The Red Sea Is Not Up for Negotiation

Eritrea’s Maritime Doctrine and the Defense of Africa’s Sovereign Order

By Alula Frezghi

There are moments in history when a country is asked to explain what should already be clear. For Eritrea, the Red Sea is one of those matters. Th Red Sear is not simply a body of water along our eastern border. It is part and parcel of our history, our geography, our identity, and our sovereignty. It has shaped our people for generations. It has connected Eritrea to the rest of African continent, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. It has carried merchants, fishermen, pilgrims, soldiers, ideas, faiths, and empires. It has also carried the weight of struggle, sacrifice, and survival.

Today, the Red Sea has again become one of the most important places in the world. Ships carrying energy, food, manufactured goods, and other essential supplies pass through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and continue toward the Suez Canal. When this route is disrupted, the effect is not local. It is global.

In recent years, the region has become more fragile. The war in Yemen, attacks on commercial shipping, tensions involving Iran and Gulf states, piracy concerns, and the growing presence of foreign military powers have made the Red Sea one of the main theaters of modern geopolitics. Nations far from its shores now speak of Red Sea security as if it were their own neighborhood.

In such a time, clarity matters. Eritrea’s position is clear. Commercial access can be discussed. Sovereignty cannot. This distinction is simple, but it is also essential. Ethiopia, as a landlocked country, has a legitimate need for access to ports and international trade. No serious person should deny that. Every country needs reliable routes to move goods, grow its economy, and connect its people to the wider world. Eritrea understands this because Eritrea, too, believes in regional trade, cooperation, and practical arrangements that serve mutual interests. To that end, ports can be leased. Roads can be built. Railways can be developed. Trade corridors can be negotiated. Customs systems can be improved. Economic partnerships can be expanded. But none of these requires another country to give up its sovereignty. That is where the line must be drawn.

A need for access does not create a right to ownership. Economic pressure does not create a claim to territory. Population size does not create entitlement to another nation’s coastline. Historical memory, however strongly felt, does not override international law. If those principles are weakened, the danger will not stop at Eritrea’s border. Africa knows this better than most continents. When African countries became independent, they inherited borders that were often imperfect. Communities were divided. Histories overlapped. Old kingdoms and identities did not always fit neatly into colonial maps. Many countries could have made claims against their neighbors. Many could have reopened old wounds. But in 1964, the Organization of African Unity (the predecessor of African Unition (AU)) made choice. It chose to respect the colonial borders inherited at independence. Ethiopia itself was an advocate and strong defender of that principle. That is why recent Ethiopian statements and diatribe about “sovereign access” to the sea are troubling. They do not simply raise a question of trade. They raise a question about whether Africa’s settled borders can be reopened whenever a powerful state feels constrained by geography. That is a dangerous road.

Eritrea’s long coastline, stretching more than 1,200 kilometers along the western Red Sea, is central to the country’s national life. Massawa and Assab are not bargaining chips. The Dahlak Archipelago is not an abstract strategic asset. These places are part of Eritrea’s national inheritance. They belong to the Eritrean people under international law and through the lived history of the nation. To speak of them as negotiable is to misunderstand Eritrea. This does not mean Eritrea rejects cooperation. On the contrary, Eritrea’s position leaves room for practical and peaceful solutions. It allows trade. It allows access. It allows regional integration. It allows neighbors to work together with dignity. But cooperation must be built on respect. It cannot be built on entitlement.

The Horn of Africa has suffered enough from war, mistrust, and outside interference. The people of the region need development, stability, roads, schools, ports, jobs, and peace. They do not need another territorial dispute. They do not need a new conflict created by old ambitions dressed in new language.

The African Union must therefore be firm and consistent. Its credibility depends on defending sovereignty and territorial integrity everywhere, not only when it is convenient. If the principle is weakened in the Horn of Africa, it will be weakened across the continent. The issue is larger than Eritrea and Ethiopia. It is about whether Africa will continue to be governed by law or whether borders will become vulnerable to pressure, power, and changing political needs. On top of that, the Red Sea is already too important, and too fragile, to become the setting for a sovereignty dispute. It is a corridor of global trade, a bridge between regions, and a strategic space where many powers are already competing. Adding territorial revisionism to this environment would not bring stability. It would threaten it.

Eritrea’s maritime doctrine is therefore both national and continental. It defends Eritrea’s coastline, but it also defends Africa’s sovereign order. It says that neighbors can trade without taking from one another. They can cooperate without redrawing maps. They can solve economic problems without creating territorial crises. That principle must be protected. Geography may shape a country’s needs, but it does not determine its rights. A landlocked country may need access to the sea, but it does not have the right to own another country’s sea.

The Red Sea is not up for negotiation. Neither is Eritrea’s sovereignty. And neither is the African principle that borders, once settled under international law, cannot be reopened by pressure, ambition, or convenience. If Africa abandons this principle, the continent risks returning to disputes that generations of leaders worked hard to contain. If it defends it, the continent preserves one of the most important achievements of the post-colonial era: the replacement of territorial ambition with legal order. And for the Red Sea, it is a reminder that peace begins with respect for what belongs to others.