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In a statement addressed to the recent Gender Equality Conference of the Progressive Alliance (PA) held in Switzerland, EPDP Women urged the PA Gender Equality Working Group to help empower Eritrean diaspora women’s groups.

The same statement also asked all sister parties in the global PA family to kindly extend helping hand in empowering and unifying the fragmented Eritrean opposition in exile as a way towards ending the prolonged suffering of people in that new  Horn of Africa country.

The Eritrean delegation headed by Ms Asghedet Mehreteab, Chairperson of the EPDP Women’s League, was one of the delegations representing 48 countries globally, seven of them African. In group and bilateral discussions with high-ranking women delegates at the conference, the EPDP delegation made efforts to explain the situation in Eritrea and the cause of Eritrean justice seekers to many conference participants.

Majority of conference participants women holding high posts in their respective countries and parties.

Printed below is the full text of the statement addressed to the PA Conference held in Luzern, Switzerland between 24 and 26 October 2025.

Distinguished Delegates at this PA Gender

Equality Meeting in Lucerne, Switzerland

Please receive the best wishes for success of this PA Gender Equality conference from us the delegation of the Women’s League of the Eritrean People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) in exile. We are honored to once again have our delegation amongst you to take part in gender focused issues and related deliberations in promoting the progressive PA agenda we all share.

Understandably, our delegation is very much interested to share with you now and in our continued networking the miserable situation of the Eritrean people in general and women in particular. In a way of quick introduction, our Women’s League is an affiliate of the EPDP, an opposition party struggling for change and democratization in Eritrea as a gateway to all liberties, including gender equality. Our mother party, the EPDP, was one of the signatory members of the PA Declaration at the founding meeting in Leipzig in May 2013. We were pleased to have attended a good number of the conferences of this worthy body of progressive parties and organizations that, inter alia, strive to promote gender equality, including the role of women in leadership positions.

Dear Conference Participants,

As you know, Eritrea has not been in good shape ever since its hard-won independence in the early 1990s. Today, the one-man dictatorship of Isaias Afeworki is widely characterized as one of the topmost repressive regimes in Africa. For several years in the past three decades, Eritrea held top record of being the most censored country in the world. It is Africa’s topmost jailer of politicians and journalists as well as a big refugee producer. Eritrean refugees also constitute a very high percentage of deaths in the Mediterranean Sea and as victims of human trafficking everywhere. Eritrean women topped in this continued suffering of an entire nation.

Dear PA Gender Equality Working Group Leadership,  

The Eritrean people and women in particular, are in urgent need of support from progressive forces like this PA family. Therefore,

• We feel it is time for the PA Gender Equality Working Group to engage in empowering the Eritrean women’s groups in diaspora, which are many. The first step can be helping them create one platform, which has not been easy to achieve. This work can be facilitated by using the EPDP Women’s League as your channel to achieve this worthy start to help a people in dire need of support from friendly forces.
• Needless to say, leaderships of member parties of the Progressive Alliance would do a great service by extending similar support to this PA-member EPDP and other pro-democracy groups to create working umbrella that would lead a future democratic State of Eritrea.

Again, my delegation wishes big success to this PA Gender Equality Working Group meeting in Switzerland and pledge and commit ourselves to be active in future networking will all of you.

Sincerely yours,

Asghedet Mehreteab, Head of EPDP Delegation