Case Of Eritrea Research Articles

Role of diplomacy in recognition of an evolving state: the case of Eritrea and South Sudan

Role of diplomacy in recognition of an evolving state: the case of Eritrea and South Sudan

Role of Diplomacy in Recognition of an Evolving State: The Case of Eritrea and South Sudan

Role of Diplomacy in Recognition of an Evolving State: The Case of Eritrea and South Sudan

The right to exit as national and transnational governance: The case of Eritrea

AbstractIn this article, we seek to explain some of the seeming paradoxes of extreme restrictions on the right to exit in the case of Eritrea. While the government has denied passports and exit visas to all but a few categories of Eritrean resident citizens in order to avoid a mass exodus from the country, and imposed harsh punishments on those found crossing the border illegally, the government has also institutionalised policies to “welcome” absconders back. We argue that restrictions on the “right to exit” make this ostensibly more conciliatory position possible because they constitute such a powerful tool of both national and transnational governance. We show the long‐term impacts that people's inability to leave Eritrea legally has on their access to other rights, in particular the right to family life, and how this enables the Eritrean government to continue to discipline people's behaviour long after they have crossed the border. Alongside the ways in which the Eritrean government thus benefits financially and politically from large‐scale emigration from the country, despite its protestations to the contrary, we show how limits on the right to exit provide yet another way for authoritarian governments to exercise transnational reach.

Understanding the capacity of key actors and their role in the seed potato systems: The case of Eritrea

Understanding the combined effects of the biophysical, socioeconomic, and institutional components of a seed system can help to improve the effectiveness of seed system interventions. This study examined whether and how institutional factors are contributing to the inadequate supply of quality seed potato in Eritrea and identified where and how bottlenecks within the seed systems might improve the efficacy of seed potato interventions. The research methodology included semi-structured interviews with seed potato system actors, focus group discussions with farmers and local experts, a review of seed potato intervention program reports, farm visit reports, and other literature. The study identified some structural system failures that block the effective functioning of the seed potato intervention. The study recommendations include (i) investment in climate-smart technologies (such as water harvesting structures and new varieties) as well as for electricity supply in the high grades seed production center (ii) shifting the traditional supply-driven approach to a demand driven approach for greater participation of the actors in the seed potato intervention (iii) strengthening the human skill of the actors for greater interaction and collaboration between the different government actors and (iv) developing local strategies to encourage decentralized service provision systems. In the longer term, consideration should be given to greater private sector participation in sourcing and supply of seed and other inputs, even as a pilot-scale activity.

Review of social protection experiences in Sub-Saharan Africa: The case of Eritrea

Review of social protection experiences in Sub-Saharan Africa: The case of Eritrea

Transnational Lived Citizenship – The Case of the Eritrean Diaspora

This special focus section analyses state–diaspora relationships with a focus on the case of Eritrea, a paradigmatic example, as we show in this introduction, to elaborate on the following key questions: What determines loyalty between diaspora and the state? How can we understand the dynamics of co-optation, loyalty, and resistance that characterise many diaspora–state relationships? What is the role of historical events and memory in building alliances as well as divides among different generations and different groups in the diaspora? How do diaspora citizens interpret and enact their citizenship in everyday practices of engagement? By engaging with both citizenship and diaspora studies, this introduction shows the significance of analysing these questions through the lens of “transnational lived citizenship.” This concept enables a look at the intersections between formal aspects of citizenship as well as the emotional and practical aspects related to feelings of belonging, transnational attitudes, and circulation of material cultures.

Retraction notice to “The correlation between parental socioeconomic status (SES) and children’s academic achievement: The case of Eritrea” [Child Youth Serv. Rev. 116 (2020) 105242

Retraction notice to “The correlation between parental socioeconomic status (SES) and children’s academic achievement: The case of Eritrea” [Child Youth Serv. Rev. 116 (2020) 105242

RETRACTED: The correlation between parental socioeconomic status (SES) and children’s academic achievement: The case of Eritrea

Abstract This study replicated and extended research on the link between parental socioeconomic status (SES) and children’s academic achievement using Eritrea, a developing country, as a case study. It used a mixed methods approach that employed both quantitative and qualitative approaches and utilized data from different stakeholders that included a sample of 397 grade eight students, twenty-seven students’ parents, eight school principals, eight schoolteachers, and four education officers. The findings of the current study indicated that parental SES (education, occupation, household size, and household possessions) appeared to be correlated to students’ academic achievement, as measured by the scores in a grade eight national examination. The findings of this study further the extant literature for it addresses the research gap in SES and academic achievement in developing countries. Implications of the study’s findings, limitations, and multiple avenues for future research are also discussed.

