The United States has removed Eritrea’s ruling party, military and several connected people and businesses from an Ethiopia-related sanctions programme after the national emergency supporting that programme expired. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, published the deletions on Friday, 18 September 2026.
The decision removes the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice, the Eritrean Defence Forces, Hidri Trust and Red Sea Trading Corporation from the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List under Executive Order 14046. OFAC also deleted Hagos Ghebrehiwet W Kidan and Abraha Kassa Nemariam, together with alternate spellings of their names.
Six Eritrean targets leave the blocked-persons list
The legal sequence matters. OFAC said the national emergency declared on 17 September 2021 had expired and that it therefore removed people and entities designated under that authority. This was not described as a court ruling, a negotiated settlement with Eritrea or a finding that the original allegations were false.
While designated, the targets’ property and interests in property within U.S. jurisdiction were blocked, and U.S. persons were generally barred from transacting with them unless authorised. Their removal from the SDN list under this programme lifts those particular blocking restrictions and changes the compliance checks required of banks, companies and other U.S.-linked actors.
The Biden administration created the Ethiopia sanctions authority as fighting and a humanitarian emergency deepened in northern Ethiopia. Treasury used it in November 2021 to designate four Eritrean entities and two officials, saying they had contributed to the crisis, obstructed a ceasefire or supported actors involved in the conflict.
The measures began during the Tigray war
At the time, Treasury described Hidri Trust as the holding company for the PFDJ’s business enterprises and Red Sea Trading Corporation as a business connected to party financing. It identified Hagos Ghebrehiwet as the PFDJ’s economic adviser and Abraha Kassa as the head of Eritrea’s national security office. Those descriptions explain why the sanctions extended beyond the armed forces.
Eritrean troops fought alongside Ethiopia’s federal forces against Tigrayan forces in the war that began in 2020 and formally ended with the Pretoria peace agreement in November 2022. The conflict killed and displaced large numbers of people across northern Ethiopia. Serious allegations concerning abuses remain part of the historical record even though this specific U.S. emergency has now lapsed.
The delisting should not be read as the cancellation of every U.S. measure involving Eritrea or every Eritrean official. OFAC’s notice applies to designations made under Executive Order 14046. Sanctions imposed under other legal authorities require separate action; for example, Treasury’s 2021 designation of Eritrean military chief Filipos Woldeyohannes was made under a different human-rights order and does not appear in the 18 September deletion notice.
What the delisting does—and does not—change
Nor does removal from the blocked-persons list automatically create trade, investment or diplomatic normalisation. Banks and companies may still apply their own risk controls, and transactions must comply with export controls, anti-money-laundering rules and any other sanctions that remain applicable to a person, product or activity.
Eritrean Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel welcomed the move in comments to the Associated Press, describing the former restrictions as unwarranted and damaging. That is Eritrea’s position on the policy change; the Treasury notice itself gives the expiration of the emergency as the operative reason for the removals.
The timing also lands in a strategically sensitive region. Eritrea’s Red Sea coast and the port of Assab sit close to the Bab el-Mandeb passage, while attacks and military activity connected to Yemen’s Houthi movement continue to threaten shipping. The delisting does not establish that Red Sea security caused the legal expiration, but it changes Washington’s economic posture toward institutions in a state occupying a pivotal coastline.
Red Sea strategy forms the wider backdrop
The next indicators will be practical: whether U.S. agencies issue broader policy guidance, whether financial institutions resume previously prohibited dealings and whether the decision leads to visible diplomatic engagement with Asmara. For now, the confirmed change is narrower and precise—the Ethiopia-related emergency has expired, and the targets sanctioned under it have been removed from OFAC’s SDN list.
