Key events in Eritrea-Ethiopia history
Mar 14, 2006 — Some key dates in the long and turbulent history shared by Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Pre-1885: What is now Eritrea was ruled by the various local or international powers that successively dominated the Red Sea region.
1885: Italians began to assert a colonial presence in what is now Eritrea, first at the Red Sea port of Assab and then in Massawa.
1889: Ethiopia and Italy established the boundary between the Empire of Ethiopia and the areas of Eritrea then in Italian possession under the Treaty of Uccialli.
1890: Italy formally established the Colony of Eritrea.
1893: Ethiopian Emperor Menelik denounced the Treaty of Uccialli as Italian expansion continued until the 1896 battle of Adwa in which Italian forces were defeated and a temporary boundary arrangement was established.
1900-1908: Ethiopia and Italy concluded three boundary agreements that set the common border between the Empire of Ethiopia and the Colony of Eritrea. None of the boundaries, however, were demarcated.
1935: Italy invaded, occupied and annexed Ethiopia.
1941: The United Kingdom expelled Italian forces from Ethiopia and Eritrea and sets up a British Military Administration over both countries.
1942: Britain and Ethiopia concluded a deal that allowed Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie to resume control of his country. Eritrea remained under British control.
1952: A U.N. resolution federating Eritrea with Ethiopia went into effect. The resolution ignored Eritrean pleas for independence.
1962: Sellassie annexed Eritrea, sparking the Eritrean fight for independence.
1991: Fighters from the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front defeated Ethiopian troops in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, and set up a provisional government there.
1993: Eritrea gains independence after a referendum. Border was not properly settled.
May 1998: War started with clash in the western border region of Badme.
June 2000: A peace agreement brokered by the then Organization of African Unity signed in Algiers in which both countries agreed in advance to accept ruling by international border commission.
2003: Ethiopia rejects the 2002 Hague-based Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission ruling that awarded Badme to Eritrea, calling for a new commission to resolve the border crisis. Eritrea refuses.
March 2006: The boundary commission resumes work for the first time in three years, meeting legal experts from the two countries to discuss preparations to physically demarcate the border.
(ST/AP)