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Statement by Foreign Minister Osman Saleh at the High-Level Segment of the 61st Session of the Human Rights Council – 24 February, 2026
General
On Feb 24, 2026



Mr. President,
Excellencies,
Distinguished Delegates,

It is an honour to address this Council at the opening of its sixty-first session.

Since my last address to this body, the global landscape continues to undergo extraordinary changes. While the multilateral system has faced challenges before, we must acknowledge that it is now under unprecedented strain. Where the sovereignty and territorial integrity of nations is violated, wars are waged in blatant violation of the prohibition of the threat or use of force. The international community has fallen short of its collective commitment and purposes and principles contained in the UN Charter.

The United Nations, as a whole, is not fully living up to the mandate entrusted to it. This reality cannot be attributed solely to the current liquidity crisis confronting the Organization. It also compels us to reflect critically on the structural and political dynamics that have shaped the functioning of the system over time.

Mr President,

The Human Rights Council, in particular, bears a distinct and significant responsibility for promoting universal respect for the protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms. Yet it must be acknowledged, with sincerity, that the Council has not consistently fulfilled this responsibility. At times, its work has been diverted to serve narrow political interests rather than the universal principles it was established to uphold. This trajectory must be reversed. The unheeded continuous erosion of trust among States and the weakening of commitment to multilateral cooperation would be difficult to repair.



At the same time, there exists a genuine will among States to address issues that directly affect the lives and livelihoods of their peoples. In a recent nationally broadcast interview, President Isaias Afwerki stated: “The universal aspiration of the peoples of the world is clear: to live in peace and dignity, to benefit fairly from their labour, and to support one another in solidarity.” This aspiration should guide our collective work. Absent such a shared commitment, we cannot credibly claim to be advancing or safeguarding the human rights of all peoples.

The very existence of Eritrea is rooted in the aspiration of its people to chart their own future, free from external interventions, and to shoulder the responsibility of nation-building in pursuit of an equitable society. The sacrifices made by the Eritrean people to reach this point are profound and enduring. They continue to inspire our resilience and determination in the face of adversity since the attainment of our independence.

Mr. President,

Eritrea’s vision is clear. We remain firmly committed to building a prosperous and self-reliant nation in which fundamental rights and freedom, including the right to development, are promoted, protected, and respected.

In conclusion, Eritrea reaffirms, with unwavering conviction, its commitment to constructive engagement with this Council and its members to foster long-term genuine partnership in the spirit of mutual respect for sovereignty and development. We stand ready to contribute in good faith to the work of this Council, to promote international cooperation, and to work collectively towards the shared ideals of peace, justice, and the inherent dignity of all human beings.

I thank you, Mr. President.

The Eritrean Foreign Minister is another coward Arab abeed slave like Arab Abid tarik the tarik Jeberti Abid, the Arab slave, Fiyameta - the Arab Abid dog, will not post this humiliation of Eritreans in the savage Arab Egypt.
Eritrean Youtubers have ignored the pain of Eritreans, such as, all the Jeberti shows and websites, the Jeberti Awate website, the Jeberti Salih Gadi Johar, AAN Jeberti Channel, the Jeberti Setit, Dawit TV, Solo Media, Asena TV, Wedi Taba, George Dirar Show ...
The savage Arab Egypt is raping and jailing multiple young Eritreans.
In the last three days, six Eritrean boys and multiple Eritrean women, some as young as nine years old, were raped by Arab Muslim police of Egypt in Cairo. Two Eritrean children were found dead at home, after they were left alone, when their mother was jailed by the Cairo police.
The Eritrean embassy Charge d'affair in Cairo, the Jeberti Muslim named Aman Abdelwasie with his stuff is responsible and shirking their responsibility.
Eritreans thru out the world need to march and strike in front of the Egyptian embassies and Councils, by targeting Egyptian tourism and business on X or Twitter, by attacking and denigrating the unsafe security of the Egyptian tourism sites and cities, in major American and European cities: Washington DC, New York, Berlin, Paris, Stockholm, Ottawa, Toronto, London, Rome ...

Weizero Temnit.
If this errand boy has any jurisdiction of his own, i am sure he could have raised the plight of Eritreans who are mistrated and sexually abused by a bunch of arabs in Egypt but here is courier of the sodomite raising issues which are beyond his comperhension.

Then Again, weizero Temnit is a bunch of low IQ like the rest of the sodomite supporters.

Tibor Nagy: political maverick with an axe to grind against Eritrea
Feb 26, 2026

In his opinion column on the Horn of Africa published in the Avalanche Journal last week, Tibor Nagy resorts to his usual recipe of disparaging Eritrea to dish out biased and presumptuous conjectures that are at variance with the principal causes and trajectories of the simmering tension in the region.

