Eritrea’s Vision: Cooperation not Expansionism

by Ghidewon Abay Asmerom

Eritrea’s Vision: Cooperation not Expansion

by Ghidewon Abay Asmerom

Recognition is not a courtesy extended out of goodwill. It is an acknowledgment of sovereignty, a confirmation that a people have secured their right to self-determination. Once granted, it is binding, durable, and not subject to the shifting moods or ambitions of neighboring states.

Withdrawing recognition has never been an African tradition. It is not in the OAU’s legacy, not in the African Union’s mandate, and not in the UN Charter. Africa knew this from the beginning. When the Organization of African Unity (OAU) was born in 1963, leaders faced the specter of border disputes across a continent carved up by colonial lines. The following year, the OAU’s Cairo Declaration of 1964 made the principle unmistakable: colonial borders, however imperfect, were to be respected. It was not sentiment but survival. As Malagasy President Philibert Tsiranana warned at that inaugural session, “It is no longer possible, nor desirable, to modify the boundaries of Nations… indeed, should we take race, religion or language as criteria, a few States in Africa would be blotted out from the map.” Ethiopia’s own Prime minister at the time, Aklilu Habtewold, echoed that same principle, stressing that African unity required “complete respect for the legacy that we have received from the colonial system — that is to say, the maintenance of the present frontiers.”

This was not abstract idealism but a solemn pact. Borders were frozen not because they were fair, but because unfreezing them would unleash endless wars. It was a principle Ethiopia itself championed, hosted in Addis Ababa, and built its own foreign policy upon.

The Map below is a sample of what Africa would look like if what Ethiopia is hallucinating for (changing borders) happens. Some of the African countries that have more than 50 ethnic groups within their political boundaries are: Burkina Faso (60+), Cameroon (250+), CAR (80+), Chad (100+), Côte d’Ivoire (60+), DRC (250+), Ethiopia (80+), Ghana (70+), Kenya (50+), Mozambique (60+), Nigeria (250+), South Sudan (60+), Sudan (70+), Tanzania (120+), Uganda (50+), and Zambia (70+).

If there is any state in Africa today whose recognition might be questioned, it is not Eritrea but Ethiopia itself—riven by ethnic wars, wracked by famine, and sliding toward disintegration. To suggest that Eritrea’s sovereignty can be undone while Ethiopia’s own unity hangs by a thread is delusional.

The irony is stark. Ethiopia proclaims “3,000 years” of uninterrupted statehood, yet it now resembles less a fortress of antiquity than a glass house perched on fault lines, trembling under famine, civil war, and aid dependency. From Haile Selassie’s imperial arrogance to Menghistu’s Soviet-fed brutality, from the TPLF’s house of lies to today’s Prosperity Party hallucinations, Ethiopia’s story is one of conflict after conflict—every regime crashing through the glass of the one before, leaving shards on the floor.

From this fragile house, with its windows cracked by hunger and its walls buckling under ethnic wars, Ethiopia dares to hurl stones at Eritrea. It accuses Eritrea of failing to “mature into a viable state,” yet the rock boomerangs back. Ethiopia cannot feed its people without aid, cannot guarantee safe passage between its own towns, and cannot hold its federation together without bloodshed. By every Montevideo criterion, it is Ethiopia—not Eritrea—that struggles with viability.

Eritrea, by contrast, is no glass house. It is a stone wall, built over thirty years of sacrifice, bound by the mortar of blood and resilience. Three generations of Eritreans have defended their land and sea against Ethiopia’s expansionist obsessions. While Ethiopia bleeds from division, Eritrea has endured, cohesive and sovereign even under siege.

The English saying : “those who live in glass houses should not throw stones” stands. Ethiopia’s rulers should remember this before indulging in fantasies of withdrawing recognition from Eritrea. Every stone they throw reflects back their own fragility, fragmentation, and desperation.

The lesson is simple. Eritrea’s independence was not a gift. It was earned, sealed, and made permanent—by sacrifice, by law, and by the will of its people. Ethiopia’s sovereignty, by contrast, is visibly cracking under the strain of its contradictions.

And yet, Eritrea does not respond with vengeance but with vision. Its National Charter of 1994 enshrined six pillars, one of which is Regional and International Cooperation. Eritrea seeks to live in harmony with its neighbors, contributing—within its means—to peace, security, and development in the Horn and beyond. It does not pretend the task is easy; it knows such coexistence demands time, hard work, and respect for sovereignty. But Eritrea also knows the future can be shaped.

What seems distant today can, through persistence, become reality: a Horn of Africa bound not by conflict but by cooperation. That has been Eritrea’s vision from the very beginning, and it remains so today.