Open Letter to Boundary Commission by The Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Front (ARDUF)
18/01/2002
Sir Eliahu Lauterpacht
President of the Eritrean-Ethiopian
Boundary Commission
The Registrar
Permanent Court of Arbitration
Peace Palace
The Hague,
Netherlands.Dear Sir Eliahu Lauterpacht,
RE: Our Position on Ethio-Eritrean Peace Accord & Border Demarcation:
Please find enclosed with this letter a copy of our letter addressed to His Excellency, Mr. Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the UN, dated 25/05/2001 where ARDUF clarifies its position on the Ethio-Eritrean Peace accord signed in Algeria on 18th of June and 12th of December 2000.
Peaceful coexistence and lasting peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea demand, prior to boundary demarcation, the resolution of the outstanding political and legal issues of the Afar people with the regime in Eritrea. Many appear to think that the Afar political and legal issues are a source of conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea. However, the Afar people themselves believe the reverse. They see their nationalist aspirations as a bridge to peace between two political entities. The Eritrean government has to work out a method of peaceful coexistence or remain mired in endless conflict and instability. It is the people who reside on both sides of the confrontation who bear the full brunt of war and political instability.
The 1908 colonial treaty constitutes the basis of the current arbitration to demarcate the eastern boundary between Ethiopia and Eritrea. At the time of the treaty neither the Italian nor the Ethiopian authorities had comprehensive knowledge of the area or of the tribal configuration of the indigenous Afar people. Therefore ARDUF would like to bring certain points to the attention of the UN, the Boundary Commission and Court of Arbitration.
In the first place, the treaty of 1908 wrongly implies that there are limitrophe tribes belonging specifically to either the Italian colony of Eritrea and to the Ethiopian Empire. In fact the same Afar tribes resided on both sides of the border. The traditional Afar authorities of the Rahaita, Biru and Awsa Sultanates extended from the Red Sea coast deep into the hinterland of Ethiopia, as they still do today. The colonial treaty of 1908, as all arbitrary colonial treaties, divided Afar tribes of one and same tribal lineage, and indeed Afar families, into two different antagonistic political entities. This violated the basic human rights of the family, and continues to violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Afars were prevented from pursuing a common political evolution or social progress.
The result was that during the recent war between Ethiopia and Eritrea (May 1998-June 2000) relatives, distant and close, were forced to face each other in the battlefield; some aligned to the Eritrean side, others to Ethiopia. The Eritrean government forcibly conscripted Afars from Djibouti and Ethiopia into its army. The Eritrean officials, who in peacetime deny Afars their rights of citizenship, during the war, were quick to identify Afars as Eritreans and potential soldiers.
The 1908 treaty was, of course, concluded between unequal powers. The Italian government was obsessed with creating an Italian colony in the shape of Italy. It had no consideration for the culture, the traditional administration or the natural human society of the Afar people. Indeed only the Second World War and the defeat of the Axis powers prevented the Italian government from excavating a canal from the Gulf of Zula and flooding the Afar or Danakil Depression apparently intending to create an inland Adriatic Sea so the colony of Eritrea might more nearly resemble Italy. From this and other implications ARDUF believes there are clear indications that the colonial treaty of 1908 was imposed on Ethiopia as it was on the Afars.
In addition, ARDUF would like to bring to the attention of the UN, the Boundary Commission and the Court of Arbitration that the colonial treaty of 1908 was not confined to boundary demarcation between the Italian colony of Eritrea and Ethiopia. The Convention also contains references to the rights of the Afar people who resided on both sides of the frontier line. The Convention of 1908, stipulated that the two governments, of Italy and Ethiopia, should " fix and adopt the frontier with the nature and variation of the ground". It also noted that "the two governments formally undertake to recognize reciprocally the ancient rights and prerogative of the limitrophe tribes without regard to their political dependence; mutually undertake not to take any action, which may give rise to questions or incidents or disturb the tranquillity of the frontier tribes." and to establish by common accord the rights of the Afar people "on the basis of their traditional and usual resistance". However, these tasks were not given any additional legal framework, nor have they been considered subsequently; technically, the issue remains pending.
Nor has any progress been made in this direction by the two current governments of Eritrea and Ethiopia. They are not in any state of normal interaction, nor are they able to define the rights of the Afar people in present circumstances. Therefore, ARDUF believes it is the responsibility of the international community to take a proactive role, on behalf of the Afar people and of peace. ARDUF believes that the international community should engage the two governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea in a dialogue to work out the necessary legal framework for the rights of the Afar people in accordance with the spirit of the colonial treaty of 1908 and for all their outstanding political and legal issues. If the international community limits its efforts to boundary demarcation alone, the peace process will remain clearly incomplete.
ARDUF strongly recommends that the international community should postpone the declaration of the findings of the Boundary Commission and the demarcation of the border between the two countries. It should first concentrate its efforts on finding a just solution to all the outstanding political and legal issues that have haunted the former Italian colony of Eritrea and Ethiopia throughout their common history. In the context of the new international political order, concentration on the resolution of problems between two peoples, instead of the more traditional approach of working to resolve purely political problems between warring governments, would appear to have more prospect of success.
Any declaration of the findings of the Border Commission without resolution of the outstanding political and legal issues between the two political entities of Ethiopia and Eritrea is effectively tantamount to planting the seeds for another round of conflict between land-locked Ethiopia and the strangling European colonial legacy of Eritrea. Equally, the imposition of an unjust solution, which does not accommodate the national pride of the Ethiopian peoples and the Afar people along that border, will remain the source of conflict. As in other similar cases, it cannot produce any lasting peace.
We would reiterate: ARDUF appeals to the United Nations, the Boundary Commission, the Court of Arbitration and the international community to seal all possible loopholes in the peace process, to prevent any further bloodshed and instability in the region by resolving all outstanding political and legal issues between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and to hammer out a peace deal for the two peoples which incorporates the needs of the Afar people and recognizes the realities of the situation along the border.
Best regards.
Sincerely,
Mohamoda Ahmed Gaas
Secretary General of ARDUF
CC.
1. Mr. Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General
2. UN Security Council
[Opinions in this article are solely that of the writer.]