both the TPLF and the Ethiopian government blaming each other for the clashes. Hundreds of Ethiopians reportedly crossed into Sudan to escape heavy gunfire, artillery and drones.

If such developments were not enough to give the US Treasury pause in declaring that the emergency in Tigray had ‘expired’, events that have transpired since have exposed just how inaccurate such an assessment was.

On 20 September – two days after the US lifted its sanctions – the TPLF and six other insurgent groups announced the formation of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival, with the stated objective of overthrowing the government of Abiy Ahmed. Within days Tigrayan forces had taken control of federally administered airports in the region, and launched offensives in the neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions.

Unsurprisingly, Eritrea appears to have entered the conflict swiftly, albeit this time allegedly on the side of the TPLF, having recently severed diplomatic relations with Ethiopia. In early October residents reported to the BBC that Eritrean troops had crossed into the country, with Ethiopia’s foreign minister accusing Eritrea of an ‘all-out invasion’ and a ‘blatant act of aggression that engages Ethiopia’s inherent right to self-defence’ in a letter to the UN Security Council.

Eritrea’s Minister of Information subsequently rejected the claims in a post on X; however, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLD), an independent conflict-monitoring organisation, has documented the presence of Eritrean troops in the region, including of Eritrean soldiers withdrawing across the border following advances by Ethiopian forces and their allies.

A regime that doesn’t change

It is also important to remember that the sanctions were imposed on the Eritrean regime in response to its conduct in Tigray for which it is yet to be held accountable, and which mirror several human rights violations it has been committing within its own borders since de facto independence in 1991.

This year marked a decade since a UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) ‘found reasonable grounds to believe’ that the Eritrean government had committed crimes against humanity in a ‘widespread and systematic manner’ since 1991.

Among the crimes the COI identified were enslavement, enforced disappearance, torture, rape, murder, and both ethnic and religious persecution, deemed to have been committed largely but not exclusively within the context of Eritrea’s military service regime, into which tens of thousands of Eritreans have been forcibly and indefinitely conscripted.

There have been no meaningful improvements in the situation of human rights since the COI published its findings, just as there has been no meaningful change in the plight of all but four religious groups whose practices have been effectively outlawed since 2002, nor any consistent or significant reduction in the number of prisoners of conscience who remain arbitrarily detained in woefully inadequate conditions across the country.

Of course, the Eritrean government has absolutely no interest in change. It managed to serve consecutive three-year terms on the UN Human Rights Council from 2019 to 2024 – securing re-election halfway through the war in Tigray without showing the slightest improvement in its domestic human rights record; it is one of the only countries to have never accepted a visit by a UN independent human rights expert, and it has made no effort to meet any of the five benchmarks for progress established by the UN Special Rapporteur on the country in 2019.

And yet the US government has decided that now is an appropriate time to lift sanctions. Signs of an impending rapprochement were already there in May 2025 when, following a 2024 letter from the Eritrean president congratulating him on his electoral victory, President Trump claimed that the US valued ‘the contributions the Government of the State of Eritrea can make to regional security.’ Then, in a subsequent letter to Afewerki dated 30 July 2025, Trump stated he would be ‘reversing the negative, harmful damage of the Biden Administration around the globe’ and reaffirmed his desire for re-engagement. 

Subsequent developments confirmed that President Trump is set on undoing the work of his predecessor above all else – but at what cost?

Sanctions are complex; in some instances they impact already suffering populations more adversely than their intended targets in governments and militaries. In the case of Eritrea, they specifically targeted the armed forces, the ruling party, and state officials.

Since gaining independence Eritrea has consistently acted as a regional spoiler, engaging in direct military conflicts or border clashes with all of its immediate neighbours on the continent, as well as with Yemen –  whose fishermen it regularly intercepts and detains, while also reportedly supporting, and even training, neighbouring insurgents.

Amid heightened fragility occasioned by continuing instability in Ethiopia, the ongoing terrorist threat in Somalia, and regional governments lining up to support differing sides in the Sudan conflict alongside external actors, the Eritrean regime must not be allowed to spin a wholly inaccurate narrative of being a dependable regional force for good while sustaining or increasing violations that it has never actually stopped committing both at home and abroad.

By CSW’s Press & Public Affairs Officer Ellis Heasley