On this page, you will find:
To find organisations working for LGBTQI+ rights, visit our Eritrea LGBTQI+ Resources page.
To find organisations providing legal or other types of assistance to refugees in Eritrea, visit our Eritrea Legal Assistance page.
COI Experts
Email: benrawlence@gmail.com
Mr Rawlence is a Country of Origin expert on the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Eritea, and Somalia. He has written numerous articles on issues occuring in the region and also written two books including City of Thorns: Fear and Longing in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp (forthcoming, 2015) and Radio Congo: Signals of Hope from Africa’s Deadliest War. Mr Rawlence can speak Swahili. He worked as a researcher on Eritrea for Human Rights Watch from 2008-2012. Although he never granted access to the country, he has interviewed hundreds of refugees in exile about their experiences, especially, the state system of mandatory military service and the network of prisons.
Email: danielrezene@gmail.com
Dr. Daniel R. Mekonnen is an Eritrean human rights lawyer, and a former Judge of the Central Provincial Court in Asmara (Eritrea). He has written numerous expert reports to immigration tribunals, lawyers and NGOs in Africa, Europe, Middle East and North America. Having lived and worked in 9 different countries (South Africa, Belgium, Holland, Ireland, Germany, UK, Norway, Hungary and Switzerland), he has assumed several academic and professional appointments, including that of a Senior Legal Advisor and Research Professor at the Oslo-based International Law and Policy Institute (ILPI), a Visiting Fellow at the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law, a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, and a Research Fellow at the School of Law in Queen’s University Belfast. His book (co-authored with Kjetil Tronvoll, 2014), The African Garrison State: Human Rights and Political Development in Eritrea, was included in the “Outstanding Academic Titles” list of January 2015, published by the CHOICE magazine of the American Library Association (ALA). His opinions/speeches/interviews have been widely featured in the following international forums and global media outlets: the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, the Geneva Summit on Human Rights and Democracy, Al-Jazeera TV, BBC, Boston’s NPR News, Die Wochenzeitung, Deutsche Welle, International Business Times, IRIN News, Klassekampen, Neue Luzerner Zeitung, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, New Europe, Radio Erena, Radio France International, Radio RaBe (Bern), Russia Today, SBS Radio Australia, Swiss Radio and Television, The Guardian, Tages-Anzeiger, Tribune de Genève, TRT TV, Zofinger Tagblatt, Voice of America. Further information is available from his personal website
Email: kibreag@lsbu.ac.uk
Professor Gaim Kibreab, Research Professor and Course Director of the MSc Refugee Studies, London South Bank University, School of Law and Social Sciences in the Department of Social Science. He earned a PhD degree from Uppsala University, Sweden, Faculty of Social Sciences/Institute of Economic History. He has published widely on forced migration (refugees, development-induced displacement, internally displaced persons, and environmentally-induced population displacement), development and governance in post-conflict societies, and he has been conducting research in Eritrea since the 1980s. He is currently working on causes of forced migration in post-independence Eritrea.
Email: harryverhoeven33@gmail.com
Dr Harry Verhoeven is the Convenor of the Oxford University China-Africa Network, an Associate Member of the Department of Politics & International Relations at the University of Oxford and a Senior Adviser to the European Institute of Peace. Prof Verhoeven completed a doctorate at the University of Oxford, where he subsequently was a postdoctoral fellow and a Junior Research Fellow. He is the author and editor of five books and deeply invested in the human rights of individuals and communities in the countries where he works.
Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, LMU Munich
Email: magnus.treiber@ethnologie.lmu.de
Dr Treiber is an anthropologist and teaches at Munich University, Germany. He has a regional focus on the Horn of Africa and can provide country of origin information for Eritrea, Ethiopia and Eritrean and Ethiopian migrants in the Sudan.
Email: samuelayele90@gmail.com
Dr Samuel A Bekalo has conducted research and published widely on Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan. He has lived and worked in the region and regularly visits the area since the 1960s. He has written over 100 expert and documentation authentication reports on these countries. His scholarly reports are based on first-hand experience and benefit from his knowledge of Amharic, Oromo, Arabic, Tigrinya, and Kiswahili. In recent years, Dr Bekalo has worked as a Research Fellow at the International School of Education of the University of Leeds (UK), where he was involved in the capacity building project North-South Higher Education Institutions Link programme for Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan.
Email: arapiles@icasal.com
Profile and publications
Twitter: @Arapiles_Sara
Dr Sara Arapiles is a Postdoctoral Fellow in international human rights law and refugee law at the Faculty of Law of Lund University. She completed her PhD research on ‘Slavery in Refugee Status Determination Procedures in Europe: A Comparative Socio-Legal Study of Approaches to Eritrean Protection Claims’ at the University of Nottingham. Dr Arapiles has extensive knowledge of and experience in researching and writing about refugee rights, with an emphasis on the matters relating to the persecution of Eritreans and their international protection needs. She is also engaged with exiled Eritrean human rights organisations and supports their capacity building. Dr Arapiles earned her PhD and MA in Socio-Legal Studies from the University of Nottingham, her LLM in International and European Law from the Institute for European Studies of the Free University of Brussels, and her Law Degree from the University of Salamanca, and is a member of the Spanish Bar Association.
