Is Assab part of Ethiopia, as a map displayed by Ethiopian army commanders suggests?

What the photograph shows

A photograph circulating since at least January shows three officers in Ethiopian army uniform holding up a framed plaque at an outdoor ceremony A. The plaque reads, in Amharic, “Special Operations Command Headquarters, we thank you”. It carries the command’s emblem and a map of the Horn of Africa. A banner behind them refers to the fourth round of the Tsenat course, a commando training programme.

The Horn Frequency, a newsletter covering the region, reported on 4 January that the army had displayed a map at the fourth-round graduation of its special forces that “appears to incorporate Assab” C.

What the map shows

On the map, Ethiopia is shaded yellow. In the enlarged image, the yellow area appears to run to the Red Sea coast at Assab, which is labelled. Only the northern part of Eritrea, around Asmara, is shaded separately B. The long coastal strip that forms Eritrea’s Southern Red Sea region, including Assab, appears inside the yellow area, as part of Ethiopia.

The photograph is small, and the map occupies only a few hundred pixels of it. Our reading matches The Horn Frequency’s, but we have not found a higher-resolution copy.

Whose territory is Assab?

Assab and the Southern Red Sea region are part of Eritrea.

The border between the two countries was settled by the Eritrea–Ethiopia Boundary Commission, which both governments agreed to set up under the Algiers Agreement of December 2000. They committed in advance to treat its decision as final and binding. The Commission delivered its decision on 13 April 2002 E, and the UN Security Council welcomed it as “final and binding” D.

In June 2018, Ethiopia’s ruling coalition announced that Ethiopia would “fully accept” the Algiers Agreement and the Commission’s ruling F.

Ethiopia’s own prime minister does not claim Assab is Ethiopian today. In September 2025, Abiy Ahmed told the state broadcaster EBC that it was “a matter of time” before Ethiopia regained the port, and that “the Red Sea was part of Ethiopia before thirty years ago” G.

Eritrea’s position

Eritrea’s government rejects any Ethiopian claim to its coast. In an editorial published by the Ministry of Information on 9 October, in Tigrinya, it describes its borders as “a matter of sovereignty and territorial integrity, bound by international law and treaties”, and says “Eritrea’s sovereign territory is bounded by blood and by law” H. The translation is ours.

Our verdict

False. A map presented as showing Ethiopia, displayed by officers of Ethiopia’s Special Operations Command, appears to include Assab and Eritrea’s Southern Red Sea region within Ethiopia. That territory belongs to Eritrea under a boundary ruling both countries agreed in advance to accept, which the UN Security Council called final and binding, and which Ethiopia formally accepted in 2018.