Eritrea Holds 320,000 Citizens in Indefinite Military Service. The Exodus Continues.

Eritrea maintains approximately 320,000 citizens in indefinite national service, according to UN Human Rights Council documentation published in March 2026, making it one of the world's most militarised societies per capita. What began in 1995 as an 18-month conscription programme has evolved into a system of permanent servitude that the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in Eritrea has characterised as forced labour on a massive scale.

For Merhawi Tekeste, a 34-year-old former conscript who reached Sudan in February 2026, the decision to flee came after 16 years in uniform. He had been drafted in 2010 at age 18, assigned to a construction battalion building government infrastructure in the western lowlands, and paid 500 nakfa monthly—approximately 33 US dollars at black market rates. "They tell you it's temporary, that you'll be released when the nation no longer needs you," he said in an interview at a UNHCR transit centre in Kassala. "But the nation always needs you. There is no end date."

The system underpins nearly every aspect of Eritrean governance. Conscripts build roads, staff hospitals, teach in schools, harvest crops on state farms, and serve in military units along the borders with Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Sudan. The United Nations estimates that between 5,000 and 8,000 Eritreans flee the country each month, with the majority citing indefinite conscription as their primary motivation. Since 2015, more than 580,000 Eritreans have sought asylum abroad—nearly 10 percent of the nation's population of 6.2 million.

A Nation on Permanent War Footing

Eritrea achieved independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after a 30-year liberation war. President Isaias Afwerki, who led the Eritrean People's Liberation Front during that struggle, has governed without elections, a constitution, or an independent judiciary ever since. When border tensions with Ethiopia erupted into full-scale war between 1998 and 2000, killing an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 people, Isaias formalised the national service programme through Proclamation 82/1995, extending service indefinitely under the pretext of national emergency.

The Algiers Agreement of December 2000 ended active hostilities, and the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission issued its final ruling in 2002, awarding the contested town of Badme to Eritrea. Ethiopia refused to accept the verdict. For two decades, Isaias justified the continuation of indefinite conscription by citing the unresolved border dispute and the threat of Ethiopian invasion. Even after Ethiopia and Eritrea signed a peace agreement in July 2018, and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed symbolically handed Badme back to Eritrea in 2019, the national service system remained unchanged.

According to the Danish Refugee Council's 2025 report on Eritrea, conscripts can be held in service until age 55 for men and 50 for women. During that time, they are assigned to military units, government ministries, state-owned enterprises, or infrastructure projects. Wages are set centrally and have not increased in real terms since 2015. Many conscripts work second jobs—often illegally—to support their families, creating a shadow economy that government officials tolerate as long as conscripts remain available for deployment.

The Human Cost

Selam Ghebremedhin, a 29-year-old conscript who reached Italy via Libya in 2024, described the system as a form of generational erasure. She was drafted at 19, assigned to a medical clinic in Keren, and given no indication of when—or if—she would be released. "You cannot marry without permission. You cannot leave your city without a travel permit. You cannot open a business. Your entire life is suspended," she told researchers from Human Rights Watch in December 2025. "When I turned 27, I realised I would never have children, never own a home, never make a decision about my own future. So I left."

The demographic consequences are profound. Eritrea's fertility rate has fallen to 3.1 births per woman, down from 5.4 in 2000, according to the World Bank. The exodus of young adults has left a generation gap in the labour force. The International Organization for Migration estimates that 78 percent of Eritrean asylum seekers in Europe are between the ages of 18 and 35—precisely the cohort that would otherwise be building families, businesses, and civil society institutions.

Despite the risks, thousands continue to flee each month. Smuggling networks operate openly in Kassala, Khartoum, and northern Ethiopia, charging between 2,000 and 5,000 US dollars to guide Eritreans across the border and onward to Libya or Sudan. Many are trafficked into forced labour or sexual exploitation. A 2024 investigation by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime found that Eritrean trafficking routes now overlap with those used by Sudanese and Somali refugees, creating hubs of exploitation in Khartoum, Tripoli, and Benghazi.