This is not surprising in many respects. The former US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa indeed lacks academic and analytical credentials, and more importantly, personal integrity and honesty, as his lop-sided positions and views on the Horn of Africa are often influenced by his lobbying contracts and unorthodox political networks.

His ardent lobbying these days for recognition of Somaliland; his negative positions on the situation in the Sudan are additional and illustrative cases in point.

⦁ In matters regarding Eritrea, Naggy was a pliable supporter of the Ethiopian regime’s violation of international law and continued occupation of Eritrean sovereign lands in breach of the Algiers Peace Agreement and the EEBC “final and binding” Award when he was the US Ambassador in Addis Abeba.

⦁ Indeed, while the US was one of the guarantor’s of the Algiers Agreement, which contained explicit provisions for punitive measures against the recalcitrant party, Tibor Nagy continued to defend and apologize for the Ethiopian regime’s continued illicit occupation of sovereign Eritrean territories, including Badme, for almost two decades in flagrant contravention of the Arbitral Award as well as its subsequent, pronounced, policy of “regime change” until 2018. In this perspective, the accolades he showers on the Ethiopian Prime Minister is neither accurate nor deserved as the new regime had only belatedly accepted, important as that was, to respect and adhere to its treaty obligations virtually 16 years after the Arbitral Award.

⦁ Tibor Nagy’s insinuation that Eritrea was an integral part of the 2000-year-old Ethiopian Empire before its independence is also pathetically wrong and panders to a deliberately crafted mythology that has nothing to do with the actual history of the region. Before the advent of Italian colonialism in the late 19th century, modern-day Eritrea passed through long historical trajectories in which the western and eastern lowlands were under various external occupiers (Ottoman Empire, etc.) while independent indigenous fiefdoms presided over the rest of the country. Historical revisionism and invocation of mythologies are essentially peddled by those who wish to imbue some semblance of justification for the current regime’s expansionist ambitions. Ethiopia and Eritrea were one, in Tibor Nagy’s terms, only from 1951 until 1991, when Eritrea was forcibly annexed by Ethiopia by abrogating the “Federal Act”; the latter imposed on Eritrea against its inalienable rights of decolonization. Tibor Nagy’s reference to small Eritrea – the size of Pennsylvania – etc. also falls in the same deceitful mold as sovereignty and territorial integrity of nations have no positive correlation whatsoever with geographic landmass.

⦁ Tibor Nagy’s eulogization of the Ethiopian Prime Minister as “a devout Evangelical Christian who sees himself as a Messianic leader doing God’s work on earth” is utterly false and risible, evidently concocted to appeal to certain constituencies in the US. Tibor Nagy has, in fact, exposed himself as the unscrupulous lobbyist that he is. His assertion that Ethiopia was the second nation in the world to adopt Christianity is cut from the same cloth and is historically inaccurate, as are his other conjectures. This false assertion, in fact, obfuscates the reality that the Red Sea of Eritrea was the gateway for the introduction of Christianity and Islamic traditions into Africa. Incontrovertible historical and archeological findings illustrate that Christianity was introduced by the 4th Century A.D. into this part of the Horn with the enterprise of Frumentius, a Christian Monk from Tyre in Syria. The highlands of Eritrea were the locations for the earliest Christian communities in the Horn of Africa, although the new faith also spread southwards to Ethiopia in concurrent times.

⦁ Tibor Nagy also seems to suffer from an apparently compulsive malaise of frenzied defamation of the Eritrean President. It is not clear whether this irrational hatred stems from an occupational hazard as a long-time hired lobbyist for Ethiopia, his personal/ideological loathing of independent policies espoused by Africa’s Statesmen, or the pretension of inconsequential little men who seek attention by throwing dirt on persons far beyond their pedigree and caliber.

⦁ In a nutshell, Tibory Nagy digresses to dwell on tangential and distorted narratives primarily and principally because his central objective is to divert attention from the root cause of the current problem: the Ethiopian regime’s willful and deplorable agenda of war and conflict in pursuit of what it calls “sovereign access to the sea” by invading the sovereign territory of its neighbor. This dangerous act cannot be justified and rationalized by other fallacious pretexts and narratives. Tibor Nagy is not, evidently, in a position to deliver on this account because he is under the beck and call of his financial sponsors; veritable cases, as it were, of “who pays the piper calls the tune”!

