Crimes against humanity [press release], including enslavement, imprisonment, torture, rape and murder have been widespread in Eritrea, the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in Eritrea [official website] said in a report [text, PDF] Wednesday. The commission has been collecting testimony of these harsh conditions since 2014. According to the report, these conditions have yet to improve. Mike Smith, chair of the commission, said:

Eritrea is an authoritarian State. There is no independent judiciary, no national assembly and there are no other democratic institutions in Eritrea. This has created a governance and rule of law vacuum, resulting in a climate of impunity for crimes against humanity to be perpetrated over a quarter of a century.

The commission suggested that these crimes against humanity should be dealt with by the International Criminal Court, alleging that state officials, the ruling party and commanding officers bear the responsibility of these conditions.

Eritrea has faced much criticism from the international community for continued abuses of human rights. In 2013 the UN called for an end to human rights abuses in Eritrea and appealed to the international community to increase scrutiny [JURIST reports] of the nation. The UN also pleaded for aid [JURIST report] for Eritrean refugees, as denial of asylum would most likely condemn them to death, based on the country’s shoot to kill order [report, PDF] for anyone attempting to leave the country illegally. In late 2013 a report from Dutch and Swedish researchers discovered that officers of the Eritrean military were kidnapping children [JURIST report] and smuggling them into Sudan. In March 2015 another UN commission released a report [JURIST report] that found that the various human rights abuses found in Eritrea included torture, a large number of detentions, and paltry wages insufficient for an adequate standard of living.