Associate Professor of Anthropology
Director, MA Program in Social Justice and Human Rights
Arizona State University, Glendale, AZ, USA
Email: Tricia.M.Redeker-Hepner@asu.edu
Dr Redeker Hepner has studied the socio-political dynamics of Eritrea and its diasporas for more than twenty years, and formerly served as Eritrea Country Specialist for Amnesty International USA. Dr Hepner has provided expert testimony in hundreds of Eritrean asylum cases and has acted as a consultant for attorneys and legal aid providers in the US, Canada, Europe, and the Middle East. Her active research agenda focuses on Eritrean refugees, transnational governance and repression, and rights-based organizing in the US, Europe, and Ethiopia. Two of her books include Soldiers, Martyrs, Traitors and Exiles: Political Conflict in Eritrea and the Diaspora (University of Pennsylvania Press) and Biopolitics, Militarism and Development: Eritrea in the Twenty-first Century, co-edited with David O’Kane (Berghahn Books). Dr. Hepner earned her MA and PhD in Anthropology from Michigan State University and a Certificate in Refugee Studies from York University, Toronto. She is currently on the faculty of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Arizona State University’s New College for Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences.
PLEASE NOTE: Due to the demands of university work and existing obligations, Dr. Hepner can only provide occasional statements on specific cases with longer timelines. If she does not respond to your request within 2 days please locate another expert.
President: John Stauffer
Tel: +1 61 08 91 84 70
Email: Mail@EritreanRefugees.org
The America Team for Displaced Eritreans provide links to COI information pertaining to Eritrean refugees. Initiatives include assisting with scholarships for Eritrean refugees seeking higher education in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and providing personal support to refugees in the USA who have come from Shimelba Refugee Camp, Ethiopia. They are not currently able to answer requests for general information but may be able to provide expert testimony in specific cases on request.
International Crisis Group, Eritrea: The Siege State, Africa Report N°163, 21 September 2010 – An excellent country report from a renowned organisation which may be a potential source of up-to-date COI for asylum applications.
COI Resources
The following sections contain documents that can be consulted when looking for country of origin information.
Click here to see the report.
This EASO COI report on Eritrea was drafted by the Swiss State Secretariat for Migration (SEM), Division Analysis. The report updates and expands on the EASO COI report on national service and illegal exit (in Eritrea) from 2016. It provides a brief overview of Eritrea’s latest political developments, in the period 2016-2019, including the rapprochement with Ethiopia, the legal framework in force, and the relevant human rights issues. For the same reference period, the report then focuses on three main topics: (1) structure and functioning of the national service; (2) legal and illegal exit from the country; (3) voluntary and forced return. Transversally to the above mentioned subjects, the report details forms of punishment and treatment of deserters, draft evaders, persons illegally exiting the country, and returnees. Besides relevant public and governmental sources, the report relies extensively on interviews with key informants and experts, which were mostly carried out in the period May-July 2019.
Click here to see the Report.
This Dutch COI report describes the current situation in Eritrea insofar as it is
relevant to the assessment of asylum applications from persons originating from
Eritrea and to decisions on the repatriation of rejected Eritrean asylum-seekers. It is
an update of previous COI reports on the situation in Eritrea (most recently from
July 2015), and covers the period from August 2015 to November 2016.
The report is based on information from public and confidential sources. Use has
been made of information from various UN agencies, non-governmental
organisations (NGOs), the Eritrean government, specialist literature and media
reporting, among other sources.
The report is also based on observations and confidential reports of the Dutch
diplomatic mission in Khartoum (Sudan), which also represents the Netherlands in
Eritrea; in addition, a fact-finding mission to Eritrea took place in September 2016.
The mission took place in Asmara and villages in the surrounding area, in Mendefera
and Keren. The Eritrean government was informed of the mission, which was
accompanied by a government representative to Keren and Mendefera, but operated
without government guidance in Asmara and the surrounding area. In the course of
the mission, discussions took place with representatives of the Eritrean government,
international diplomatic missions, local and international organisations and – in the
absence of government officials – with a large number of Eritrean citizens. In
addition, the mission visited Endebaguna in Ethiopia, Khartoum and East Sudan in
order to gather information on the situation in Eritrea and the reception of Eritrean
refugees in Ethiopia and Sudan.
Click here to see a collection of annual COI reports on Eritrea by ECOI.net.
Document link
UNHCR Eligibility Guidelines offer a legal interpretation of the refugee criteria in respect of specific profiles on the basis of social, economic, security, human rights, and humanitarian conditions in the country/territory of origin concerned.
Eritrea Legal Assistance
Find organisations offering legal and other types of assistance to refugees in Eritrea.
Eritrea LGBTQI+ Resources
Find organisations working for refugee LGBTQI+ rights in Eritrea.
We are always looking to expand the resources on our platform. If you know about relevant experts, or you are aware of organisations and/or resources to include in our directories, please get in touch.
Last updated November 2024
