Silence is not Neutrality. It is Abdication!

By David Yeh

The African Union Commission’s statement on tensions involving Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Egypt is a study in institutional avoidance. It presents itself as a call for restraint while refusing to confront the conduct that produced the tensions in the first place. By grouping three countries into a single vague category, the AU protects diplomatic convenience at the expense of responsibility, truth, and the principles of its own Constitutive Act.

The crisis did not emerge from some abstract triangular dispute. It followed years of Ethiopian political provocations, territorial rhetoric, and unilateral actions that directly threatened Eritrea’s sovereignty. For more than three years, Ethiopia’s leadership has questioned the legitimacy of Eritrea’s independence, dismissed its thirty-year struggle for independence and the 1993 UN-observed referendum, and publicly entertained the acquisition of Eritrean ports by force. Senior Ethiopian military figures have displayed maps depicting large parts of Eritrea within Ethiopia. These were not misunderstandings. They were explicit challenges to the territorial integrity of a sovereign member state. Yet the AU remained silent, choosing institutional comfort over the principles it was created to defend.

Principles Must Mean Something

The Commission invokes the AU Constitutive Act as though mentioning it were sufficient. It is not. Article 4 establishes clear obligations: respect for borders existing at independence, peaceful settlement of disputes, and prohibition of the use or threat of force among member states. These provisions are supposed to govern the Union’s response to crises, not decorate communiqués whose authors decline to apply them.

Where, then, is the unequivocal declaration that Eritrea’s coastline belongs to Eritrea? Where is the warning that economic need, population size, or strategic ambition confers no entitlement to another country’s territory? Maritime access can be negotiated, but it cannot become a license to redraw borders, threaten force, or intimidate a sovereign neighbor. If the AU believes its own Constitutive Act, it should be capable of saying so without qualification.

That responsibility is even greater because the OAU, succeeded by the African Union, was not a bystander to the Eritrea–Ethiopia peace process. It played a central role in the negotiations that culminated in the Algiers Agreement and was among its witnesses and guarantors. In 2006, the AU joined an explicit call for implementation of the Eritrea–Ethiopia Boundary Commission’s decision without qualification, reaffirming that the Commission’s determinations were final and binding. Yet in the years that followed, the AU failed to sustain that position with the same clarity and urgency, even as implementation of the EEBC decision remained stalled due to Ethiopia’s refusal.

The failure went beyond the boundary question. The Algiers Agreement also envisaged an independent and impartial investigation, under OAU auspices and in consultation with the United Nations, into the origins of the conflict and the incidents of July and August 1997 and May 1998 that preceded the war. That investigation was intended to establish the facts surrounding how the 1998–2000 conflict began. Yet this responsibility was never carried through to its intended conclusion.

That history makes the AU’s present posture particularly difficult to defend. An organization entrusted with responsibilities arising from the agreement cannot allow those responsibilities to disappear into institutional memory and then return decades later merely to urge the parties to “dialogue.” The AU failed to sustain pressure for implementation of a final and binding boundary decision, and it failed to complete the investigation into the origins of a devastating war that the agreement specifically contemplated. Its present reluctance to speak plainly about renewed territorial rhetoric therefore does not arise in a vacuum. It follows a long record of responsibilities assumed, principles proclaimed, and obligations left unfinished.

No wonder, then, that the AU’s latest appeal for dialogue rings hollow. Before prescribing another round of diplomacy to Eritrea, the Union should account for the responsibilities it already accepted—and failed to discharge. The AU cannot now behave as though its responsibility begins and ends with another appeal for dialogue. What meaning does a binding settlement retain if its guarantors retreat into generic calls for discussion whenever the settlement becomes politically inconvenient? When institutions refuse to defend an agreed legal outcome, they reward obstruction and teach governments that persistence in defiance may eventually accomplish what they failed to secure through arbitration.

A guarantor unwilling to defend what it guaranteed risks becoming little more than a witness to its own irrelevance.

