A/HRC/23/53 to round up a number of students who were physically fit for military training. He was afraid that this might mean that underage students were also being targeted for military service. The concluding observations made by the Committee on the Rights of the Child on the situation in Eritrea are indicative in this context. The Committee expressed its concern at reports of “forced underage recruitment and at the detention and ill-treatment of boys under the age when they were required to serve their compulsory military service”, and urged Eritrea to take all possible measures to prevent the recruitment of children. 9 K. Minority rights 74. Minority groups in Eritrea include the Afar, the Bilen, the Beni Amer, the Kunama, the Nara, the Saho and the Tigre. During her mission, the Special Rapporteur met with members of the Afar and the Kunama ethnic groups and was able to hold group discussions with them. While the human rights violations they described were not necessarily uniquely experienced by the groups, they have had a disparate impact on them. 75. The Afar are nomadic people living in the area spanning Ethiopia, Djibouti and Eritrea along the Red Sea coast. The population of Eritrean Afar has been estimated at between 600,000 and 800,000. A sizable proportion left after independence, and approximately 19,435 have registered as refugees in Ethiopia. 76. The Afar speak a distinct language and are pastoralists. Their wish is to continue their traditional way of life, which implies living off their land and its resources, while being involved in nomadic animal husbandry, salt mining and fishing. 77. The Afar are subjected to extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture and rape, as well as the destruction of their traditional means of subsistence and livelihood, and businesses. They have also been forced into displacement from their traditional territory. Forced military training and national service requiring young Afar women to leave their homes for long periods of time is met with criticism. 78. The Afar consider that they are targeted as a community and are discriminated against, given that the Afar region has suffered from lack of development and security for the past 20 years. 79. The Kunama populate the border areas between Eritrea and Ethiopia, and consider themselves the first inhabitants of those areas. Originally a nomadic people, they settled in the Gash Barka (formerly Gash Setit) region of Eritrea, one of the most fertile areas of the country. Their livelihood is based on farming and herding cattle. Kunama culture is rooted in the community and they carry out several tasks communally, such as building their huts, farming and harvesting. Some still practice their traditional religion, while others have embraced Islam and Christianity. 80. Since independence, many people from other regions of Eritrea, particularly from the highlands, have been encouraged to settle in areas traditionally populated by the Kunama. The Government’s policy, turning all land into State property, undermined the clan-based traditional land tenure system of the Kunama people. It led to competition between the Kunama agro-pastoralists and the new settlers for land and grazing grounds, resulting in encroachment until much of the land was taken over, forcing the population off it. 81. The Kunama assert that they have been marginalized, a situation that has brought about disparities in their access to such basic social services as health care and education. 9 CRC/C/ERI/CO/3, paras. 70-71. 15