children work as farmhands, street vendors, or household servants;
girls and women are also trafficked for commercial sexual
exploitation
tier rating: Tier 2 Watch List - Equatorial Guinea is placed on the
Tier 2 Watch List for its failure to provide adequate evidence of
concrete measures to address trafficking over the past year

This page was last updated on 8 February, 2007

======================================================================

@Eritrea

Introduction Eritrea

Background:
Eritrea was awarded to Ethiopia in 1952 as part of a federation.
Ethiopia's annexation of Eritrea as a province 10 years later
sparked a 30-year struggle for independence that ended in 1991 with
Eritrean rebels defeating governmental forces; independence was
overwhelmingly approved in a 1993 referendum. A two-and-a-half-year
border war with Ethiopia that erupted in 1998 ended under UN
auspices in December 2000. Eritrea currently hosts a UN peacekeeping
operation that is monitoring a 25 km-wide Temporary Security Zone on
the border with Ethiopia. An international commission, organized to
resolve the border dispute, posted its findings in 2002 but final
demarcation is on hold due to Ethiopian objections.

Geography Eritrea

Location:
Eastern Africa, bordering the Red Sea, between Djibouti and Sudan

Geographic coordinates:
15 00 N, 39 00 E

Map references:
Africa

Area:
total: 121,320 sq km
land: 121,320 sq km
water: 0 sq km

Area - comparative:
slightly larger than Pennsylvania

Land boundaries:
total: 1,626 km
border countries: Djibouti 109 km, Ethiopia 912 km, Sudan 605 km

Coastline:
2,234 km (mainland on Red Sea 1,151 km, islands in Red Sea 1,083 km)

Maritime claims:
territorial sea: 12 nm

Climate:
hot, dry desert strip along Red Sea coast; cooler and wetter in the
central highlands (up to 61 cm of rainfall annually, heaviest June
to September); semiarid in western hills and lowlands

Terrain:
dominated by extension of Ethiopian north-south trending highlands,
descending on the east to a coastal desert plain, on the northwest
to hilly terrain and on the southwest to flat-to-rolling plains

Elevation extremes:
lowest point: near Kulul within the Denakil depression -75 m
highest point: Soira 3,018 m

Natural resources:
gold, potash, zinc, copper, salt, possibly oil and natural gas, fish

Land use:
a