Ethiopia’s Pattern of Interference, and the AU’s Silence

For the past three years, since the end of the 2020–2022 Tigray war, Ethiopia has been openly arming and training “Eritrean” groups designated as terrorist organizations by European governments, particularly the German government. These groups have been provided with financing and offices in Addis Ababa in the hope of bringing about regime change in Eritrea by force. Ethiopia is grooming any group willing to support its pursuit of sovereign access to the Red Sea.

The concern over interference in neighboring states, however, is not confined to Eritrea. Similar Ethiopian involvement has emerged in Sudan and Somalia, creating a broader pattern that should concern an African Union whose Constitutive Act explicitly embraces the principle of “non-interference by any Member State in the internal affairs of another.”

Sudan presents perhaps the most immediate test of the AU’s institutional seriousness. The Sudanese Armed Forces have accused Ethiopia of providing cross-border assistance to the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan’s ongoing civil war. Reports citing diplomatic and intelligence sources, documents, and satellite imagery have also alleged the existence of training facilities inside Ethiopia, including a camp in the Benishangul-Gumuz region used by RSF fighters and recruits. Sudanese officials have further alleged that Ethiopian territory has facilitated logistical support and drone operations against the Sudanese army, as well as the movement of South American mercenary forces.

In Somalia, Ethiopia has repeatedly pursued its political, economic, and security interests through direct relationships with regional administrations and breakaway regions, including Puntland, Somaliland, Jubaland, and local actors in Gedo, often bypassing the internationally recognized federal government in Mogadishu. The most consequential example was Ethiopia’s memorandum of understanding with Somaliland, which contemplated Ethiopian maritime access and a military presence in exchange for the prospect of diplomatic recognition, triggering a serious rupture with Somalia.

The AU Commission responded by reaffirming Somalia’s unity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity. That response was appropriate, but declarations require diplomatic follow-through. Defending sovereignty requires consistent application of the principle, scrutiny of arrangements that may conflict with it, and support for peaceful solutions that respect the territorial integrity of member states. The same standard the AU invoked in defense of Somalia should apply when the sovereignty of Eritrea, Sudan, or any other African state is at issue.

Although Turkish mediation subsequently helped restore diplomatic relations between Addis Ababa and Mogadishu, the underlying concern remains. Ethiopia’s direct dealings with regional authorities have challenged the federal government’s authority over foreign relations and, from Mogadishu’s perspective, risked weakening Somalia’s sovereignty and encouraging centrifugal forces within an already fragile federal system.

South Sudan adds another layer to this volatile regional environment. The Ethiopia–South Sudan frontier has long experienced cross-border violence involving local armed groups and communities around Gambella and neighboring areas of South Sudan. Although Addis Ababa and Juba maintain diplomatic relations, instability in Sudan and shifting regional alliances increase the danger that local conflicts and proxy rivalries will spill across borders.

Taken together, these developments raise serious questions about Ethiopia’s role in the increasingly unstable politics of the Horn of Africa and present a direct test of whether the African Union is prepared to apply its own principles consistently. If a member state is training, arming, financing, or otherwise assisting forces seeking to destabilize another member state, the matter goes directly to the principle of non-interference contained in Article 4 of the AU Constitutive Act. A continental institution entrusted with peace and security should pursue credible evidence impartially, regardless of which government is implicated.

The AU therefore has a responsibility to investigate credible allegations consistently and impartially. Article 4 cannot be invoked when politically convenient and forgotten when enforcement becomes uncomfortable. If non-interference, sovereignty, and territorial integrity are genuine continental principles, they must apply equally to every member state and every government, including the government of the country that hosts the African Union. Otherwise, principles cease to be principles and become diplomatic preferences.

The Commission’s latest appeal to preserve channels of communication exposes the same contradiction. Ethiopia has closed its embassy in Asmara and expelled Eritrean diplomats, yet the AU speaks of preserving dialogue while declining to confront the very actions dismantling it. The pattern has become painfully familiar: the AU arrives after the damage, surveys the wreckage, and urges everyone to exercise restraint.

“Too little and too late” is no longer merely a criticism. It is becoming an institutional reflex.

Ethiopia Hosts the AU. It Does Not Own It.

