Our association takes its name from the Greek word erythraea, the ancient name for the Red (or Eritrean) Sea, known for the red highlights that, appear in the times of the year when the Oscillatoria Erythraea, a red sea algae, is most abundant.

Eritrea borders Sudan to the North, the Federal Republic of Ethiopia to the West, and Djibouti to the South.
This territory presents unique morphological characteristics given that the inland territory is covered with desert plains, while the coasts are green and mountainous areas with an especially temperate climate in the central region of the country.

Rising almost fortress-like over the inland population is the majestic Ethiopian Plateau, whose ridges rise up in Eritrea, enhancing the truly rare mixture of flora, fauna and peoples with different traditions.

The waters of Eritrea are dusted with a myriad of pristine coral islands, making it a potential tourist’s paradise that is, for the most part, still waiting to be discovered.

Eritrea’s thirty year struggle for independence from Ethiopia ended in May of 1991. Decades of conflict and various natural disasters, such as the severe draught, have created a very difficult socio-economic climate, especially with regard to food security. Despite current relief efforts, over 50% of the population is dependent on international aid for its survival.

In this state of dependence on external aid and under the difficult socio-economic precipitated by the disastrous thirty-year war for independence, this small African country found itself once again in combat with Ethiopia to define country boundaries from 1998 to 2000.

Present-day Eritrea provides a positive example against the trend of African countries where wars and ethnic conflicts blaze on without retreat. This young African state is a concrete example of multiethnic coexistence. There are nine different ethnic groups are present on the territory and the Christian-Coptic religion has lived in harmony for centuries along side the Muslim faith. Unfortunately, economic recession and the dangerous instability of relations with neighboring countries have forced the current government, an outgrowth of the Eritrea Popular Liberation Front that brought independence to the country, to a painful suffocation of democratic freedoms.

The main source of financial support is made toward agriculture and in small part to animal husbandry.
Industry is almost non-existent in the country. The majority of streets and roads is in disrepair, which renders transport and travel often quite difficult. The airport in the capital, Asmara, is active and efficient. Nonetheless, the country faces countless social problems; in a population of 3.5 million inhabitants, 95 thousand are ex-combatants who have has a difficult time with social reintegration; there are 60 thousand disabled people, most of them injured during the war, of whom nearly half are visually impaired and 3 thousand have severe disabilities and are unable to care for themselves. Moreover, there are ninety-thousand young orphans and more than 500 thousand Eritreans are currently in refugee camps in Sudan.

Infant mortality rates are extremely high. There is one doctor ever 48 thousand inhabitants. The hospitals are all functional, but there are many problems in procuring the necessary medicines and equipment.

Eritrea has been subject to domination by various entities over the centuries, from Turkish to Egyptian, up to Italian colonialism which began in 1890.

The Italian occupation lasted about 50 years, until 1941, and was characterized by a political and cultural insensitivity on the part of the upper classes, and harsh, racist policies instituted to marginalized the local population. The situation reached its peak after the proclamation of the racial laws in 1938. Under the auspices of these laws, measures such as executions without trial, the use of humiliating military discipline, the prohibition of mixed marriages, and the total neglect of the education of youth served to weaken the situation and hamper the future hopes of Eritrea. Furthermore, the confiscation of the most fertile land by he colonizers compromised local forms of subsistence. The only positive outcomes of this historical parenthesis were unintended by the colonizing government. These “accidental benefits” such as the mixing of cultures and the consolidation of a common identity, a prerequisite for the subsequent struggle for independence.

In 1941, Italian colonialism was replaced, for a period of ten years, by English colonialism. In 1950, the United Nations established, to the surprise of the Eritrean people, a federal union between Ethiopia and Eritrea. In 1962, in violation of the 1950 UN resolution, the Emperor of Ethiopia, Hailè Selassiè, passed a decree that annexed Eritrea as the 14th province of Ethiopia. Thus began Eritrea’s long struggle for independence,  at first against Addis Ababa which had the support of the United States and the entire Western Bloc, and later against the military regime of Menghistu allied with the Soviet Union.

The national liberation movement led the partisan struggle against the Ethiopian invaders. There actions revolved around a recognition of the fundamental importance of collaboration between combatants and the civilian population.