In a strongly-worded appeal dated 15 January 2018, the Eritrean People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) asked the Commission of the European Union to kindly consider a global solution for about 30,000 Eritrean asylum seekers in Israel because "Eritreans have nowhere to go".

The memorandum stressed that asylum seekers from dangerous places like Eritrea and Darfur "deserved to be considered as the responsibility of the rest of humanity if the international system fails to persuade  Israel  that it cannot treat asylum seekers in the way it is doing it". 

Addressed to Ms Federica Mogherini, the EU Commission High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the EPDP statement expressed total dismay at EU's silence on Israel's decision to push those asylum seekers out of its territory in total disregard  of international conventions on refugee rights.

Copies of the message were sent to the AU Commissioner and UNHCR Chief.

The statement further noted that Israel, which was one of the active drafters of the 1951 Refugee Convention and the first nation to sign it, should better know the definition of the term "refugee" in the international document, and that Eritrean asylum seekers should in no way be  mistaken for  "illegal migrants" or "infiltrators."

The EPDP statement also contained the party's conviction about future dangers that can follow the ongoing policies of appeasement "to suppressive dictatorships like the one in Eritrea" and indifference to actions of "apparently discriminatory governments like the one in Israel" that are left to easily flout  international conventions and obligations.

This appeal to the European Union Commission was also copied to UNHCR chief, Mr. Filippo Grandi, and to the Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Mr. Mr. Moussa Faki Mahamat in Addis Ababa.