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Mr. President,

We, like other members of the Council, are interested in the early achievement of sustainable peace and stability in Somalia and Eritrea and in the region of the Horn of Africa as a whole, but were forced to abstain by UN Security Council resolution 2385 for the following reasons.

The main criteria for the introduction of restrictive measures against Asmara in 2009 were Eritrea's support for the terrorist group Al-Shabab, the border dispute between Djibouti and Eritrea, Asmara's support for armed groups operating against Djibouti and Ethiopia and Eritrea's inadequate cooperation with the Monitoring Group MG).

For eight years, the situation on the ground has changed significantly: the MG in its final reports for the fourth year in a row concludes that there is no conclusive evidence of Eritrea's support for the terrorist group Al-Shabab.

As for the MG's allegations that the Eritreans allegedly support regional armed groups, the same expert report says that such assistance is not only provided by Asmara, but practically by all the states of the region. That is, this problem has a pronounced regional dimension, and it would be unfair to blame Eritrea alone for destabilizing the entire region. We would like to draw your attention to the fact that some of the armed groups mentioned by the Monitoring Group have headquarters in the capitals of countries whose delegations sit at this table.

Thus, it turns out that part of the reasons that necessitated the introduction of anti-Eritrean sanctions ceased to exist, and the sanctions regime against Eritrea continues to operate in an unchanged form.

We are concerned that MG again could not visit Eritrea this year, we supported the relevant provisions of the project. However, according to our estimates, the text of the resolution has only deteriorated compared to last year's document. Despite our repeated appeals, it did not include the reference to the road map, which could serve as a kind of benchmark for the further actions of the Eritreans.

In addition, the reference was deleted from the preamble that the MG once again failed to find exhaustive evidence of Eritrean support for Shababovites. The authors did this on the pretext that this passage is also present in the operative part of the resolution and therefore, they say, looks superfluous.

At the same time, those paragraphs critical of Eritrea that are in the interests of the "penthouseholders" are present both in the preamble and in the operative part. We can not support such a selective approach of the authors.

In this regard, we reiterate the need to think over the development of a kind of "roadmap" for the gradual removal of sanctions from Asmara, as was already suggested by a number of delegations and us when working on the draft resolution last year and throughout 2017. 

#Russia abstained during the voting on the #UNSC resolution 2385 because the penholders in an effort to take into account all their interests have left the sanctions regime against #Eritrea unchanged, while the situation "on the ground" has significantly improved.