Embassy of the State of Eritrea
Washington, DC
26 Feb 2026

Potemkin Party’s Delusion of Grandeur and the Stark Reality of Governance
By : Weldu Gebreslasie (PhD)

Opinion & Analysis
Feb 28, 2026



At the 65th anniversary of the Special Operations Command of the Ethiopian National Defense Force, held at Hawassa Stadium, the Prime Minister pledged support for “brotherly peoples from the tip of Somalia to Massawa” in combating “maritime terrorism”. He further claimed, in a rather arrogant tone, that Ethiopia’s army, “physically and mentally robust,’’ can end conflicts swiftly and is equipped with “sophisticated technology.”

This portrayal stands in stark contrast to the realities on the ground, where government forces have struggled against opponents in multiple regions, with reports of thousands of soldiers being captured in various battles. The much-vaunted “strong army” has thus far proven incapable of securing lasting peace within Ethiopia, let alone projecting power into the Red Sea, over which the country holds no sovereignty. PP’s delusional pipedreams aside, it is palpably clear that the agency and sovereign responsibility for safeguarding the security of the Red Sea basin indeed rests with the littoral States.

The African proverb: “the crown does not hide the foolishness of the head it sits on,” aptly captures the present condition. The Potemkin Party’s performative projection of “greatness” masks a nation teetering on the brink of internal strife.

Critics contend that Ethiopia’s longstanding quest for regional hegemony is shaped by aggressive posturing towards its neighbors. The recent Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Somaliland is widely viewed as reflecting such ambitions, raising concerns about the sanctity of Somalia’s internationally recognized borders. Similarly, rhetoric directed towards Eritrea, particularly regarding the ports of Massawa and Assab, signals a persistent, if unrealistic, aspiration to maritime access. As recently as a few weeks ago, in advancing his claim of “sovereign sea access,” rooted in perilous hubris, the Potemkin’s Party Prime Minister sought to justify his expansionist posture by drawing an analogy to Israel’s seizure of Syrian territory – the Golan Heights – thereby exposing his bravado and outright disregard for sovereignty.

In this context, the Prime Minister’s remarks appear less as policy and more as political theater. Analysts emphasize that elusive ambition for hegemony, which is intrinsically asymmetric, remains both impractical and destabilizing. In the event, the Potemkin Party’s pursuit of “grandeur” and “hegemony,” rooted in expansionist thinking, risks undermining regional stability and violating the territorial and maritime sovereignty of neighboring states.

More fundamentally, the Prime Minister appears unable to confront the central reality: his administration has failed to unify a deeply fractured country. Ethiopia’s complex demographic composition, combined with weak governance structures, has accelerated fragmentation and eroded public trust.

A growing body of research indicates that Ethiopia ranks poorly across multiple global human development indicators. These persistent challenges are widely attributed to political instability, corruption, reliance on foreign assistance, ethnic polarization, and inconsistent development strategies.

Scholars further argue that leaders of this type excel in impression management— deflecting attention from economic hardships and reputational decline. Abiy Ahmed’s premature and convoluted image as a “messiah of peace and development” had indeed been long corroded as his governing style and regional ambitions came under scrutiny. His fixation on “sovereign sea access,” framed as a strategic necessity, increasingly resembles a grandiose vision that is not only detached from reality but that also flouts key pillars of international law as well as the norms and ethos of regional security and stability.

In Potemkin Party’s Ethiopia, high-visibility projects and rhetorical ambition are willfully and deceitfully projected to hide and eclipse abject and widespread depravity and poverty. The cultivation of an inflated personal image, bordering on a cult of personality, serves as a mechanism for political survival rather than genuine national development. This performative leadership recalls the parable of King Malakor, remembered not for wisdom or achievement but for spectacle. Through grand processions, he concealed crises and poverty. Ethiopia today is suffering a similar fate under the Potemkin Party’s politics of illusion.

While the country grapples with insurgency, inflation, and economic distress, the leadership’s gaze remains fixed outward, toward maritime ambitions that are elusive in practice and deplorable in terms of legality and the lofty ideals of regional cooperation and stability. This disparity underscores a broader pattern of political bankruptcy and strategic overreach.

The imperative, therefore, is clear: abandon narcissistic showoffs, expansionist rhetoric, and delusions of grandeur. Ultimately, humility and peaceful coexistence with neighboring countries, not inflated military and governance capability of the Potemkin Party, are what yield enduring benefits. Most importantly, the Horn of Africa cannot afford another devastating conflict.

I understand why Lobbyist Tibor Nagy feels that he owns Ethiopia, and I think he has every right to do so. As CNN's Erin Burnett explained in the video below, Ethiopia is considered a "trophy" by those who feel they've won the Cold War. When asked to choose between being a sovereign nation and being a trophy, many aid-fed Ethiopians would choose to be the latter. That is a fact!