Eritrea’s UN embargo lasted nine years, and it covered more than guns

An arms embargo does not have to stop a ship in a harbour to change a country’s procurement options. A rule can close the lawful route before a shipment exists. Eritrea’s second United Nations arms embargo did that from December 2009 until November 2018.

The United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1907 on 23 December 2009. Its operative measure required all member states to prevent the sale, supply, transfer or export of arms and related matériel to Eritrea by their nationals or from their territories. The resolution also covered technical assistance, training and financial or other assistance connected with those items. SIPRI’s Arms Embargo Database records the embargo as entering into force on 23 December 2009 and being lifted on 14 November 2018.

That is more precise than saying that Eritrea was simply “cut off”. The resolution concerned the lawful supply of the listed military goods and associated assistance. It did not provide a public inventory of Eritrea’s holdings, identify every supplier outside the measure’s scope, or show what happened to a particular contract. The primary text also includes provisions on implementation and exemptions, so the existence of an embargo is not evidence that every possible transfer was physically impossible.

The case also contains an important date distinction. Eritrea had previously been subject to the arms embargo imposed by Resolution 1298 in May 2000 on both Eritrea and Ethiopia. SIPRI lists that earlier measure as ending on 15 May 2001. Resolution 1907 was a later, separate decision, adopted in the context of the Security Council’s concerns about Eritrea’s conduct relating to Somalia and its border dispute with Djibouti. The 2009 decision should not be presented as one uninterrupted measure beginning in 2000.

Resolution 1907 did more than name arms. It called for restrictions on travel and assets as well as the arms measure, and it expanded the monitoring role of the Security Council committee established for Somalia-related sanctions. Those provisions show the political setting of the decision. They do not, by themselves, demonstrate how Eritrea’s armed forces performed during the period or whether the country found substitutes.

There is no verified order in the retrieved material that can be described as cancelled by the 2009 embargo. Nor does the lifting date prove that procurement returned to its previous level. A legal barrier can be removed while contracts, finance, suppliers and political relationships still take time to change.

The account is narrower and still significant. For almost nine years, a Security Council decision narrowed the lawful set of states and companies able to supply Eritrea with arms, related matériel and associated assistance. Eritrea may have retained equipment acquired earlier, and Ownership of existing weapons was therefore not the same thing as unrestricted access to the next shipment.