In May 2019 IDN-InDepthNews reported from Brussels that hope for change inside Eritrea after the July 2018 Ethiopia-Eritrea peace agreement had already faded, and that people were still leaving.
Nearly a year after Abiy Ahmed’s handshake with Isaias Afwerki, indefinite national service and closed politics kept pushing Eritreans onto the same migrant routes through Sudan, Libya, and Europe. Peace next door did not rewrite life inside a one-party security state.
The Horn’s refugee story is often told only as Ethiopia’s IDP crisis. This file keeps Eritrea’s continuing outflow on the same shelf, because Red Sea and Mediterranean arrivals did not pause for ribbon cuttings.
As migration archive, the IDN assessment is a dated warning: diplomatic thaw without domestic reform still exports people.
Sources: IDN-InDepthNews