The expulsion of Eritrean diplomats is particularly troubling because it reportedly includes representatives accredited to the African Union itself. That reaches beyond an ordinary bilateral dispute and directly touches the AU’s own diplomatic space. Yet the continental organization has avoided confronting the matter. Ethiopia hosts the African Union. It does not own it.

A continental institution that cannot defend the integrity of its own diplomatic environment weakens its claim to continental authority. The AU increasingly risks appearing like a guest afraid of offending its landlord, even when the actions of that landlord intrude upon the institution’s own diplomatic protections. That is not diplomacy. It is institutional timidity.

More fundamentally, the AU’s refusal to distinguish responsibility from neutrality distorts the crisis itself. Eritrea did not question Ethiopia’s sovereignty. Egypt did not question Ethiopia’s borders. Ethiopia questioned Eritrea’s independence, entertained the forcible acquisition of ports, tolerated or promoted annexationist rhetoric and maps, intensified nationalist claims surrounding the Red Sea, and expelled Eritrean diplomats.

Placing all three countries in the same diplomatic sentence and directing identical appeals for restraint toward them does not constitute neutrality. It removes responsibility from the equation. Neutrality among member states does not require neutrality between a principle and its violation. That is precisely the distinction the Commission has failed to make.

The Addis Ababa Problem

The consequences are becoming structural. An institution that cannot protect its diplomatic space, apply its principles consistently, or speak plainly when its host government violates obligations risks forfeiting the authority expected of a continental body.

Ethiopia’s internal instability, armed conflicts, political fragmentation, and governance crises also raise a question that should no longer be dismissed as merely symbolic: whether Addis Ababa remains the appropriate location for an organization that requires diplomatic security, institutional independence, and insulation from the domestic turbulence of its host state.

Relocating the AU headquarters should therefore be considered a practical question, not merely a political gesture. No host government should acquire, through geography, an influence over a continental institution that it could not legitimately exercise under the Union’s rules. Addis Ababa’s role as host must never confer immunity. The Commission serves Africa, not the government whose capital happens to house it.

This is why the latest communiqué represents more than a poorly worded response to one diplomatic crisis. It raises a larger question about whether proximity to the Ethiopian government has made the AU reluctant to confront actions it would judge more clearly if committed elsewhere. A continental organization cannot afford even the appearance of such deference.

What Institutional Leadership Requires

A serious AU response would have confronted the issues directly. It would have addressed interference with AU-accredited diplomats, reaffirmed Eritrea’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, rejected territorial acquisition through coercion, demanded clarification of annexationist rhetoric, addressed credible allegations concerning Ethiopian involvement in Sudan, upheld Somalia’s territorial integrity consistently, and defended the authority of binding settlements to which the AU itself was a guarantor. Instead, the Commission chose ambiguity.

Vague language may be comfortable, but comfort is not leadership. An institution does not demonstrate impartiality by refusing to distinguish between a sovereign right and a challenge to that right. Nor does it preserve peace by waiting until escalation has occurred and then distributing identical admonitions to everyone involved.

The AU already possesses the principles necessary to act. What is missing is the willingness to apply them consistently, including when doing so means confronting the government of the country in which the organization is headquartered.

Silence Has a Cost

The AU Commission’s communiqué is therefore not de-escalation. It is avoidance. It reflects an institution unwilling to confront its host government even when that government’s actions implicate the AU’s diplomatic space and the principles the organization claims to defend. Ethiopia may expel diplomats. The African Union cannot continue expelling responsibility.

The AU should reject territorial acquisition through coercion, defend binding settlements, investigate credible allegations of cross-border destabilization, protect its diplomatic environment, and uphold the sovereignty and territorial integrity of every member state consistently. These are not extraordinary demands. They are duties arising from principles the Union already professes.

Until it performs those duties, repeated declarations of “concern” will increasingly read as admissions of institutional weakness. Continually urging restraint while refusing to address the conduct that makes restraint necessary reduces the Commission to little more than a secretariat of evasions. Africa does not lack principles. It lacks an African Union willing to enforce its own. Unless the AU finds the backbone to defend those principles when doing so is uncomfortable, its silence will no longer be mistaken for neutrality.

It will be recognized for what it is: abdication.