Colonial borders and hybrid identities: Lessons from the case of Eritrea

Abstract Colonialism left numerous borders in its wake that subsequently became contested. These colonial borders have often been discussed as artificial, dividing communities, people or ethnicities that otherwise would belong together. Such an interpretation of colonial borders, I argue in this article, overlooks another important aspect of colonial boundaries: their role in creating nations as ‘imagined communities’ who in making reference to such borders can lay claim to a distinct national identity. While such an identity can be exclusionary and trigger conflict, it can also have a much more positive and ultimately hybrid function. I use the case of Italian colonialism in the Horn of Africa to demonstrate these multiple roles colonial boundaries can occupy and focus specifically on the creation and contestations of the borders of Eritrea. I argue that the acceptance of borders as markers of identity can be a prerequisite for finding innovative ways to overcome exclusions in the everyday lives of borderland groups. Thus, the example of Eritrea could hold wider lessons for addressing postcolonial disputes about borders and boundaries, if institutional arrangements are put in place that allow fluidity in everyday encounters.

The teacher state: navigating the fusion of education and militarisation in Eritrea and elsewhere

ABSTRACT This paper uses the case of Eritrea to explore tensions between education and militarisation as forms of everyday state-making and examine how teachers constitute the state in the process of navigating these tensions. In 2003 Eritrea merged educational and military institutions. Teachers responded to the new policies by alternately joining in with students’ tacit resistance to them, and engaging in strict, often violent, measures to reclaim control and exert ‘teacher sovereignty’ over schools. Teachers’ intermingling of resistant humour and foot-dragging with violence and authoritarianism suggests that teachers, as agents of the state in Eritrea and elsewhere, may resist militarisation yet also reproduce authoritarian violence. While this policy, which effectively merged military and educational institutions was unique to Eritrea, the disjuncture between education and militarisation exposed by this case illuminates the complex role that schools and teachers play in state-making and nuances our understanding of education, the state and armed conflict.

International Law and Self-Determination: The Case of Eritrea

Writing about the Eritrean conflict in the Horn of Africa is a difficult task, because it involves the issue of dismembership of a state. From the Greek Empire to the Roman, from the feudal era to the colonial times, and now in the post-colonial era, dismembership of the state has been a highly controversial and emotional issue. From the colonial era to decolonization, Africans did not have to face this problem. In fact, not only did they applaud the dismembership of the colonial empire, they worked hard to insure the disintegration of the colonies. In their optimism for the future of Africa, they developed a rhetoric that went beyond cooperation among future independent states to continental political unity. “Africa must unite” said the vibrant and dynamic leader of Ghana, Nkrumah.

Journalists’ Safety in the World’s Most Restricted Regime: The Case of Eritrea, Northeast Africa

The TV station located within the premises of the Ministry of Information in Asmara, the capital city of Eritrea, went out off air on the 21 st of January 2013 for the entire day. There were reports that 200 mutinied soldiers seized the station with the help of two tankers compelling the station director to announce the release of political detainees and journalists, who were held since independence, and demanded the implementation of ratified constitution. It was indeed a demand in pending for the past two decades, ever since Eritrea turned into a free nation. The mutiny came to an end with the soldiers surrendering their arms. In February 2009, the government of Eritrea raided a tiny radio station located in the downtown Asmara, adjacent to the Ministry of Education, detaining the entire staff and crew of Radio Bana that broadcasts programmes for adults and neo-literates. They were arrested without any charges and were never produced in the court. Six journalists of Radio Bana were released by January 2015 after prolonged imprisonment. These two incidents provide only a glimpse of the ongoing, never-ending, government-sponsored terror on the journalists of Eritrea. In a country where free political debate, freedom of expression, freedom of movement, right to academics, and freedom of religion are denied and suppressed, it is absolutely not possible to study journalist’s safety. Based on fieldwork and personal interviews with journalists, students and citizens serving indefinite national service, the study aims to illustrate the government- sponsored terror on the people of Eritrea in general and journalists in particular.

African Diplomacy of Liberation. The Case of Eritrea’s Search for an “African India”

Conflicting views of the Eritrean independence war as a solitary, single-handed struggle against the Ethiopian Empire on the one hand and assertions about Eritrean diplomatic ineptitude on the other abound in the discourse on Northeast Africa. Both positions defy the age-old adage that war and diplomacy are enduring features of human interaction, and overlook African experiences with liberation diplomacy. This article revisits Eritrean nationalists’ hydra-like diplomatic dealings with an array of forces in the region and beyond to show that their diplomacy of liberation was indispensable to the heated battles (1961-1991), and that, as a result, they received materiel, political and humanitarian assistance without which their movement would have been hard pressed to succeed. They particularly forged political-military alliances with Ethiopian insurgents to clinch the all-important but elusive international recognition after military victory in Asmara and parallel regime change in Addis Ababa.

Myths, memories and metaphors: recollecting landscape change in the Eritrean highlands

Using the case of Eritrea, this article investigates why people's visual recollections and oral accounts of past landscapes can be an unreliable source of accurate information on environmental change. In Eritrea, a longstanding narrative exists that claims that forest cover throughout the country has decreased from 30% of land cover in the late nineteenth century to less than 1% today. Yet popular recollections are contradicted by available archival and photographic evidence, all of which indicates that the landscape has changed far less dramatically than generally imagined. This article explores why a disjunction between the historical evidence regarding the extent and pattern of deforestation in the central Eritrean highlands and people's memories and beliefs about this process should have evolved. Drawing on recent findings in social psychology, and placing this within prevailing debates on landscape and memory, it seeks to explain why visual recollections may be strongly influenced by the metaphoric and symbolic meaning that landscapes hold for individuals and communities. In particular it looks at how memories about the process of deforestation may be shaped less by actual observation of a physical event than by the nature of people's interaction with past authorities, and by individual experiences of economic hardship and scarcity. The article also looks at how the popular myth of a supposedly once prosperous landscape in Eritrea has been employed and encouraged by those in power – either as a justification for various colonial policies or, in the case of the present government, as a powerful impetus to nation building.

