Ethiopia’s UN Letter Can’t Erase a Year of Escalation

If you only read Addis Ababa’s 2 October letter to the UN, you’d think Ethiopia is a beleaguered neighbor fending off an Eritrean onslaught and some shadowy “Tsimdo” plot. Reality is less cinematic and far better documented: for a full year Ethiopia’s leadership has normalized talk of “regaining” Red Sea access, signed a destabilizing MoU on another country’s coastline, and allowed aligned outlets to flirt with the lunacy of “reversing” Eritrea’s statehood—then pivoted to victimhood when the world pushed back. 

Let’s put the facts in order.

The record: Ethiopia made “access to the sea” an existential—and territorial—campaign

Beginning October 2023, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed framed Red Sea access as an “existential” issue from the floor of parliament. Analysts and outlets across the spectrum—Reuters, Al Jazeera, the UK House of Lords Library, African Arguments—documented the rhetoric and the unmistakable inference that “ownership” or force were on the table, even as the PM toggled between hard talk and calming reassurances. That duality is the point: raise the temperature, then deny you’re boiling the pot.

The temporary walk-backs came only after regional alarm spiked. In March 2025 the PM said Ethiopia “has no intention” of invading Eritrea for sea access—an important sentence that exists only because the previous year’s words triggered real fears of interstate conflict. Reuters captured that temporary climbdown.

The action: a sovereignty-busting MoU on Somalia’s coast

Words were followed by deeds. On 1 January 2024, Ethiopia signed an MoU with Somaliland to secure Red Sea access and a base—an act Mogadishu immediately deemed a violation of Somalia’s sovereignty, prompting diplomatic expulsions and a regional scramble to defuse the crisis. Whether or not Addis meant it as leverage, it shattered trust across the Horn and invited exactly the international censure Ethiopia now tries to deflect onto Eritrea. 

The narrative: from “peaceful integration” to think-tank fantasies about un-recognizing Eritrea

The 2 October letter talks up “institutionalized economic integration” while accusing Eritrea of masterminding all manner of subversion. Yet pro-government platforms amplified ideas that make integration impossible—most brazenly Horn Review’s piece arguing Ethiopia could “reverse” recognition of Eritrea’s statehood. You don’t float the un-statehood of a UN member you claim you want to “integrate” with; you either respect sovereignty or you don’t.

For the record: Eritrea’s sovereignty is not a policy preference; it is a legal fact grounded in international recognition (1993), the UN Charter, and subsequent treaties—including the Algiers Agreement and the Eritrea–Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC) award that Ethiopia resisted for years and which awarded Badme and its surroundings to Eritrea as “final and binding.” That history matters when one side starts to relitigate geography by essay and microphone.

The scapegoat: “Tsimdo/Ximdo” isn’t a war plan; it’s a people-to-people peace initiative

Ethiopia’s letter tries to recast “Tsimdo/Ximdo” as a conspiratorial front. In reality, Tsimdo/Ximdo is a civic, people-to-people initiative—border communities trying to mend the social fabric torn by decades of war. Turning such reconciliation efforts into a casus belli is a reach. If anything, the attempt to criminalize contact between Eritrean and Tigrayan border communities tells you how allergic Ethiopia’s political class has become to bottom-up reconciliation that doesn’t run through Addis.

The UN context: Eritrea reiterated law; the UN reiterated principles

On 30 September—two days before Ethiopia’s letter—Eritrean Foreign Minister Osman Saleh met the UN Secretary-General in New York. The Eritrean Ministry of Information readout says the FM explicitly rejected “reckless provocations and expansionist ambitions” packaged as “access to the sea.” The Secretary-General, for his part, “reaffirmed” the UN’s commitment to territorial integrity, sovereignty and unity of all nations. That was a quiet but unmistakable signal in a week of noisy lobbying.

And the principles are not vague: Article 2(4) of the UN Charter prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. You don’t get exceptions because your population is large or your geography is vast. Sovereignty is not a sliding scale.

The inversion: Accusing Eritrea to mask policy overreach

Read the October 2 letter closely and you’ll see a classic inversion. After a year in which Addis:

• elevated an “ownership” discourse about the Red Sea;
• signed a sovereignty-problematic MoU on Somalia’s coast; and
• platformed arguments about undoing Eritrea’s recognition,

the PP government now casts itself as the restrained actor forced into “defensive posture” by non-existential Eritrea-TPLF collusion and a borderland civic initiative. That framing collapses under basic scrutiny and under the weight of Ethiopia’s own public record. 

The regional off-ramp already exists: commercial access, not territorial revision

Nobody disputes that Ethiopia needs efficient, diversified sea access. The region has been exploring lawful pathways—commercial agreements, joint investments, corridor treaties—precisely to avoid the destabilization that comes with ownership rhetoric.

Eritrea, for its part, has never closed the door to lawful, mutually respectful arrangements. Over the years, Asmara has consistently expressed readiness to provide port services and logistics facilities to all neighbors on a commercial basis, without politics or preconditions. Both Massawa and Assab have long served regional trade—handling goods from Sudan, Yemen, and even Ethiopia itself before 1998.

When war erupted that year, it was Ethiopia—not Eritrea—that severed access to the ports, declaring a boycott that ReliefWeb and UN reports described as part of Addis Ababa’s wider war posture. The decision was meant to isolate and economically pressure Eritrea, not the result of any denial of access from Asmara. Ironically, that punitive move ended up harming Ethiopia’s own economy, forcing a costly dependence on a single outlet through Djibouti.

In 2018, after the peace declaration, Eritrea once again opened its ports for Ethiopian use, welcoming commercial access under normal trade frameworks before Addis’s renewed internal upheavals derailed the process.

Asmara’s position has been consistent: regional access must rest on international law, contractual fairness, and sovereign consent—not coercion or expansionist pretexts. Kenya’s later proposal for a regional maritime framework to codify such access norms reflected that same spirit of legality and cooperation. That’s the serious lane; everything else is a detour toward crisis.

Eritrea’s position is crystal clear

Eritrea’s message has not wavered: no appetite for entanglement in manufactured disputes; no tolerance for agenda-setting that reopens settled sovereignty; yes to lawful, UN-charter-based regional cooperation. That’s exactly what Asmara conveyed to the UN—and exactly what the international law requires. 

Facts Outlast Spin

Ethiopia’s latest letter is less a warning about Eritrea than a plea to launder a year of its own escalation through diplomatic stationery. The way out is not by criminalizing cross-border dialogue, not by think-tank daydreams about un-recognizing a neighbor, and certainly not by revisiting maps with 20th-century tools. It’s by returning to first principles—territorial integrity, non-use of force—and the grown-up instruments that flow from them: corridors, commercial agreements, and regional partnerships.

Until then, the chronology speaks for itself—and it doesn’t say “victim.”
It says: walk back the rhetoric, shelve the fantasies, respect the borders, and build the commerce.
That’s how the Horn grows stable and prosperous—not chaotic and loud.