DESCRIPTION
Join War on Want and Eritrea Focus to hear about UK mining companies complicity in human rights abuses in Eritrea – one of the world’s most repressive states. UK mining companies and financial institutions have been complicit in using state conscripted labour in their mining and exploration activities.
Eritrea is one of the fastest emptying nations in the world with 400,000 people leaving the country in the last decade, seeking asylum elsewhere. Their desperate attempts to escape Eritea is because of this forced labour disguised as military service.
Speakers include:
Habte Hagos, a graduate in accountancy (Glasgow) and a Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants. Habte has worked at executive level in London for many years. Habte is a founding member of Eritrea Focus. Eritrea Focus is an association of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), human rights organisations, exile and refugee groups and individuals concerned with the gross abuse of human rights in Eritrea.
Ms Helen Kidan who holds BA (Hons) Joint Major in Politics and Third World Studies and MA in International Relations. Helen is a founding member of Horn Human Rights (set up in 1998 in the aftermath of the border conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia) and she also helped to set up the Eritrean Youth UK in 2003. She provided a statement to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on the plight of Eritrean women and continues to do advocacy and lobbying in the UK and in Europe.
