Eritrea Map

Home > Africa Map > Eritrea Map

Country Maps

Eritrea is run by the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ). Other political groups are not allowed to organize, although the unimplemented Constitution of 1997 provides for the existence of multi-party politics. The National Assembly has 150 seats, of which 75 are occupied by the PFDJ. National elections have been periodically scheduled and cancelled; none have ever been held in the country.

Independent local sources of political information on Eritrean domestic politics are scarce; in September 2001 the government closed down all of the nation's privately owned print media, and outspoken critics of the government have been arrested and held without trial, according to various international observers, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. In 2004 the U.S. State Department declared Eritrea a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) for its record of religious persecution.

Eritrean society is ethnically heterogeneous. An independent census has yet to be conducted, but the Tigrinya people make up about 60% and Tigre people make up about 30% of the population. These form the bulk of the country's predominantly Semitic-speaking population.

The rest of the population is from other Afro-Asiatic groups, such as the Saho, Hedareb, Afar and Bilen. There are also a number of Nilotic minorities who are represented in Eritrea by the Kunama and Nara. Each ethnicity speaks a different native tongue but, typically, many of the minorities speak more than one language.

In addition, there exist Italian Eritrean (concentrated in Asmara) and Ethiopian Tigrayan communities. Neither is generally given citizenship unless through marriage or, more rarely, by having it conferred upon them by the State.

The most recent addition to the nationalities of Eritrea is the Rashaida. The Rashaida came to Eritrea in the 19th century from the Arabian Coast.

Many languages are spoken in Eritrea today. There is no official language as such, as the Constitution establishes the "equality of all Eritrean languages" but Tigrinya and Arabic are the two predominant languages for official purposes. English and Italian are also widely understood. Most of the languages spoken in Eritrea stem from the Semitic and Cushitic branches of the Afro-Asiatic language family. The Semitic languages in Eritrea are Tigre, Tigrinya, the newly-recognized Dahlik, and Arabic (spoken natively by the Rashaida Arabs); these languages (primarily Tigre and Tigrinya) are spoken as a first language by over 80% of the population. The Cushitic languages in Eritrea are just as numerous, including Afar, Beja, Blin and Saho. Nilo-Saharan languages (Kunama and Nara) are also spoken as a mother tongue by the Kunama and Nara Nilotic minority groups.

Eritrea is a full member of the African Union (AU), the successor of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). However, it had withdrawn its representative to the AU in protest at the AU's alleged lack of leadership in facilitating the implementation of a binding border decision demarcating the border between Eritrea and Ethiopia. The Eritrean government has since January 2011 appointed an envoy, Tesfa-Alem Tekle, to the AU.