Ethiopia and Eritrea Declare Their War Over

On 8 July 2018, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed arrived in Asmara for a historic summit with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki. The meeting signaled an extraordinary shift between two neighboring states in the Horn of Africa whose formal ties had been severed for nearly two decades. On the following day, 9 July 2018, both leaders signed a joint declaration that officially concluded their state of war, pledging to re-establish diplomatic relations, reopen borders, and restore long-disrupted telecommunication and transport links.

The summit was the first meeting between the two countries' heads of state in nearly two decades. For twenty years it had been impossible to travel directly from one nation to the other: there were no flights, the land border was closed, and telephone lines between them did not work. As the declaration was announced, families divided by the dispute were able to telephone one another for the first time since the war, and Ethiopian state-affiliated media reported that flights could resume within days. The rivalry had shaped the wider region, with the two governments backing opposing sides in Somalia's long conflict, while Eritrea had justified open-ended national conscription by warning that war could resume at any time.