Regional Entanglements

Eritrea's militarised society serves a foreign policy built on strategic opportunism. Between November 2020 and December 2022, Eritrean forces fought alongside Ethiopian federal troops in the Tigray War, committing what UN investigators described as war crimes, including massacres in Axum and other Tigrayan towns. The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission documented at least 2,400 civilian deaths attributable to Eritrean forces during the conflict. Despite the formal peace deal signed in November 2022, Eritrean troops remain deployed in parts of western Tigray, according to satellite imagery analysed by the Conflict Observatory in March 2026.

The conscription system makes such deployments possible. Unlike professional armies that must balance troop rotations and morale, Eritrea can deploy indefinite-service conscripts with no political cost. During the Tigray War, entire battalions were mobilised from construction units and sent to the front with minimal training. Desertion rates were high—Human Rights Watch interviewed 14 former conscripts who described mass defections during the fighting—but those who fled faced the same choice as any other escapee: exile or imprisonment.

Eritrea also hosts foreign military infrastructure, including a Russian naval logistics facility at Assab and a UAE military base that was active during the Yemen war between 2015 and 2019. The Assab port, which once served as a major Red Sea hub, now generates revenue primarily from military leases and fuel shipments. Conscripts provide the labour: dock workers, fuel handlers, and construction crews are drawn from national service battalions assigned to the port.

Why the System Persists

International pressure has achieved little. The European Union imposed an arms embargo in 2010, but Eritrea has no domestic arms industry and sources weapons from Russia, China, and North Korea. The UN Security Council imposed sanctions in 2009, accusing Eritrea of supporting al-Shabaab in Somalia, but those sanctions were lifted in 2018 after Ethiopia and Eritrea signed their peace deal. The UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in Eritrea, established in 2014, documented systematic abuses but was dissolved in 2021 after opposition from Ethiopia and other African states.

Eritrea's government insists that national service is a necessary response to external threats. In a rare public statement in January 2025, Yemane Gebreab, the head of political affairs for the ruling People's Front for Democracy and Justice, told state media that "the defence of sovereignty is not negotiable" and that "nations with hostile neighbours cannot afford to disarm." He did not specify which neighbours posed a current threat.

The conscription system also serves an economic function. State-owned enterprises in mining, construction, and agriculture rely on conscript labour paid at below-market wages. The Bisha gold and copper mine, operated by a Canadian-Eritrean joint venture, has faced repeated accusations of using national service labour. The company, Nevsun Resources (later acquired by Zijin Mining Group), settled a lawsuit in Canadian courts in 2020 brought by former conscripts who alleged forced labour, though the company denied wrongdoing.

What Comes Next

There is no indication that Eritrea will end or even reform its conscription system. Isaias Afwerki, now 80, has ruled for 33 years without naming a successor or establishing a process for political transition. The ruling party maintains a monopoly on political organisation, and no independent civil society exists within the country. The few Eritrean opposition groups operate in exile, fragmented and with little influence inside the country.

Western governments have largely accepted Eritrea's isolation as a fact of regional politics. The United States closed its embassy in Asmara in 2020 and has not reopened it. The European Union maintains diplomatic contact primarily through its humanitarian programmes, which are restricted to projects approved by the government. Italy, which colonised Eritrea from 1890 to 1941, has sought to negotiate migration control agreements with Asmara, offering development aid in exchange for cooperation on deportations, but those talks have yielded little.

For those trapped inside the system, the future is measured in survival strategies: how to avoid the most dangerous deployments, how to secure extra income, how to maintain contact with family members who have fled. The United Nations Development Programme ranks Eritrea 176th out of 193 countries on its Human Development Index, placing it among the poorest nations on Earth. Life expectancy is 67 years. GDP per capita is 640 US dollars.

Merhawi Tekeste, the conscript who reached Sudan in February, said he has no plans to return. He applied for refugee status and hopes to resettle in Europe or North America. His younger brother, still in uniform in Eritrea, has stopped answering his calls. "He knows that talking to someone who fled is dangerous," Merhawi said. "But he also knows that one day he will make the same choice. Everyone does. It's just a question of when."