Isaias Afwerki

Isaias Afwerki has been Eritrea's only president since it won independence from Ethiopia in 1993, following a decades-long war he helped lead as head of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front. Eritrea has never held a national election under his rule, its 1997 constitution has never been implemented, and indefinite, often decades-long national conscription has been condemned by the UN Human Rights Council as amounting to forced labor affecting a large share of the working-age population.

The country has no independent press — Reporters Without Borders has repeatedly ranked it among the world's most censored states — and a 2001 crackdown on reformist officials and journalists led to the indefinite, incommunicado detention of dozens of critics, several of whom are believed to have died in custody without ever facing trial.