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8 Afr. Hum. Rts. L.J. 108 (2008)
The Status and Fate of the Eritrean Constitution

handle is hein.journals/afrhurlj8 and id is 112 raw text is: AFRICAN HUMAN RIGHTS LAW JOURNAL The status and fate of the Eritrean Constitution Simon M Weldehaimanot* TMF Human Rights Fellow, Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa, Banjul, The Gambia Summary Between 1993 and 1997, Eritrea was engaged in a constitution-making process. In accordance with the legal framework set to guide the process, the constitution-in-the-making was finalised on 23 May 1997. There is disagreement about the status of this Constitution. Although it remained supportive throughout the constitution-making process, the transitional government of Eritrea has declined to implement the Constitution more than ten years after the Constitution had been ratified. The government of Eritrea's reluctance is ascribed to the absence of an entry into force clause in the Constitution and the 1998-2000 border conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia. The government used this as a pretext and as a result, constitu- tional development in Eritrea has been arrested for a period of ten years. This article investigates the factors affecting the status of the Constitution and concludes that, in spite of certain flaws in the constitution-making process, the Constitution is a legitimate pact that has been in force since the date it was ratified. 1 Introduction Considering the way state formation finally took shape in Africa as a result of colonisation, Eritreans believed that they were entitled to an autonomous state of their own. However, they were put together in LLB (Asmara), LLIM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa) (Pretoria); simo- xen2001 @gmail.com. The author is grateful to Daniel R Mekonnen for his invaluable contribution in this work.

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