The Committee to Protect Journalists on Tuesday joined 30 other non-governmental organizations in urging member and observer states of the United Nations Human Rights Council to extend the mandate of the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Eritrea.

The special rapporteur reports on and assesses the human rights situation in Eritrea, and the council extended their mandate for a year in a July 2023 resolution.

In their letter, the non-governmental organizations say Eritrea's human rights record remains poor, citing the arbitrary and incommunicado detention of journalists, severe restrictions on the media, enforced disappearances, and past findings that crimes against humanity may have been committed in the country since 1991, when the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, a secessionist movement that later became the country's ruling party, took effective control of Eritrea from Ethiopia.

The organizations also note that Eritrea continues to defy repeated calls by the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, a continental quasi-judicial body tasked with ensuring protection of human rights, to release or accord fair trial to journalists detained for over two decades.

With 16 members of the press behind bars, Eritrea is sub-Saharan Africa's worst jailer of journalists, according to CPJ's latest annual prison census.

Read or download the letter in English and French below:

Civil society letter on Eritrea - May 2024Download

Civil society letter on Eritrea (French)Download