Causes, Challenges and Prospects of Brain Drain: The Case of Eritrea

AbstractWhile there is little doubt that highly skilled workers in many Least Developed Countries (LDCs) are scarce, it is also true that many highly trained professionals have left LDCs to go and work in the developed world. The latter, known as the “brain drain,” or simply human capital flight, is not at all a new phenomenon; it has only become more pronounced in recent years. This paper delves into the causes, challenges, and prospects of the phenomenon of the “brain drain” in LDCs, by taking Eritrea as a case study. In so doing, it demonstrates that deteriorating economic conditions, lack of good governance and political instability are the root causes of the “brain drain” in LDCs such as Eritrea. The paper also highlights the impact of the “brain drain”, and suggests some of the measures that may be put in place by governments of LDCs in order to redress the situation.

Establishment processes in a one party economy: the case of Eritrea

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to address the issues of how business people perceive the business environment, how government policies impact the environment and how the environment impacts the establishment processes and position development of new firms in the Eritrean market. The process is discussed by keeping a strict focus on the main actors and the activities they carried out, as well as how the available resources are utilized and exchanged in the market.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on the establishment process model developed from the network approach, case studies based on interviews and focus group discussions have been used to shed light on the extent to how government policies and the environment impacts the establishment processes and position development in the Eritrean market.FindingsAn important conclusion of this paper is that the main obstacle for business establishment is the hostile attitude of the government to the private sector. Another significant obstacle for building a successful position in the market is the state‐owned command economy network of relationships. An additional crucial hindrance is the non‐existence of a market economy network of relationships that can provide firms in the private sector with the resources they need to perform their operations.Research limitations/implicationsAll firms in this paper have demonstrated that the main obstacle for establishment is the hostile attitude of the government to the private sector. Another obstacle is the state‐owned command economy network of relationships, which hinders firms from building a successful position in the market. An additional crucial hindrance is the non‐existence of a market economy network of relationships that can provide firms in the private sector with the resources they need to perform their operations. Since the paper is based on case studies and focus group discussions, conducting a similar study on a representative sample of firms selected from a larger population will be very useful.Originality/valueThis paper makes a unique contribution by focusing on the establishment process in a market, which is regulated, controlled and owned by the one party government. The other unique contribution is that a firm has to identify the secrets of business success and to follow the same strategy.

Conceptualizing Civil Society in Africa: The Case of Eritrea

The article analyses the evolution of civil society in Eritrea. It has two sections. The first section critically analyses the notion of civil society. It argues that the Eurocentric or conventional perception of the notion of civil society fails to capture the reality in Africa. The second section, the case of Eritrea (the empirical part), deals with a specific type of civil society. The Eritrean civil society is an outcome of colonial-, liberation- and post-liberation-induced societal reality. The article traces the emergence of civil society in Eritrea in its diverse forms through the historical trajectories of pre-colonial, colonial, liberation and post-liberation eras. It maps out the development of civil society in Eritrea.

The Quest for Cooperation in the Nile Water Conflicts: The Case of Eritrea

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Colonialism and the Construction of National Identities: The Case of Eritrea

In spite of the common agreement on the relevance of Italian rule on the political and social shaping of Eritrea, little investigation has been carried out to analyse the political, juridical and economical, nature of the colonial system in Eritrea and its impact on Eritrean society. This article focuses on the structure and strategies of the colonial state in Eritrea. Special attention is given to the development of an alternative juridical and institutional system for colonial subjects, which is described as both a key aspect of the development and consolidation of colonial powers and a crucial factor in moulding new identities. The final section of the article discusses relations between the colonial state and local elites. It is a common assumption that one of the main negative consequences of the harsh policies adopted by Italian colonialism in order to frustrate Eritrean aspiration and access to education was the suppression of a local elite. It is argued that, while true in a general sense, this assumption needs to be examined more closely. For, in spite of repressive colonial policies, a small and ‘informal’ Eritrean elite grew up during the fifty-one years of official Italian colonial rule, many members of this germinal ‘elite’ going on to play an important role in post-colonial Eritrea.

Human resource management and performance in a developing country: the case of Eritrea

This study investigates the relationship between human resource management (HRM) practices and organizational performance. Results based on a sample of 82 organizations from private and public sectors in Eritrea indicate that some of the practices have a significant impact on employee turnover, absenteeism, grievances and productivity. While compensation was the only independent variable found to be statistically significant in affecting grievances, employee selection had no effect across all performance measures. However, the study's results offer support for the assertion that investments in HRM practices results in better organizational performance.