Isaias Afwerki Has Turned Eritrea's Youth Into Refugees Fleeing Sudan's War

Eritreans are fleeing their own country and walking into a war zone. Many of them are teenagers who were never given a choice about whether to serve. Some of them have spent years under a national service system that never ends, and then they run for the border only to find Sudan's guns waiting on the other side.

Ask yourself what kind of state makes its young people more afraid of home than of a civil war. Eritrea under Isaias Afwerki has built exactly that kind of state. Its national service was meant to last 18 months, but for most conscripts it has stretched into years, sometimes decades, with pay so low that families must send money just to keep their children alive. Those who try to leave are treated as deserters. The UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in Eritrea has documented arbitrary detention, torture, and forced labour, and in 2016 it concluded that the government may have committed crimes against humanity. Seven years on, the regime has not answered for any of it.

So they run. Eritreans have long made up a large share of the refugee population in eastern Sudan, and UNHCR's overview, which tracks the situation as of the end of October 2026, shows that the people who reached Sudan are now living inside a second catastrophe. Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have turned large parts of the country into battlefields since April 2023. Khartoum, Gezira, Darfur, and Kordofan have seen killings, sexual violence, mass displacement, and the collapse of basic services. Refugees who came to Sudan to escape one dictatorship now have to survive a war that neither they nor the Sudanese people started.

Think about what that means in practice. A young Eritrean who escaped conscription arrives in Sudan with no money and no papers. He or she cannot easily register, cannot easily work legally, and cannot easily move without being stopped at checkpoints controlled by men with guns and no accountability. Women face sexual violence. Children miss school. Families split up, with some members pushed toward Libya and the Mediterranean because staying is no longer survivable. Human traffickers have built entire business models on this desperation, and the people who pay them often end up in detention centres or at the bottom of the sea.

This is not an accident of geography. The Eritrean government's model depends on exporting its problems. Conscription creates a stream of people who would rather risk everything than serve indefinitely, and the regime treats that flight as a security threat rather than a verdict on its own failure. Meanwhile, the Sudanese generals who are supposed to protect civilians have shown they can barely protect themselves, let alone the refugees living among them. The result is that a government which refuses to let its citizens leave in safety and a war that refuses to end are squeezing the same vulnerable people from both sides.

The wider pattern should alarm every African capital. Across the Horn of Africa and the Sahel, young people are being told that their futures are somewhere else because there is no future at home. Some of them are fleeing dictatorships like Eritrea's. Others are fleeing juntas, insurgencies, or collapsed states. Every one of those departures is a verdict on the governance of the country left behind. A continent with more than a billion people should not be exporting its youth as a survival strategy.

The solutions are not mysterious, and Africa has already proven some of them work. Botswana built one of the continent's most stable economies by protecting property rights, maintaining an independent judiciary, and keeping its institutions accountable to its citizens. Mauritius rose from a plantation economy to a diversified, rules-based economy by making transparency and the rule of law non-negotiable. Senegal, for all its challenges, has shown that peaceful democratic transitions are possible when courts, electoral commissions, and civil society refuse to bow to power. Those are the building blocks: strong institutions, equal application of law, and free economic opportunity that gives young people a reason to stay.

For Eritrea, the first demand is simple. End indefinite national service. Release those detained for trying to leave. Allow independent human rights monitors and humanitarian agencies into the country. The African Union's Peace and Security Council should stop treating Asmara's silence as a diplomatic courtesy and start naming the conscription system for what it is, a form of forced labour that drives mass flight. Targeted sanctions against officials implicated in abuses, along with a travel-ban and asset-freeze regime, would send a message that impunity has a price.

For Sudan, the answer begins with ending the war. That requires pressure on both the army and the RSF to accept a ceasefire, to open humanitarian corridors, and to allow UNHCR and partner agencies to reach refugees wherever they are. The African Union, IGAD, and the Arab League have all claimed a stake in Sudan's future. It is time they proved it with more than communiqués. Refugees must be registered with dignity, given documents that let them work and move safely, and protected from the traffickers who prey on them. Wealthier partners who fund border management should be asked, plainly, whether they are paying for walls or for protection.

Civil society and the private sector have a role too. Diaspora networks, local businesses, and faith communities in Sudan and across the region already feed, house, and educate refugees when governments fail them. They deserve legal space to do so and protection from harassment. Employers who hire refugees legally should be rewarded with clear rules and fair treatment, because a refugee with a job is less vulnerable to traffickers and more able to rebuild a life.

And you, the reader, have a part to play. Ask your government what it has said about Eritrea's conscription system. Ask your parliamentarians whether they have raised the Eritrean refugee crisis at the African Union or the UN Human Rights Council. Ask the media houses you follow why coverage of Sudan's war so rarely mentions the Eritrean teenagers caught in it. Silence is what the regime in Asmara counts on, and silence is what allows the generals in Port Sudan and Khartoum to keep fighting.

We cannot accept a continent where a young person's safest option is a desert crossing and a rubber boat. We cannot accept a dictator who treats his own citizens as a resource to be drafted and then forgotten. We cannot accept a war that makes refugees of the refugees. The people fleeing Eritrea are not asking for charity. They are asking for the basic promise every African government should have made to its citizens long ago: that you can live, work, and grow up without being hunted for your freedom. Demand that promise from every leader who claims to speak for Africa, and do not stop demanding it until the last conscript is free to go home.

Based on reporting by RELIEFWEB