A/HRC/32/47 V. Accountability 96. The commission recalls that, in its resolution 29/18, the Human Rights Council extended the mandate of the commission of inquiry to investigate gross violations of human rights in Eritrea with a view to ensuring full accountability, including where these violations may amount to crimes against humanity. A. Institutional accountability 97. Eritrea is an authoritarian State. Despite some attributes of a democratic State, including a 16-member cabinet, a judicial system and regional governors and assemblies, political power in Eritrea is concentrated in the hands of the President and of a small and amorphous circle of military and political loyalists. The President appears to maintain shadow structures of advisers who make policy decisions outside the formal governing structures. Government ministers, who are not in the President’s inner circle, do not debate or create policy, but merely enforce executive will. The leading members of the ruling PFDJ party and the commanders of the security forces appear to report directly to the President, and each group has responsibilities parallel to those of appointed government officials. More generally, individual proximity to the President is a more reliable indicator of de facto influence and control than official title. 98. In assessing de facto power in Eritrea and its relationship to the gross human rights violations and crimes described in the present report, the commission bears in mind that Eritrea is a highly militarized society, and that military and security personnel are disproportionately represented within the President’s inner circle. Both the National Security Office and the military have a central role in affairs of State. The commission has reasonable grounds to believe that the National Security Office is responsible for most cases of arbitrary arrest, enforced disappearance and torture in official and unofficial detention centres. 99. The military in Eritrea is responsible for the numerous abuses associated with the Government’s military service programmes, including in training camps and military detention centres and at Eritrean borders. Military detention centres reportedly exist wherever there is a military encampment. Military commanders are also responsible for the use of conscripts as forced labour. It is the commission’s understanding that the commanders of the country’s five military zones, all generals, hold considerably more power than civilian governors, given that they control economic assets and military prisons in their zones. 100. The distinction between the PFDJ and the Government is blurred at the highest levels, given also that the President is Secretary-General of the party. The PFDJ leadership reportedly controls parastatal enterprises in Eritrea, and thus benefits from the use of conscript labour in them. 101. The police appear to have less influence, although some witnesses described cases of illegal detention in police stations. That government ministers tend to have less de facto power than the military, national security and the President’s inner circle does not preclude the possibility that individual ministers closely associated with the President could be liable for the acts described in the present report. 16