Federation of Ethiopia and Eritrea

The Bevin–Sforza Plan

When the Four Power Commission failed to reach agreement, the question of Eritrea's future passed to the United Nations General Assembly, where the Italian Foreign Minister Count Sforza negotiated a compromise with the British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin during the Assembly's third session, held in Paris in late 1948 and continued at Lake Success in early 1949. The resulting "Bevin–Sforza Plan," submitted as a British resolution, proposed a UN trusteeship over Libya divided between British-administered Cyrenaica and Italian-administered Tripolitania, continued Italian trusteeship over Somaliland, and the partition of Eritrea, with the east united to Ethiopia and the west annexed to the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.^[4]

The proposed annexation of western Eritrea to Sudan was rejected by a UN political committee, while a modified version uniting only eastern Eritrea with Ethiopia was initially carried by 37 votes to 11.^[5] When the remaining elements of the plan came to a final vote in the General Assembly plenary, however, several Latin American delegations reversed their earlier support after the defeat of Italy's claims over Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, and the measure fell short of the required two-thirds majority, leaving Eritrea's status unresolved.^[6] Italy subsequently shifted to advocating Eritrean "independence" as a fallback position, paving the way for a further United Nations Commission of Enquiry.^[7]

United Nations Commission of Enquiry

In November 1949, the General Assembly's Fourth Session appointed a five-member Commission of Enquiry, composed of Burma, Guatemala, Norway, Pakistan and South Africa, to visit Eritrea and consult its inhabitants on the territory's future.^[8] The delegates met at Lake Success on 10 January 1950 to plan their programme before travelling to Eritrea.^[9] A correspondent for The Times, quoted in a contemporary account, reported that the Commission's tours of the highlands found support for union with Ethiopia running as high as 95 percent among the Christian population, and that the Italian-backed Independence Bloc was losing members as parts of the Muslim League and other parties shifted toward conditional union.^[10]

The Commission could not agree on a single recommendation. Burma, South Africa and Norway jointly reported on conditions in Eritrea but split on policy: Burma and South Africa proposed that Eritrea become a self-governing unit federated with Ethiopia under the Ethiopian Crown, with the federal government holding authority over defence, external affairs, finance and communications.^[11] Norway, in a separate opinion, argued for outright reunion rather than federation, on the grounds that the two territories were economically interdependent and that federation would leave Eritrea's status unsettled.^[12] Guatemala and Pakistan, in a minority report, recommended a ten-year United Nations trusteeship over Eritrea followed by independence.^[13]

On 2 December 1950 the General Assembly voted 46 to 10, with 4 abstentions, to adopt Resolution 390 A (V), endorsing the federal solution proposed by Burma and South Africa. Anze Matienzo, the Bolivian delegate to the United Nations, was appointed United Nations Commissioner for Eritrea to oversee the transition.^[14]

Political parties' uprisings

From 1941 until 1952, the British Administration acted as an intermediate governing appointment as the political interest and socioeconomic well-being of the Eritrean people was being assessed to form a more autonomous predication. The emergence of political parties was initiated with Haile Selassie’s return to the Ethiopian throne in May of 1941, where to immediate effect he set out on the acquisition of Eritrea and Somaliland into the Ethiopian state. This political perspective was synonymous with the organization known as 'Mahbar Feqri Hagar Eretra’ (Society for the Love of the Land of Eritrea) which would then become the Unionist Party in 1944.^{[15]: 261–281} Most Eritreans during this time did not favor the alignment of the Ethiopian crown and Eritrea.^[15]: 281 The emanation of the Unionist Party was challenged two years later with the materialization of the Moslem League in 1946 which incurred enormous following from the mostly-Muslim western part of the country, and a small portion from the Christian Highlands. A segmentation from the Moslem League was erected in 1947 and came to be known as the National Moslem Party of Massawa. Following was another predominantly Muslim organization known as the New Eritrean Pro-Italy Party maintaining a large Italian community supporting the ideology that if Rome desired to reacquire Eritrea, Italy would assist in obtaining its independence.^[15]: 262 A predominantly Christian party was also incurred in February 1948 known as the Eritrean Liberal Progressive Party, opposing any union with Ethiopia. On 25 July 1949, the Independence Bloc was devised and consisted of all major parties except the Unionist.^[15]: 276 Political parties continued to branch off from their original predecessors to represent more refined interests and many secluded to form singular parties representing the dominant political aspiration. Affiliation with political parties was no more strictly determinate on religious alliance as it was with geographical locale. However, parties often shared common interests, such as regional - highland versus lowland - and faith - Muslim versus Christian.^[15]: 281 Most of the parties sustained an anti-union sentiment which was met with intimidation and interference by the Ethiopian crown.

Tensions between the British Administration and the Unionist movement turned violent in 1946. On 28 July, a Unionist demonstration in Massawa was broken up by police, with participants later sentenced to as much as three years' imprisonment.^[16] A month later, on 28 August 1946, following a dispute in Asmara's native quarter, troops of the Sudan Defence Force left their barracks with machine guns and armoured cars and fired on the Eritrean civilian population for nearly three hours, killing fifty-nine Eritreans and wounding thirty-three; ten Italians were also hit, one fatally.^[17] Ten Sudanese soldiers were later convicted of murder, with sentences of up to fifteen years' penal servitude, though the findings of a British court of inquiry were never disclosed and compensation to victims' families was refused by the British government; Emperor Haile Selassie donated £2,000 to a relief committee for the victims.^[18]