The UNMEE Line


For my next three posts, I've decided to write about things that happened during my most recent trip to Senafe (March 19-22). And I'm going to begin by discussing my visit to Serha, a village located adjacent to the UNMEE line separating Eritrea from Ethiopia.

The UNMEE line is the de facto boundary between Eritrea and Ethiopia. The UNMEE line differs substantially from the de jure border as delimited by the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission in its 2002 decision. That is, the UNMEE line tends to favor Ethiopia while the Boundary Commission decisions gives more territory to Eritrea. The UNMEE line was not designed to be permanent. However, because the border has not yet been demarcated on the ground, it remains the de facto boundary. I don't want to get much into politics here, but if your interested, I would recommend doing a google news search on the Eritrea/Ethiopia border to learn the most recent news about the boundary.

Anyway, north of the UNMEE line is the Temporary Security Zone (TSZ), a demilitarized zone located entirely within Eritrea. Don't ask me why the TSZ doesn't straddle the UNMEE line. I originally thought it did, but apparently not. We do a lot of our work in towns inside the TSZ. Therefore, at one point Amanda said our office should write a travel guide to the TSZ, since we know all about the hotels and restaurants down there. Then she expanded the idea and suggested that we write a travel guide to demilitarized zones of the world. Wouldn't that be awesome? Bill, do you want to contribute?

But I digress. On our last trip to Senafe, we visited Serha, the last town on this side of the UNMEE line. The picture above depicts the last UNMEE camp inside Eritrea. Apparently, Ethiopia is located just on the other side of that camp. The mountains in the background of the picture below are also in Ethiopia.



Here's a picture of Simon in Serha. Serha is probably the most desolate town I've beeen in here. Unlike even the surrounding villages, Serha is flat and barren. At least many of the surrounding villages have hills or trees or cacti or something. Serha has nothing but dirt and small buildings.



We were supposed to take a witness statement or two in Serha, but that didn't pan out. So, instead, we went to another village nearby to take statements. In the picture below, we're taking a witness statement in a hidmo (the traditional house of the Eritrean highlands). We only took one statement that morning becuase the woman we interviewed and her family insisted on giving us coffee, kitcha (a kind of traditional bread), and fritata. And, as I mentioned in a previous post, coffee takes a long time here. But while it wasn't the most productive morning, it was definitely one of the more memorable ones I've had here because I was treated to trypical Eritrean village life; something I don't get a lot of in Asmara.