Eritrea

On 20 August 2009, off the Italian island of Lampedusa, the Italian coastguard rescued five of the remaining 78 Eritrean passengers aboard a rickety boat set sail from the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

In 2000, my brother, who had married in 1993 and had three children, left Eritrea alone. He left to study journalism in another African country, and he was fully aware that returning to Eritrea would be problematic.

It is rare that a country's entire condition can be summarised in a single word. That is true of Eritrea today, however, and the word is tragic. There are many indices of this tragedy, among them Eritrea's appalling record in hunger, poverty, human rights and freedom of the press.